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Dateline: Where the plans get plastered

Yes, it has finally started. My remodeling. In earnest.  Or perhaps I should say in Ernesto, given who’s doing all of this. After spending a year spinning my wheels looking for folks who could do the job, I went back to Plan A, which was to use the contractor my lawyer had suggested in the first place.

Why the heck did I wait so long? Well, in my defense, I did a LOT of design and planning. I spent myriad hours lurking along Avenida División del Norte, being simultaneously called by the marble sirens of tile and also figuring out what I could really use and couldn’t use. I drew up a detailed floorplan of my house, and spent a lot of time thinking about quotidian things like drains, electrical circuits, and the routing of pipes and wires. And in that year, I did manage to renew all of the plumbing and electrical system, no mean feat given that the first guy basically swindled me.

Southwest Bedroom – Before

But I was also waylaid by various folks who said they could get things done, but in the end did not. A young architect who was suggested by a friend was the last such person. I had approached him to help me solve the problem of building a stairway to give access to both the “Dance Studio” over the second house, and the azotea where I wanted to convert the cuarto de servicio into a small apartment. After struggling to come up with anything concrete, he suggested that I pay him to create a “levantamiento,” a scale drawing of the house. He thought it’d take a week. It ended up taking six. Worse, I thought I’d get a 3-D model at the end, one that would facilitate the visualization of stairway possibilities. Instead, what I got was some very basic floorplans that basically just copied what I had done myself, albeit in an obsolete software package. That also cost me $24,000 MXN, money now lost.

Southwest Bedroom – After

The contractor I’m now using, Omni Construction, had given me a quote last July. At that time, the owner and his chief architect took me on a tour of one of their projects, Quéretaro 136, a six-story apartment project that they had completed around a 400 year old house. INAH, the protector of architectural treasures here, had wanted the house conserved, and, ideally, the façade to be visible from the street. Because it was uncharacteristically set back, this was going to be a challenge. But Omni managed to build the project around the old house, create a glassed-in façade so the old house was visible, and even constructed a parking garage under it without breaking anything. Clearly they were up to remodeling my little old house.

Anyway, in early April I called them and we reached a deal. About three weeks ago about a dozen men descended on my house, and have been pounding, cutting, and plastering six days a week. The progress is impressive. My upstairs is nearly done, at least as far as plastering and window work goes. I say “window work” because what they are doing is nothing short of extraordinary.

Back Wall Before

All of my windows are 1930s steel windows, all originally made by hand by skilled herreros. But the glass is old, and much of the outside glass is coated with eighty years of crud that’s almost impossible to remove. And much of the original glazing compound is either missing or severely deteriorated. That of interior windows is hard as a rock. Well, the guys here are taking out all of the glass in every window, cleaning and sanding the ironwork, and then I’ll get new glass in almost every window. Amazing. There’s a guy working here who has done nothing but scrape paint off of windows every day for three weeks now. This would cost a fortune in the states. Here? It’s quite reasonable.

Back Wall During/After (still needs paint & glass)

The plaster too has exceeded my exceptionally picky expectations. When we were negotiating the deal, I said to Wasim, they owner of Omni, “I just want you to know that I’m super-picky. So don’t be surprised when I hold you to high standards.” He just chuckled and said he was happy to have picky clients. In fact this pickiness was part of why it took me so long to get going. I was terrified that I’d hire someone, only to get a very slap-dash job. And in fact that happened with the guy who redid my exterior western wall. The wall was adequate, but not pretty, but it made my neighbor happy, which was kind of the point. But Omni’s work? My God! The plaster work is VERY good. They lines are all very straight. The walls are incredibly flat, and the finish is very hard. They also are doing the ceilings, which, frankly, I had not even really asked to have done. So not only am I getting a lot done, but it’s being done to a very high standard of work. I couldn’t be happier. And every night, I get a PDF document emailed to me documenting me on the progress of the work. When I told my friend and neighbor, Carole, who has lived in Mexico since 1997 and built many a house with her contractor late husband, she was astonished. In short, things are going very well.

My Eastern Wall, Mid Way Through

So the current scope of my project includes redoing all of the interior plaster, the windows, and the exterior stucco, along with stuccoing the neighbor’s walls that surround my patio. Based on the current pace of work, I’m guessing there’s at least another two or three weeks of work ahead. Inside, I’ve got about 500 square meters of wall, plus another 200-ish of ceilings. Outside, the number is closer to 400 square meters. And how much is all of this going to cost me? Sit down, the figure is kind of shocking. The quote, plus IVA, is just a smidgen under $20,000 USD. I’m amazed.

Still, there will be a fair bit of additional things to do. I’m replacing a bunch of privacy glass, including that on the garage and front door. Those two spots will require the glass to be laminated. There will also be some extra work from an herrero ($700MXN/day), and some additional plumbing, etc. I also will need to do the kitchen, flooring, lighting, and some other things. But I’m having a hard time coming up with a final USD bill that exceeds $70,000 to remodel the entire house. These days, you can’t even get a kitchen in Boston for that. In fact, I spent a fair bit more than that in 1997 remodeling my Boston house.

Not only is this a great deal, but I’m finally beginning to think that I might even be able to move in within a few months which will be priceless.

Thanks for reading. I’ve been bad about keeping up this blog.  I’ll try to post a bit more often. Coming up I’ll be writing about paint (amazingly difficult), glass (almost became as much of an obsession as tile), the battle with La Doña and her son, and of course, more about tile.

Saludos!