Mérida Hideaway

For the past five months, we've been tinkering here and there to improve things in our house that have been bugging us. Instead of boring you with these details (and boring they are), we'd rather just say life is moving ahead and other new design projects are keeping us busy.

We've recently developed a concept design for a really cool artist in residence loft in the center of Mérida. If and when this house renovation happens, the loft will house a gallery space in front along with an artist studio upstairs

and entertainment space below

that will lead out to a garden with a reclaimed steel drum acting as a pool.

All of this will be tucked neatly within an old colonial house that's no wider than 4.8 meters (about 16 ft.) by 33 meters (108 ft.) long.

To keep the space well lit and ventilated, we're proposing to add an atrium above the dining room that will serve as a huge chimney. Hot air will rise up into it and will evacuate above through a light translucent cover that will also bring light into the spaces below.

For now, life moves forward and all is well. With our house pretty much wrapped up, we'll be blogging about other new architecture and design work in Mérida in the coming months.

For months, we've been occupying our outdoor living room sans our large steel pivot mosquito screen doors.

In the beginning, we thought it was marvelous knowing that our outdoor living room connected seamlessly with our central courtyard garden. We felt we were truly outside without being exposed to the elements. Given the cooler weather and reduction in mosquitoes, we weren't in a hurry to install the screens.

Of late, however, we have started to feel a bit overwhelmed by the abundance of openness. Like our 3-D images showed ages ago (ignore the now incorrect position of our stairwell), the screen doors have always been essential to the demarcating of the "living room".

The challenge has always been to create an attractive "transparent" separation that keeps mosquitoes out, yet allows views and airflow through. Or in architecture speak - how do you achieve thin profile, frame-less, 9 foot floor-to-ceiling doors that effortlessly pivot open to exactly 90 degrees and stay shut when closed with the minimum number of visible hardware?

Here's the breakdown:

1) Use 2" x 1" tubular steel.

By exposing the thinner 1" face on the vertical face of the door, we achieved a thin-profile door without compromising the door's structural integrity (as the 2" horizontal surface keeps the doors from wobbling).

2) Create simple pivot hardware that embeds in the floor and ceiling above and below each panel, hidden from view. Off the shelve pivots are extremely expensive, and so we created our own to allow the heavy doors to effortlessly open a full 90 degrees.

3) Level the ceiling to maintain a 3mm gap between the tops of the doors and the ceiling.

This narrow gap is important to keep mosquitoes out, yet very difficult to achieve consistently along the 48 foot span of the opening. Suffice it to say, although our ever-patient albañil got close on the first attempt, there have been a few corrections in places - nothing too large that it can't be patched when we are done.

4) Purchase heavy-duty concealed screw bolts that fit within the narrow 1" profile of the doors. Luckily, these bolts, with a finish of oil rubbed bronze are an exact match for the final door color. As such, no painting required.

5) Install industry-strength magnets in the ceiling.

These magnets are, as the manufacturer warns, not your average fridge magnets (as is evidenced by a blood blister that appeared on Stan's finger after being caught between two of them). Embedded in the ceiling, these magnets will hold our doors open, and closed, at a perfect 90 degree angle with invisible magnet magic.

Hello world. We wanted to let you know that we're not dead. This past holiday season brought a last-minute escape to Buenos Aires, Argentina and Montevideo, Uruguay to "renovate" our spirits.

Travel, along with a much-needed break from the daily grind brings us back feeling refreshed and ready to tackle the new year with gusto.

For now, we leave you with a couple teaser images of what's to come:

1) After days of toiling in the sun, our garden finally takes shape with partially completed brick paving!

2) We didn't think the day would ever come, but our kitchen actually arrives (well, 1/3 of it - just enough to make a mess), poco a poco!

The last time we mentioned our staircase, we were reveling in the fact that we could travel between floors without either having to climb a ladder or negotiate a rather steep makeshift ramp.

My how time flies. After watching the stairwell go from a drab gray concrete tunnel to a more spritely white-washed shaft of light, we have now witnessed its final transformation into the wood-clad beauty we designed.

