Progress: House, FM3, and razor blades

(Andy blogging here)

Sorry that it's been so long since the last update. It's been so busy I don't know where to start.


We DID actually find razor blades - WalMart. We bought the entire stock (just in case) and went to work on scraping the floors of decades-old paint. Oh, and just after the last post we (cue the hosts of angels singing) we received out FM3s. I nearly wept!

A funny FM3 story: our pal Jorge spilled tea on his FM3 and the ink ran such that it became unreadable. So off he went to the "palace" of government to get a replacement. They told him that a simple $400 pesos and a letter describing what had happened to his existing FM3 and they would issue a replacement. Using his Spanish-speaking friend, he wrote a page-long description of the tea spill, turned in it and waited the usual week. When he returned, he was told that the letter wasn't detailed enough. He kept his cool and asked: "What more is there to say? There was tea, it spilled." Not much dramatic tension to work with here. "You see, tea was first domesticated by the Chinese. . . ." After much pleading, whinging, and refusing to go away, they finally agreed that a page was enough and he was told to return in 2 hours. The FM3 was waiting for him.


Now, on to sewage. . .


(Warning: geeky home-repair detail here, feel free to skip to next paragraph)

If you'll remember, we had to replace the in-floor plumbing in the kitchen. It was old and was leaking (and leaching up the kitchen wall - causing the plaster to fall off). We replaced the pipe in the floor and routed the 4 inch PVC through the wall and into the garage. But now, what to do with it. I decided to put a distribution box with a drain in the middle of the garage floor and then route the plumbing to this. They call it a "registro" here (not sure of the actual translation) It's just a concrete box into which the many different waste lines run. One line then runs out to the main sewer. I expected that I could just buy a prebuilt one. Ah, but no. You have to make it by hand.

A picture is worth a thousand words (especially when you're dealing with sewer) so here you go:

First I broke out the concrete floor and dug a hole in the middle of the floor. Next, I cut the top out of a 5 gallon bucket and ran the lines into it (I ran a new line for a second drain which will accommodate the washer on the other side of the wall and a second work sink).

I covered the bucket with wire mesh and then threw concrete at it. It took several coats but eventually I was able to build it out the right thickness. Near the end I added a drain with a trap so the stinky gases won't enter my workshop/shrine.

I capped the top with manhole cover that I found under the counter at my local hardware store. This week I repour the floor and will slope it all toward the drain. A sewage masterpiece.

And now on to electricity (more geeky home improvement stuff to follow).

The wiring in the house in freakish. I'll spare you the details but a few of the lights were registering either zero, 70, 130, or 240 volts. Depending on which combination of 2- and 3-way switch positions were used. If defies logic but, the best I can surmise, is that many of the lines were doing double duty as ground and hot, depending on switch. I'm pulling EVERYTHING out of the walls and am going to start over. First step was to get clean power to the house. We installed two, new 16-breaker boxes on two separate meters outside. We'll gradually cut over from the weird old system to the spanky new one.

Enough with the technical details. The look of the house has changed so dramatically that it's difficult to relate it to the stinky, grungy place that we originally bought. We changed Maestros and now Lupe is our man. It's made all the difference. In addition to getting more stuff done, he has a great eye and has made tons of wonderful suggestions.

First, the paint.

Stina (in consultation with George and Lupe) gets the credit for choosing the color combinations. They certainly aren't subtle but will blend in a bit more when our stuff (furniture, paintings, etc.) is in the rooms.

Stina bought a half/dozen lights from Tonala to replace the cheezy, mid-70s chandelier/Ethan Allen-type fixtures that were there. The new ones look very cool.

We also decided to change the walls/doors in our bedroom. We knocked a big door openning into the patio area and reconfigure the closet. I was surprised to find that new floor and wall panels are actually made from Styrofoam, sandwiched by wire mesh, covered by concrete. They say that it's stronger than 100% concrete and with only a fraction of the weight.

