House Finally Done!!

We moved into our new house at Damián Carmona Norte #11 on July 31, 2007, a date that will live in . . . , well for a long, long time in our memories at least.

What a relief. If you have not looked at the Before and After shots recently, I added a few since I first put up the photos in Flickr. There are a few more flowers in these. The red of our bougainvilla and canas are really set off by the ochre of the patio walls. We really lucked out on colors.

We have been cleaning and organizing ever since, and are pooped. Miguel and Alberto did a great job and despite the extra couple of months and the extra couple hundred thousand pesos, we are very pleased with what they were able to accomplish. The old owner, Alberto G., has apparently been coming by to check things on "his" house, and I think he is a little surprised at what we were able to do with it and still maintain its historic nature. Every door (all are glassed) has a different and interesting view.

I also added some pix to Flickr that Celine (C's niece, daughter of Claude and Marie José) took when she visited us a few months ago. I just happened on them again and thought they provided an interesting look at Querétaro, especially since she was here for less than 24 hours. The couple at Hacienda Juriquilla are Niels and Grace.

Niel's father was the archaeologist who discovered Tepexpan Man in 1947, the earliest human remains in the New World until that time. We are having a 60 year retrospective at the Tepexpan Museum (near Teotihuacan) on August 23. I did the website with a lot of help from Niels. Check it out here.

Now if we can find some money to finish paying the Social Security of the workers, attending our daughters' weddings and another niece's wedding in France, we will be able to survive 2007. I would hate to have to sell this house to make ends meet!

And life goes on despite the threat of world economic breakdown, rumors of unrest in Mexico, and especially despite the fact that George W. is trying his level best to destroy what used to make the US great.

House Update #6

On July 30 or 31, we will move into our new house. It has been a long 7 months since we started the renovations and an even longer 9 and a half months since we bought it, and it has been over a year since we made our first offer on it. Whew! I am tired just thinking about it.

Every thing is about finished so I went to the house today and took pictures based on what we saw before renovations began and posted BEFORE and AFTER shots to Flickr. I will post a few more next week after things get cleaned up a little more.

On August 18, we are planning on having a house warming with everyone we have ever met (well almost) in Querétaro, along with our architects, masons, electrician, some neighbors, etc. If they all come it will be well over 60 people.

This house is the nicest one we have ever owned, and more charming than most we lived in growing up. Only the one we lived in in Newport R.I. (near Cliff Walk) and the one my parents owned on Main St. Glastonbury, Connecticut (1745 Colonial), were nearly as neat as this one. It has a great mixture of traditional construction and basic layout with modern convenience and light. Our architect did a tremendous job of adding the nice little touches like the back patio floor and stairs, the rooftop terrace, and the skylights in the bathrooms and front bedroom; and he was very creative in adapting an old house to modern needs.

I just like to go there, with or without the workmen, and stare.

House Update #5

Since the last update (#4), about a month and a half ago, things have picked up speed as we have consistently had 10 people working. Click here for some recent photos.

All the tile in the baths and the kitchen; and the interior floors have been installed and grouted. They really look nice. The floors are of terra cotta tile and will need to be sealed, but that will wait until all the painting and other heavy work is done. The brick in the back patio is finished and a new drain has been installed. They are putting the quarried patio stones back in the main patio, now that the electrical and plumbing work is mostly done. We still need to install the light and plumbing fixtures. The light fixtures in the bedrooms, baths, study and kitchen will be modern; and in the living room, dining room and patios they will be traditional handicraft style which we bought in San Miguel de Allende, where there is really a wider selection even if the prices are a little higher.

We bought a new stove and a dishwasher which will be installed in the next week or so. The main question will be whether the gas company will accept our pipes or require that they install the pipes (on the outside of the walls) and hook up the stove and hot water heater on the roof.

The interior doors are all of wood, but since the doorways are all different widths and heights and because we want an “authentic” look, they have either been made by hand (hand hewn tongue in grove, all pegged together and no nails, and mortice and tenon) or are being adapted from the original exterior doors, which were also hand-made and pegged together. The carpenter has also repaired the original front window using the same methods as the original builder. It is really fascinating watching him work.

The doors leading to the patios will all be metal door frames with glass. And these are being installed even though we have not gotten the quarried threshold stones yet. It seems that the little village where the thresholds are being made has been cutoff from the outside world by the recent rains, making it impossible for trucks to get in and out.