Using tzalam hardwood we purchased ages ago, our carpenter cut, joined and assembled units consisting of one riser and one tread, screwed together from behind where it would not be visible once laid.

On the underside of each panel, grooves were cut to help prevent the wood from warping. All this work happened in the workshop where precision was better, quicker and cheaper. Delivered to site, the idea was to nail them together to form the stairs.

In advance of their arrival, the concrete base of each stair was leveled and a little bit of the concrete picked out on each side so each stair could be embedded in 1/8 inch.

This embedding is easier than cutting the stairs to the exact dimension and relying on the walls being exactly straight (in Mérida renovation projects, they seldom are). Embedding the stairs a little makes this a moot problem as an albañil simply has to return after the stairs are in and patch the gaps with new cement. 

To blend the paint, we have asked the painters to taper down to a single coat as they near the edge of the stairs. Some would say this is obsessive - but hey it's our house and we'll notice if it's not right.

Anyway, back to the stairs. Once delivered on site, installation began at the bottom, moving up one step at a time. To adjust for small variations in the height of each step, a little wood was planed from each step to make a snug fit. 

Surprising for us, the stairs weren't actually fixed to the concrete, but instead secured to each other with "invisible" carpentry nails to form a solid run, whose overall weight would prevent any movement.

A day of installation and everything was in. Another day to putty the seams, and yet another to polyurethane them and the stairs are complete-ish.

What? Have we gone mad? How can it possibly be springtime when we're north of the equator and were headed into winter?

The answer lies in the following image.

Unlike further north, the prime growing season is now upon us. With the heat behind us and tropical storms abated (well, almost), the air is feeling positively springtime and it's perfect for growing yummy things.

Unlike our previous attempt at growing edible goodies, we now have our first opportunity to take advantage of Mérida's four-month-ish growing season and see for ourselves what possible wonders will pull themselves from the earth and onto our table.

To start, we have plenty of Asian varietals like Korean radishes, Chinese cucumber, Japanese kabocha squash, and a bounty of leafy greens. In our past experience, they tend to be the hardiest. Mixed in with these are some other reliable croppers like heirloom tomatoes (using seeds we kept from last year's treasures), chili peppers and eggplant (a surprise hit, as even in the heat of actual spring in Mérida, they grew and grew).

And just to make things interesting, we're trying some past failures like fennel and green beans (we shall see). 

Even more exciting is our incoming drip-irrigation system. This simple system will provide a "water light" solution to keeping our plants drinking happily until the rain begins again next May. As water is delivered, drip by drip, and not via the gush of  sprinkler or hose, there is less change of stray water pooling on leaves and pathways and inadvertently creating an unfortunate mosquito problem.

After many months of production and installation, the wood terrace connecting our two bedrooms is finally complete (okay, maybe it'll be tomorrow morning because of the rain).

Constructed from tzalam wood, this wood has been sitting in our carpenter's shop for over a year drying and being processed for use on our terrace.

With a flooring design in place, our carpenters were on site to begin the slow and deliberate process of installing the floor, board by board according to the following pattern.

First, the framing. Essential to creating structure and providing a solid connection point between the concrete foundation and the floor board above, the framing system was spaced out evenly, allowing sufficient gaps for water to flow underneath, but not enough for the boards to sag.

Soon after, our carpenters requisitioned our dining room table and clamped a circular saw to it so they could began cutting the individual boards to size.

While one person cut, another spaced the boards using a few 5mm planks, while yet another person screwed them into place.

Once 95% complete, the floor was laid to rest and settle for nearly three months.

Treated with polyurethane, the idea was to let the sun take its initial toll on the boards, allowing some of them to fade slightly and thus produce some more rustic undertones to the floor.

Being new wood, the three-month holding process also allowed the boards to move and shift until they could settle into a more "permanent" position. The boards that moved too much would eventually be replaced (5 in total).

Finally, a week ago, our carpenters returned to finish laying out the final 5% of the floor, sand down the entire thing and replace all warped boards. Sealant was then applied, and as of yesterday, the first of two coats of UV-resistant polyurethane was applied.