Before

During

After

Closet

Once the painting was completed, they moved on to the patio out back. First step was to chip all of the existing concrete off (made easier by the fact that it was mostly falling off). Then they hosed it down and hurled a coat of sloppy concrete (with some magic liquid that deters salitre, legend has it).

Another great Lupe idea was to frame the doors with bricks - it was cheap, easy, and makes the doors look a lot better.

The (nearly) finished product:

It's been a crazy couple of weeks. The truck with all of our stuff is supposed to arrive by the end of the year and we we're in a crunch to get the house as far along as we can. At the very least, we wanted to have the painting done and the dust-creating tasks mostly behind us. Mission accomplished.

We still have wiring to do, cabinets to install, doors and windows, etc. but the end-of-year crush is nearly past. It's been a lot of fun too. The workers are really nice guys. We've celebrated a couple of their birthdays with cake, beer, and tacos.

They've even let the kids do some brick work.

I've learned so many new things about how to build/restore a house here. I've also learned a lot of cultural and language things (saving for upcoming posts). All-in-all Mexico continues to be one of the best decisions that we've ever made. We are having a ball!

Why can't we find razor blades?

Now that the painters have moved on we are faced with cleaning up the floors. Our painters mostly cleaned up after themselves, but alas they did not want to scape up the droppings of previous painters. Our floors are badly speckled- especially in the master bedroom and in the guest room.

Yesterday morning I spent my child-free time with a bucket of Mr Clean and a razor, moving along tile by tile scraping off the old paint (and lord knows what else- there was a lot of mystery sticky) and scrubbing each tile with cleaner. I finished about half the TV room. By then I had gone through maybe 6 razor blades.

Andy was at Home Depot and tried to get new blades there. (You know, those packs of 6 or ten blades, each wrapped up in a little paper sleeve??) No luck. We tried about 10 hardware stores throughout the day. No one had razors, although we were recommended to try muratic acid to get the stuff off the floors. Finally we broke down and bought a bottle... It frightens me, but we'll see how it works.

But how will we clean the paint off the windows?

Where can we find razor blades in Guadalajara?

A Mariachi Serenade

Last night I had a completely Mexican moment.

I was in a pretty deep sleep and about 2:30 I woke up to the sound of music. Mariachi music. I looked out the window to try to see the source, but it sounded like it was coming from around the corner, up the street. I opened the window and listened for a few minutes- the violins were a little out of tune but the trumpets and men's voices were great.

The sound was so surreal and interesting in the absolute quiet, dead of the night. I think someone was getting a serenade, but I'm really not sure what was going on.

November 21: Interior painting done, another FM-3 delay, Lily turns 3

The latest and greatest from Andy & Stina in Guadalajara...............

Javier and crew finished interior wall prep and painting this past week. Some images (including one with our new entryway light):

The guys have also powerwashed the kitchen walls (they are much brighter now!) and hacked out the cement "step" in the kitchen. While knocking that out, though, they made a not-so-surprising discovery, and it sadly it wasn't gold. The kitchen wastewater pipes were made of clay, and they had collapsed some time ago. This would explain the water damage on the wall between the kitchen and dining room, not to mention the extensive salitre (another form of water damage) in the garage, which is on the other side of an intersecting kitchen wall. There is likely water damage on the inside of the kitchen walls, but the marble tile has probably covered it up.

We also discovered that the kitchen floor tile was laid directly on the dirt- there is no "slab" underneath the house. Interesting.

Andy got some PVC and installed a new drain pipe. He and the crew ended up breaking up all the concrete in the garage floor, as the new kitchen drain needs to be routed out the garage floor on the way to the main sewer line to the street. We weren't planning to break out the garage floor just yet, but alas, those of you who have been through a major renovation know how these things are.

Anyway, the kitchen floor has been repaired. It's all ready for our new temporary kitchen to be set up. The garage floor is a disaster, but that's for another day.

