Steel and Mud (1)

There is now something physical to show for all the pesos leaving my bank account on a daily basis. The steel for the footings, along with pre-assembled columns and the beams associated with the foundation, were all placed and wired together by Friday afternoon, and the concrete footings were poured on Saturday morning. Lencho and crew work very hard and things happen fast. Sunday is a day off though. The expectation is that the block work for the walls below the first floor slab will be in this next week -- walls that will define the bodega and cistern and also rise from the footings to support the walls and all else above.

As for the money, it is now a daily routine to go to the bank machine and get another 5000 pesos, (about $380 US or $470 Canadian) to pay for more materials, more labor, our rent, and the neccesities of life such as cerveza and comida (beer and food). Somedays I need 10,000 pesos so Liz has been advancing me a bit of cash, since I managed to lose one of my bank cards on the way down and can only get the limit of 5,000 a day from my one remaining card. So with living expenses our time here is costing about $450 (US) a day, which is not a particularly outlandish vacation-for-two daily budget, and at the end of the 2-month vacation there will be half a house to keep as a souvenir of the trip. But then we never have taken a $450-a-day vacation for two months.

The photos above are of the covered and uncovered (with concrete) footings from roughly the same spot on Saturday and Friday afternoons. Fortunately the freak winter rainstorm we had on friday night did not collapse any of the trenches. I feel fortunate that the soil is a mix of enough sand to drain and enough finer grains to hold a shape, with also enough rocks from fist- to refrigerator-size to make life interesting. These rocks are hopefully destined to become a retaining wall at the lower end of the top lot.

With the walls sort-of defined by the columns and footings, it's become clear that it is indeed a small building. I keep reminding myself that one does a lot of living outdoors in this climate and there is a lot of outdoors, plus the terrace (1st floor) , deck (2nd) and almost-open palapa (3rd) in addition to the enclosed spaces. We also enclosed the area under the east-side stairwell for a possible laundry (you only need a washer and a closeline here, and you just plain need to wear and wash a lot less clothing). Besides that we added a bit of deck aroiund on the south, accessed from the west deck on the 2nd floor, and extrended the terrace on the first floor around to the east to access the stairway to the 2nd level. There is now a stairway on the NW rising from the parking level under the terrace up to the terrace with a switchback, and a few steps will have to be added to access the east door from the street. I am going to have to draw up a new version of the building in my home-architect software to help us all visualize it.

The weather has beed a little less clear than most years but no less warm. it is about 83F days and 72F in the mornings. One cannot complain.