It's been over a month since our last excitable post about our pool, so we thought it was high time we resurfaced and assured everyone that we are still alive and kicking.

We'd love to say we've been relaxing poolside while our crew wraps up around us with efficiency and outstanding speed. Alas, that would be a lie. Instead, we find ourselves mired in the painful phase of corrections - a process that seems to take us two steps forward, just to bring us back another three.

For instance, our guest bathroom vanity is supposed to go here.

There was in fact a moment when it was here, but due to some issues we had with the positioning of the drawer (it was wrong) and a curious downward slope on its left end, the vanity had to be pulled from its spot and sent back to our carpenter's workshop.

This patch of missing pasta tile has been like this for about a month now.

We have the tile and could install it tomorrow, if not for the fact that the temporary steel door (shown in photo) was installed too low and would not open if we were to install the tile now. To finish up, the temporary door needs to go.

For that to happen, however, the colonial wood door beyond must be restored, which entails first removing and replacing the rotted door frame. Although the frame could go today, a new one can't be installed until the facade is refinished and the new frame cemented into place while the door opening is reconstructed.

This long chain of events involves our carpenter, a couple albañiles (masonry guys), a tile guy, and electrician (for the doorbell). Time to completion? How long is a piece of string?

This mess in our rear garden is due to the fact that lines of conduit and plumbing were incorrectly positioned directly underneath our future garden. At a depth of 20cm, our concern was that there would be nothing but trouble when we (or our gardener) began tilling the soil and split a water pipe (or worse electrocute ourselves when we cut through a conduit). The solution? Dig it all up and push it to the right so it falls underneath a brick walkway.

These three items have 137 "friends" nailed to a board in the kitchen. As is typical during the end of construction, the list is long and we are measuring our progress daily. A lot of people worry about these things further down the line. We, however, have the energy and inclination to get things done right now.

Being sans pool these last 12 or so months, our friends have taken pity on us with invites to swim at their houses. Their kindness has at times helped us from completely losing it during the hot days spent on site supervising the build.  

This weekend, however, we are no longer a charity case as our pool is full up with cool aquamarine. As of 1:13pm yesterday, the pump stared up and water gushed forth. Despite waiting 18 months for this moment, watching it fill inch by painful inch over the course of five hours was agony.

The pool has been under construction since the beginning of March. Since those early days when the crew marked out the boundaries with spray paint, it's been a slow and deliberate process getting the pool to its current state.

First up, the dig. Unlike many horror stories we've heard of people bringing dynamite to the site to blast through limestone boulders, we had one kid who spent three weeks shoveling nothing but fluffy nutrient-rich soil with nary a stone in sight (the ones you see piled up were brought in by us for other purposes).

Then, as with so much in Mérida, it was time to build a mamposteria wall running the perimeter of the pool, acting as both sides and footing.

Nearing the end of May, with the temperature soaring, the mamposteria wall was plastered with a hand-mixed concoction of grey concrete and festegral (a powdery substance that is added to concrete to make it waterproof).

The choice of concrete color (or any other finish for that matter) impacts the resulting color of the water (you can get an idea of how it works here). We chose a darker grey, which gives the water a rich turquoise color. Darker colors do cause the pool to absorb more sunlight and warm the water, but we will be balancing this out by erecting a summertime-only shading solution.

For the pool edging, we opted for a stone cap of "tok", a local limestone that complements the stone wall bordering the rear garden. Working with a stonemason in Dzitya, a town specializing in stone work, we obtained thick machine-cut blocks which were scored on a diagonal to give a rough, non-slip finish.

By mid June, with our friends growing tired of our constant come-ons for a swim, it was time to get things finished up. The steps and platform went in by forming mini mamposteria walls, filling them with rubble and finally forming the steps with a layer of concrete/festegral plaster.

Finally, with yet more plaster and a little wire mesh, the floor was laid along with the plumbing and various other boring details (our patience was wearing thin).

Since moving in two weeks ago, we have purposely not asked our contractor when the pool would be completed so as not to appear naggy and perhaps a little disappointed. This approach seems to have paid off, for we were taken by surprise yesterday with news that things were ready to fill.  