Another note on the plumbing front. The City is installing a new sewer line on our street. Their approach doean't appear to be especially North American, but I suppose it eventually it will get done. A city crew has been periodically coming to our block for a day or so, digging up maybe 10-15 feet of street, installing the new pipe, filling the hole, and then going away. For a week to 10 days. Then they come back, do another 10 feet or so, and disappear again. About 6 weeks ago Andy spoke with them about breaking out the end of our driveway where our sewer line meets the street so we can update that connection ourselves, and they promised him they would do it for 3000 pesos. (A little less than $300 USD.) They have been back to our street 3 or 4 times since then, sloooooowly making their way down the street towards our house, and each time they touch base with Andy, and tell him, "we'll be back this Wednesday for sure!" Well, they haven't made it yet, and who knows when they will. But they will sometime, we are sort of sure about that. It's clear they'd like the money. But who makes the decisions for where they go every day??

Aside from plumbing, we bought our new kitchen appliances last week. Managed to find a great sale at Sears and everything was 20% off. In the next week or two they will deliver a Bosch side-by-side fridge/freezer, a GE Profile stove (w/ 6 burners and a double oven), a Bosch dishwasher, a Mabe hood/fan, and an In-Sink-Erator garbage disposal. Total cost was $4300 US. Not bad! I did a ton of shopping around and Sears had the best prices by far. The selection of appliances here in Guadalajara is not as extensive as in the US, and they have a less "solid" feel than the US counterparts. A GE Profile stove in Mexico does not equal a GE Profile stove in the US. (Although 95% of the GE stoves sold in the US are made in Mexico by a Mexican company called "Mabe". Go figure.)

On the non-house front, we continue to have a frustrating experience getting our FM-3's. We thought we would have received them last Thursday, and took the kids out of school that morning so we could all be fingerprinted. Turns out that somewhere in the back office one page of our paperwork had been lost. We got another copy of this document right there and turned it in on the spot, but we still have to wait yet another week for the FM-3s. This coming Friday we will take the kiddos out of school again and hopefully the visas will be ready then.

I know that our experience is a cakewalk compared to how Mexicans (and other foreigners) get treated by US Immigration. I am trying to remain zen about the whole thing, but it's hard, especially as the net result of this last delay is a bummer: we can't begin moving our stuff down here until we get the FM-3's. The move will take 4-6 weeks once the clock starts, so this means that we're not going to get our stuff until mid-January. That will cost us another month of rent ($1300), because we can't move into the house until we get our stuff. It's now looking like move day will be sometime around February 1st.

On a happier note, the kids continue to do really well. Lucy, in the past couple of weeks, has just been starting to read- she's beginning to use phonics to match letters to sounds. It's very cool to watch all of this.

It was Lily's 3rd birthday on Saturday, and we didn't do much for her on that day. She did get a rocking horse, though- a much-wanted toy. She also got another "Wandall"- her name for a doll. (A favorite teacher at her last school is named Randall, and all dolls she's had since have been called Randall. Or as she says, "Wandall".) On Sunday Liesl and Cristian joined us at some hot springs near a town called Villa Corona, about an hour's drive away. The kids swam and played and the grownups chatted and soaked in the warm water.

Life continues to be good here. The newness has worn off somewhat, but what I'm looking at now with clearer eyes is very good. I love it here.

Some of Stina's favorite things so far are:

• the sound of churchbells, occasionally at weird hours (8:30 on a Sunday night?)
• the quiet morning ritual of people out sweeping their sidewalks
• the guy who keeps a flock of pigeons on his rooftop next door (when he lets them out for their exercise every evening, it's mesmerizing to watch the flock soar and dive in tight formation)
• the architecture- from the old colonial buildings downtown to present

Some of Andy's favorite things are:

• weather (no fog and minimal wind compared to San Francisco)
• food (tacos in particular)
• cost of living
• pace
• personal freedoms- you aren't treated like an idiot (e.g. drink in the swimming pool!)
  
  

November 10 update

Since our last posting our focus has primarily been on our new house.



