New Plans

We visited Miguel, our architect, on Tuesday. He lives in El Pueblito in a house he designed and built 10 years ago, when he was just getting started. The walls are hay bails (covered with stucco, of course) like they have been working on the southwest for the past few decades, and it is a mix of rooms and patios and gardens. It is gorgeous.

He had about 30 different plans printed out. We rapidly discarded a bunch, and narrowed it down to two or three, and with some changes in the computer, we came up with our nearly final plan shown here. We turned the living room into a guest room, will have two full baths, a study, and two new doors to the back garden (from the kitchen and the family room). We will remove the current stairs to the upstairs room and put new ones on the back wall of the garden and have a balcony to connect them to the upstairs room. My original plan had a corridor along the back wall from the living room to the kitchen, but it was a real space waster. After Bob suggested making the living room into a guest room, which really does not need an interior path to the kitchen, everything fell into place. This plan above is still not finished and shows the washing machine in two different places. We may end up putting it in the front guest bedroom's bath room, which itself needs a door!

As I was waiting for the locksmith to change the keys on Monday, and the previous owner frantically removed the last of his stuff, I picked at the paint in the entranceway with my pocket knife. There appears to be a fresco mural under all the paint, and we will need to obtain some free advice from an art historian and restorer. If at all possible, I would like to preserve it or at least reproduce it.

On Wed. we showed the house to Shelley, and she is sure that the kitchen counter is not ceramic tile, but stone tile. At first, I did not believe it since the tiles are a very deep red, but the more I thought about it the more I thought it might be pipestone or something. If it is stone, then we might be able to refinish it, which would be spectacular. Even if it is a well-fired ceramic tile we may be able to refinish it. After I cleaned it off with cleanser, I realized how bad the surface is and that it is not the original stove, despite having the firebox holes in the front; as there are no holes in the top for pots to be set to cook. So for now we don't really know how old it is, only that it is over 50 years old.

Now, I really have to learn patience, as it will take weeks to get the permits and get started working; and then even more weeks/months to get it all done.

I've added a few more pix to the "before" pictures at http://www.flickr.com/photos/tomwheaton/sets/72157594198157604/