As of a week ago, we are living in our new home. It's not done yet, but with the lease on our rental accommodation up, we had to move.

Living in a house under construction is no picnic. With 15 workers on site each day, hammering, sawing and asking a million questions, it's hard to concentrate in the din. Dust flies everywhere, and although we are living upstairs where construction is largely complete, everything is constantly covered in a thin film of polvo.

We have fitted the master bedroom with a makeshift kitchen and office, reserving the guest bedroom for our bed and storage.

The terrace between the two bedrooms has become our living room, where we wind down with a bottle of wine. After each day of construction management, it's nice to sit quietly and watch the remaining dust of the day settle.

Despite having only one tap in our bathroom that also serves as the kitchen sink, we are in fine spirits.

For us this is déjà vu. Camping amongst the dust and debris, without fully functional plumbing and electricity, is where we started.  

There are differences. This time around we have windows that close and doors that lock. We don't have glass in the top sections, or paint on the frames, but we now possess a conviction that soon, these things will come to pass.

Some things, however, are just like before. Without a proper laundry, we have resurrected the old clothesline to dry our clothes. Looking over at it fluttering in the breeze, it feels like we've come home.

The thing about restoration is that you can spend a great deal of time and money to repair something that ends up looking the same once you're done. Is this good?  Should one be happy that the job was so "perfect", or feel deflated that after all the work, you are back where you started. Such was the conundrum of our tejaban.

Six months ago, the old tejaban covering the space designated for our kitchen was dismantled. Although it looked great, it was rotten to its core and had to be reconstructed. The old wood came down, tiles were stored and our kitchen was left open to the elements. Last week, the tejaban came back.

New beams of machiche - a native hardwood - were laid from north to south, matching the original slope of the kitchen.

Primed and treated for termites at our carpenter's workshop before arriving onsite, each beam was positioned above the kitchen. Hard to reach areas were hand painted before a paint gun was used to turn each beam blue.

To prevent the exposed beams from warping in the harsh tropical sun and heavy afternoon rains, a tarp was laid across the top of the freshly painted beams.

Despite the tarp, the beams still warped. In the photo below you can see the bowed ends hanging over the south end of the kitchen. We were a little worried as some of them were as bent as bananas; not a good look for our tejaban. 

We shouldn't have stressed as our carpenters had things under control. Once all the main supports were laid, they pulled the beams back in line with a wooden brace and secured them in place using cross supports and nails.

Once all the cross members were up, everything was straight again!

Finally, after a week of work, the old tiles were brought back to site and relaid onto the new structure.

The ragged ends of the beams were cut at an angle to expose a little of the machiche hardwood beneath. These ends will be sealed with polyurethane so that a little of the wood can peak out from beneath the blue paint.

After six months, six grand and a few weeks of labor, we are reunited with our tejaban and it's just like before. Is this good? You betcha! Although it would've been nice to design something amazing and new, restoring something to its original state is great too - especially when it's so good you forget it was ever anything but.

In the last few weeks, our house has gradually been turning white. The painters have arrived and are washing our walls with calestina.  

An ancient technique used throughout the world, calestina is a cal (slaked lime)-based paint that has been used in Mexico for centuries. It works well in Mérida's humid climate because it's not waterproof. Any moisture rising up inside the walls simply evaporates through the calestina without causing it to bubble in the way latex paint does. As an extra bonus, the escaping humidity dissolves the cal at a microscopic level and allows it to shift, thus filling any cracks appearing in the concrete.

Not something you buy premixed in the store, calestina is made on site by mixing cal with water and a little binding agent to hold it together. The binding agent varies from country to country. In our research, we have found people using everything from milk to honey. Here in Yucatán, the mix seems to be a little vegetable oil (Negrita won the day) and some wood glue.

Our painters began weeks ago by "hydrating" the cal with water in a big blue drum. When done it looked a lot like horchata, except with leaves and dead insects floating around. After a few days, it was time to decide if we wanted to add any pigment to the mix.