Our immediate goal is to get the house livable so we can move into it as soon as our stuff comes from the US. Livable to us means that it's clean, painted, and that the current electrical and plumbing systems are operational. We will do the renovation in stages after that. So we're going to live with a temporary kitchen in the short term, and some pretty ugly bathrooms. The electrical system is OK but that needs to be upgraded, as well as the plumbing. Also, in the future the plan is that we will put in-floor heating and new polished cement floors throughout the house... again, that will come later.

We found a work crew through our landlord; she owns several upscale tile shops here in Guadalajara and knows something about the construction business here. Anyway, she introduced us to Javier, the maestro, and his crew- 2 young guys (1 is 13) and his son and his nephew. We met Javier on a Thursday and they started work the following Monday. They have been working hard for 3 weeks now (how time flies!) Their focus has been to demo the nasty old built-ins in the kitchen and bedrooms, fix the walls and paint throughout the house.

The demo took a couple of days. When they took the kitchen sink and the dishwasher out, a pile of old chicken bones, not to mention 2 decades of filth, greeted them. More cucarachas than I could count. The workers were pretty grossed out, but the smell was like decent compost, not old chicken. Not as bad as you'd think.




After demo the crew tackled the wall repairs and prep. The construction of our house is totally different than what you'd find in the USA. No wooden studs with sheetrock over it.... here what holds houses up are cement posts (cement around rebar) and steel beams in the ceilings. The walls are adobe and/or clay brick. The supporting walls are quite thick. Plaster covers the interior adobe/brick, so the walls are smooth. Generally speaking the walls were in good shape but they needed to be patched and smoothed before painting. This is a time-consuming process and there is plaster dust everywhere. In some cases, where there were bigger holes, they applied some sort of heavy duty cement before plastering it over.



Three weeks into the process, they have pretty much completed all the painting. In the living/dining room and entry way the ceilings are covered in intricate plaster molding. Someone years ago had painted these details unpleasant shades of dark green, pink and copper. Then there were the years of smoking... putting a thick yellow film on top of everything. I had initially wanted to scrape the plaster details off and put in wooden beams- the plaster seemed fussy and out of sync with the rest of the house design- but after the painters applied the 10th coat of white paint and finally covered the yellow/green/pink/copper mess that was there, I could see how pretty the ceilings actually are. Sure it will look more like a San Francisco living room, but we'll save the $$ on the beams and spend it elsewhere. Those ceilings look like beautiful frosting, especially paired with the buttery pale yellow that we have had the walls painted throughout the house.




The next thing the work crew will tackle is the kitchen. The cabinets/appliances have been removed and what remains is a cement stair-like base that the cabinets and appliances sat on. The walls are covered with some kind of marble tile. Perhaps this could be pretty- I can't see it yet (kind of like those ceilings...) The tile is totally filthy.



Javier says that removing the tile, as it's cemented to the wall-will be very time consuming, and then they will have to replaster/recement the walls. Since we're not sure what we want to do with the kitchen yet (we may extend it) we are going to have Javier and crew remove that cement step and scrub/bleach the walls. I will outfit a "temporary" kitchen for now. We are going to buy the appliances we will use long-term but skimp on cabinets/workspace in the meantime.

BTW- the cost of all this work, including materials? $4000 US. I should mention that the house itself is about 4000 sq feet.

After the workers finish the kitchen, we will have them focus on the patio in the back on the house and then move up to the roofdecks- getting them waterproofed. We don't want a leak to wreck our beautiful paint job.

We also met yesterday with another painter named Lupe. He's the person who did the painting at George's B&B. He does beautiful work with decorative painting. He's going to come back in a week with a cost estimate for doing decortive painting, as well as his color charts and portfolio to discuss ideas. I'd like to apply deeper shades of color over the walls in a wash, and have him paint trim around windows, doors, etc. This is Mexico after all....

