House Update #4

The upstairs bedroom with a new little room for our tinacos (water tanks) on top. Note our neighbor's tinaco, not too pretty; and presumably against the law in new construction and renovations. But hey, rules are meant to be broken, right?

After a month lost to INAH, we had a reduced crew of 2-4 for nearly a month, slowing down the process considerably. We are now 2-3 months behind the original estimate for one reason or another. BUT- things are looking up. The main patio is still a mess, but the bathrooms are being tiled, the walls are being stuccoed and painted, and the floor tiles are being installed. Here are some pictures.

Birds seem to be a theme. For the front guest bathroom we selected a simple blue, bird design, and for the upstairs guest room we selected a green/blue, bird design. These talavera bird designs are pretty much straight from the 13th century when they seem to have found their way from north Africa to Italy to Spain. You can still find them in Morocco, or you could 40 years ago.

We have to wait for the tiles for the kitchen, half-bath and master bath since the tiles had to be ordered from Dolores Hidalgo (la cuna de la revolución). They are really nothing special, but they make tiles down here as they are needed, all hand-made of course. The kitchen counter and wall designs will include yellow birds on a red background for highlighting and yellow tiles for the counter top. Most new "traditional" kitchens here seem to be bright red, blue or green, but we liked the yellow tiles which have a nice glow and warmth to them that you often don't get in recent Mexican kitchens. And besides we just did not want to be like everyone else.

The tiles in the half-bath in the study will have an abstract cobalt blue design on natural terra cotta, with an off-white tile for the counter top. We will not tile the walls, which we can do later if we want to.

Our master bath will be white and blue with two types of blue crosses, following a design that Christiane liked at the house (i.e. mansion where the sitting president of Mexcio who signed the Guadalupe Hidalgo treaty once lived) where she takes her culture classes. It will be somewhat sedate and formal (I hesitate to say distinguished) and easy to live with.

The patio will be brick set on edge in a series of concentric circles, a little modern, but it will really be spectacular when it is finished with large terra cotta flower pots and some bougainvilla.

The outside walls look so nice in plain white that I am tempted to leave them alone. But we will probably paint them off-white in the patios, except for one wall in San Francisco orange/red or something. With bougainvilla climbing up the walls, they too will be spectacular; and since bougainvilla blooms every other month down here and geraniums are always blooming, we will always have a wide variety of flowers to sit and enjoy. I can barely wait. But at least we are finally making progress again.