Although we toyed with a splash of bright color here and there, we ended up settling for a natural "horchata". The house is about showcasing original details and rustic textures so a clean white palette was the best option for allowing these details to shine.

We did, however, opt for a very subtle hint of orange - not enough to notice - just enough to warm the white so our house doesn't look like some cold minimalist gallery space. Orange is a good fit that complements all the natural limestone, wood and vegetation we have on site.

As it's not an off the shelf product with a rainbow of paint chips to agonize over, our "hint of orange" was a hard concept to convey to our painter. We figured it out by mixing a strong peach-colored tint with a splash of paint from the drum. From there, we created swatch after swatch on the wall, halving the tint each time. It took us 6 swatches to get down to the white we wanted. Here are some of the early attempts:

Three coats of calestina have now been applied upstairs. Here is what it looks like in the guest bedroom:

When designing the kitchen, we always felt like the cabinetry had to be wood.

After flirting with tzalam, (and buying a stack of wood we'll now have to use elsewhere) we changed our minds and went with pucte. It's lighter in color and the fact that it's easier to work made it the superior choice for our needs.

The big question, however, was what to use for the counter tops? This was solved when we stumbled upon a number of old salvaged beams made from jabim wood. Being over 100 years old and so dry there is no possibility for any movement or splitting, it was the perfect choice.

Our carpenter was both thrilled and cautious. Transforming a ragged stack of beams into a flat counter top measuring 3 x 1.2 meters is no mean feat. After acquiring some shiny new equipment to work on these old giants, she was ready to go.

First, each beam was squared up with a large planer before being cut into four planks, five centimeters (2 inches) thick.

Although most of the nails and other metal bits were pried off in advance, our carpenter advised that the beams were so old, they may have "swallowed" a nail or two. Striking one with the saw blade while cutting would break the blade and cost us 500 pesos each time. Luckily, we only struck one.

Once cut, the wood was laid out into a rough approximation of the final shape. We opted for an irregular pattern, with some boards longer or thinner than others. As well as achieving a more organic look, not cutting the beams into even sized planks allowed us to minimize the amount of wastage.

Planks with rotten sections or large gashes were designated for areas where they would eventually be cut out to make way for the drop-in cook top and sink.

Next, the wood was joined. Thin strips of wood were cut and inserted (with glue) into the ends and sides of each plank to join it to its neighbor.

Each plank was so large and heavy that clamping them together with traditional G-clamps while the glue dried was impossible. Instead, the counter top was built on its side, each board sitting atop the next, allowing gravity to naturally compress the planks together.

Once the glue was dry, the ends were trimmed to the right size and holes were cut for the sink and cook tops. Large holes were plugged with wood off cuts. Minor holes and spaces along the seams were filled with a putty made from a mix of glue and sawdust created during production.

After a serious sanding, the counter top is largely complete. It's taken two months to get to this point, but we couldn't be happier. Being so old and partially petrified, the wood was like rock and work was arduous. Our carpenter is relieved it's done. At least until we reminded her of the cabinetry work still remaining.

We are finally at a point in our renovation where we are starting to see finishes applied to the house. After eight months of renovation, it's gratifying to see hints of color and texture appear.

First up, the upstairs bedrooms get a lift with the laying of reclaimed pasta tile from the former living room. With a splash of orange, the house starts coming back to life.

Although the tiles were meticulously cleaned before being laid, it took not three hours before the flip flops of our workers had covered them in a thin film of concrete dust and returned them to the dull state they were in when we bought the house. We can't wait for the tile polisher to come in and restore them to their former shine and glory (this action will also signify the exit of worker flip flops, stage left).

"Antique White" Pasta tile is the choice for our bathrooms. At only eight pesos per tile (20x20cm), it's an economical option that fits with the aesthetic of the house. In the photo below, we have laid a lozenge pattern edged in a square strip of the same tile. The edge marks the transition between the bathroom and an outdoor private terrace. Cut at a 45 degree angle, we are thrilled this edge came out so well. Sometimes it really is the small things that make us happy.

The space to the right of the edge will be filled with gravel. To the left (and bottom) a hardwood slatted shower platform will allow you to cross from inside to outside barefoot (and naked).