All of the walls, inside and out, have now been stuccoed white, and only need to be painted. They look pretty good without paint. The 12-foot ceilings have all been painted.

The pergola on the roof was finished today, and they will start putting in the terra cotta floor tile tomorrow. We still need to tile the steps to the roof, put guard rails on the stairs and the puente (bridge), connect to the water tanks on the roof, put in the hot water heater, build and install the kitchen and master bathroom cabinets (by hand, of course), install the rest of the doors, put in the light and plumbing fixtures, paint, and few other things. We have told our architect and our landlord that we plan on moving in at the end of the month.

I hope they get it ready on time.

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.

Catorce and Charco

Not a happy camper, but at least a safe one.

The last couple of weekends we have made two great trips, Real de Catorce, an overnight trip to a nearly abandoned mining town in San Luis Potosi, and a quick trip to Charco del Ingenio near San Miguel de Allende about 45 minutes from our house.

The last weekend in April, we made the Real de Catorce trip with Pierre and Sophie and their son, Antoine, along with Byron, the Mexico country director for the Peace Corps. It took four and a half hours to get there, the last 1.5 miles of which were through a one-way tunnel, the only car access to the town. It was inhabited late as mining towns in Mexico go, having been discovered in the 18th century, and its mines were exhausted by the early 20th century after producing tons of silver. Since prehistoric times it has been a pilgrimage site for Huichol Indians who live in another state, Jalisco.

Until the 1990s it was pretty much abandoned and had a population of around 80 in the 1980s. It now has around 1,200 mostly because of tourism. There are probably more restaurants and hotels (and horse rental guys) per square meter than anywhere in Mexico.

The afternoon that we arrived we walked up the mountain to the first abandoned mine. The road was so bad, even for walking, that I was afraid that C would fall and split her head open. She had fallen the week before in Querétaro and bruised her chin. The next morning we rented horses to take us back the same way we had gone the day before, but we went beyond the first mine to the second, which is locally known as el Pueblo de Fantasma. For some pictures of town, the hotel, the ruins, the abandoned buildings, and yes, Christiane on a horse, go to our Flickr site. We had a really great time, good food, good company, good scenery, and some mediocre horses.

Cañon de Chan at Charco del Ingenio, Guanajuato.

A couple of weeks ago we attended the Querétaro international guitar festival like we did last year. The only difference is that this year we knew a lot of the people. The last night we attended the Guitarras de America concert, and our friend, “el famoso” Ramon, was recognized by the group. Among other things, Ramon plays the guitar, besides being an electrical engineer who specializes in solar energy and ecology, and being a pretty funny guy. After the concert we went with Ramon and Elvira to a lecture on ecology, or more precisely on an ecological preserve near San Miguel de Allende called Charco del Ingenio. The speaker, Cesár, introduced Ramon in the audience because Ramon had done all the solar energy at Charco. With the guitar guys and the ecological guy, I have dubbed Ramon “el famoso”. Elvira says it was a fluke that he seemed to know everyone that evening, but wives always try to keep you from having a swelled head, so “el famoso” it will remain, at least for me.

Anyway, after the lecture Ramon wangled an invitation for us to visit Charco with Cesár today. Not only do they have a unique program, there is only one municipal ecological preserve in Guanajuato state, and none in Querétaro state, but the plants and water are beautiful, the trails are safe (much safer than Catorce) and walkable; AND they have some real archaeology, a couple of old mills (remembrances of my days at New South), including one that is from the late 1600s. Since they don’t have much money, and virtually none from INAH or the feds, they need volunteers. It may be that I can find some archaeology to do after all. We shall see. Check here for some photos.

I invited Angel along. Angel lives in our apartment building or patio and works for the Peace Corps. He is in charge of the new environmental program they are starting, and I hoped he would be able to make some useful contacts for himself and the Peace Corps. He had already been to Charco three times recently, but had never met Cesár. He filled out our “team” and made it a truly memorable trip. It was fun talking with people like this after being away from it for over a year, and the preserve is beautiful.

We will have to take people by here on our way to visit San Miguel in the future. But we will still visit the cactus nursery in Cadareyta near Bernal which is always interesting for visitors even though both places are heavy on cactus. They are really very different and complement each other.