But life hasn't all been about the house. On 28 October we celebrated Lucy's 5th birthday. Her birthday fell on a weekend and to celebrate we met up with our friends Cristian and Liesl at a neat kids' museum/playspace called Trompo Magico. We've been a couple of times now and it's a favorite with the kiddos -it's kind of hands-on sciency like the Exploratorium, but then it has lots of indoor and outdoor play stations, like a place for playing "hospital" and another for playing "restaurant". All the playing props are provided. Anyway, afterwards we went to Liesl and Cristian's place for pizza and cake, and a good time was had by all. Lucy got a new dress from Cristian and Liesl, and a couple of puzzles and a game from mama and dad. Her comment later? "I had expected more." We explored that a bit and what she meant was that she missed having a big party with lots of friends. Next year.... Lily's birthday is coming up a week from today, and we will undoubtably have a similar low-key event.

On the FM-3 front, we dropped off the next round of paperwork and photos (which had to be professionally taken and not with a digital camera- that set us back 880 pesos) this past week, and we were told to come back next Thursday with the kids, so we can get the FM-3's finally, and provide fingerprints. I am skeptical that everything will be ready by then- they are sure to find some issue with some aspect of the paperwork and/or photos- but we will see. As soon as we have the FM-3's -AND I can get a decent fare to San Diego- I will fly up to meet our stuff in storage and oversee its transfer to the moving truck. Then I will fly up to SF to see friends and have a couple of days of shopping... then back here.

Generally speaking we are doing really great. The kids are happy and continue to love their life at school. They are having a great time with their friends and are always happy when we arrive to pick them up- and at drop off time. Andy and I are happy here- not missing the US at all. Sometimes I wish there was a great grocery store around here, but that's about where my pining for the US ends. Of course we sorely miss our friends- that's a given.

Our Mexican adventure begins

We arrived here about a month and some change ago, and we're settling into life in Guadalajara pretty well. Lots has been going on- not enough fingers to count everything on. Here are the highlights:

-We are living in a furnished 2-bedroom apartment in a very nice part of Guadalajara, near the Minerva circle, for anyone familiar with this area. It's very green around here, and close by there are amenities like coffee shops, restaurants, grocery stores, etc. Our apartment is owned by a woman originally from Barcelona who owns several upscale tile stores in town. It's just been completely "redone" (lots of fancy tile!) and we're not roughing it by any stretch of the imagination. As I said, this apartment is fully furnished and we're not really lacking for anything, if you don't count my espresso machine. Or kitchen equipment. Or Andy's tools. Or the kids' toys. Or our clothes, art, books, etc. etc. OK, so we miss our stuff, but that will get here soon enough- maybe another 6 weeks or 8 weeks, depending.

-The girls are in school and loving it. They are in a kindergarten program in an English immersion school but all their classmates are Mexican, so they are learning playground Spanish (what better kind is there?) One of the first words they learned was "cochinita" which means literally "little pig" or semiliterally "little dirty thing". Although the kiddos usually resemble little dirty things when they get home from school, this specifically is in reference to the roly poly bugs they and their classmates love to collect and play with during recess. Much happy bonding has happened during cochinita collection time between our gringa daughters and their new compatriots. Anyway, it's a favorite word around here and my car has been christened "Cochenita"- a play on the word for car ("coche") and dirty. With a 2 year old, a 4 year old and a fixer upper house, it will be dirty fast enough. Lucy, clever gal she is, came up with the name.

- On the note of the car- I got a new 2007 Honda CR-V. It's great, and it features all the airbags we could ever need while navigating the insane traffic circles which grace our new city. It has Jalisco (that's the state Guadalajara is in) license plates so until I get out of the car I'm not immediately identified as a gringa. Andy is waiting to get a new car in California, as the one he wants (a Honda Element) isn't sold in Mexico. He's going to get it after we get our FM-3's- our long-term visas. That's another story.

-We closed on the purchase of our new house Tuesday. The purchase process was not complicated and we did not work with a real estate agent. We found the house through word of mouth (through our friends George and Gabriel, the owners of Casa Venezuela- the amazing B&B we stayed in in August, which is a few blocks away.) All real estate transactions here in Mexico need to be managed and recorded by a "notario"- roughly the combined equivalent of a lawyer and a title company in the US. We found our notario through our friend Matt who had some interaction with him while Matt was in law school at USC. Our notario speaks perfect English and also has a US law degree from Duke. The notario helped us with the necessary paperwork and his crew also performed the title search. Incidently, we were able to purchase this house only with tourist visas. We own the house outright, too; as we are not within 50 km of the coast, the "putting the property in a bank trust" requirement does not apply.

-Our FM-3 visas are in process. An FM-3 visa is for people like us who will not be working. It is good for 1 year and FM-3 holders may have a car in Mexico. It is renewable every year. If we want to- and this is really a long way out and far from our thinking- we could apply for Mexican citizenship after 5 years of living here on an FM-3, not that there's really any reason to do so. It's very hard to get a working visa in Mexico, unless one is clearly going to do a job a Mexican cannot do, like teaching English as a native speaker. Anyway, we had to give up our tourist visa entry cards a couple of weeks ago when we started the process, and until we get the FM-3's we will not be able to leave Mexico. We expect that we should have them in a few weeks.

-Spanish. Well, Andy is doing pretty well, and the kids seem to be holding their own at school. I am struggling, although my comprehension is getting better all the time. All those years of French are decidedly NOT helping- when I speak most of my prepositions and many verb tenses come out in French, which is often confusing to my interlocutors. When we get a little more settled, and find more childcare (the kids are only in school for a half day, which isn't much time considering all the running around we're doing getting house, car, insurance, etc etc.) I will be taking some classes. So for now I'm learning on the fly. It's frustrating but I guess it's making me a better person or something. I have only made one bad faux pas, when I asked a gas station attendent to fill it up. I think I said something like fill me up, which means something pornographic here, and the guy was about 80 years old.... he handled it better than Andy did when I told him what I said later on. Anyway, I try to say the least needed when I don't know the person I'm talking to.

Generally speaking we are very happy, and Guadalajara is a good place to be. Overall it seems that Lucy has had the toughest time with the transition. She's old enough to have real relationships with people, but not quite able to grasp why we're doing this, or even how far away we are from San Francisco- for example, she still wants to invite her former classmates to her birthday party next week. Lily is taking it all utterly like a champ, as long as she gets her afternoon siesta. Andy and I have not yet been hit by homesickness, but we know it's only a matter of time before it will come. What has helped has been the few friendships we've made. Primary is George- the owner of the B&B we stayed in in August. He is a really sweet, generous guy- funny and easy to hang out with. Also a treasure trove of info. George has lived in Guadalajara for just over a year- originally he's from Orlando, where he was the VP of food & beverage for Hyatt for 20 years. His Mexican partner, Gabriel, is in medical school and is busy with that- so George has lots of time on his hands, when the B&B isn't full. He loves to shop and has amazing taste. His place is 2 blocks from the kids school (4 blocks from our new house), so after we drop them off in the morning, we swing by George's for coffee and frequently some sort of outing. George and Gabriel just got a new puppy so the kids like going to his place even more. Our other main new friends here are Liesl, and her 5 year old son Cristian. They have been a godsend- Lucy and Cristian are new best friends, and Andy and I love hanging out with Liesl, a smart and interesting single mom. They moved here in August from Denver. Cristian's dad was Mexican and Liesl wants Cristian to learn Spanish and understand his Mexican heritage. We do many kid-friendly things together, especially on the weekends.

The weather has been hot, although the rainy season is tapering off and it's getting much less humid than it was. The daytime temps are probably in the low to mid 80's in the sun, cooler in the shade. The fall is coming on though- it's definitely getting cooler in the mornings and sometimes I even need a jacket.

Guadalajara is a pretty place, although it's scruffy around the edges most everywhere. That said, if you look a little closer there are architectural gems all over the place. I don't know much about the Mexican economy or history yet, but it seems that there is a fast growing middle class with more disposable income now. There are lots of home improvement stores here, but not many boutique-y places like you'd find in San Francisco or Boston or New York or Paris. Lots of fancy cars. But still many buildings are in disrepair and the sidewalks are all crazy and you have to always watch out when you're walking for huge random potholes. It will be interesting to see what this place is like in 10 years