Downstairs in the outdoor living room, a smooth layer of concrete foundation has been poured.

To this, an application of locally-sourced limestone tiles called crema maya (or macedonia) is going down. As the room is a screened outdoor garden space, the limestone brings this outdoor feeling inside.

Inside the media room, we find yet another layer of concrete.

As pasta tile is the choice for this room, the foundation has been poured roughly, with stones poking through the surface. Each tile will sit on a hand-troughed bed of mortar that will bond tightly to the rough surface beneath. Also visible here is a layer of plastic sheeting laid under the concrete to prevent moisture from rising up from the ground beneath.

We would like to take a moment to thank the Coca-Cola Corporation for all material support they have provided during our renovation.

Coco-Cola is the drink behind the man. Our workers valiantly empty gallons of Coke into their bodies every day so as to provide us with free building materials.

The empty bottles are refilled with water that are carried around the site to wash walls, thin concrete, etc. - all in neat two-liter increments. Cut in half, the bottles provide impromtu pails for mixing paint or for plugging up holes. This free product from Coke has literally saved us hundreds of pesos on buckets, tape and the like.

For the last few months, empties have piled up faster than they can be used. Their torn wrappers, waving brightly in the breeze like papel picado, lifted our spirits among all that drab concrete.

A few days back, however, things were different. Every little pile had been rounded up, cut into strips and dropped into the newly formed septic tank. Sitting in the last of three chambers, the plastic will knit together to form a floating barrier atop the greywater. Any unwanted solids beneath will thus be prevented from rising up and escaping down the outlet (pictured top left) and onwards into the well.

Before we started construction, our house had one well, one cistern, one tinaco (water tank), and one single-chamber septic tank.  

It's a setup typical of houses in the Yucatán. Water is pumped up from the well (of which the well head is visible to the right of the pre-construction photo below) into the ground-level cistern (to the left of the well but overgrown with plants). From there, another pump pushes water up to the tinaco on the roof to provide water pressure for the house. Once used up, gray water returns to the ground via the septic tank.

Our renovation is an opportunity to improve, and some would argue, complicate the plumbing.

Our new setup starts on the street, where after 100 years, the house is now connected to city water. This water flows (more accurately trickles) into the house and is deposited into a new 1700 gallon (6800 liter) cistern being built under the rear garden.  

Above - the formed cistern. Below - the cistern again, covered with a concrete lid.

Instead of a tinaco on the roof, we'll achieve pressure with a motorized water pressure system, which will sit in a service building being constructed atop the cistern (below). What we'll do in the event of a hurricane-induced two day power outage, we have no idea, but we were drawing water by hand when we first camped out at our house, so no doubt we can do it again.

After water is pumped from the cistern, it flows through a water softener to remove excess calcium and, where appropriate, a reverse osmosis filtration system to render it drinkable.

Gray water is directed into a new three-chamber septic tank fashioned from the original cistern. Successively cleaned in each chamber, treated water is finally directed down the original well.

Where once a torrential downpour would flood the yard, storm water runoff is now collected in gutters and piped directly down the well.

We toyed with the idea of adding some kind of rain water catchment system for the garden, but it didn't make sense. During the six month wet season, there's so much water, we don't need to store any. Saving enough to keep our plants growing during the non-rainy six would require that we dig a hole 2-3 times the size of our pool - a cost prohibitive proposition.

Instead, a new well (90 feet deep) was drilled in the rear garden next to the service room (pictured in the shot to the right). Besides feeding the drip irrigation for our garden, this well will also be used to fill the pool. 

After debating over what tile pattern to use in the bedrooms, we finally settled on option three, edged in plain white pasta tile. Here is a plan view of how the tile will be fully laid out in the guest bedroom:

Yesterday, the room was measured out with string to determine the position of the first tile to be set, a tile in the center of the room.

Concrete was mixed on the terrace outside the bedroom and carried in one bucket at a time. Finally the tile laying, much promised for two weeks, began.

Each tile is being set by hand into a lozenge pattern using a level to ensure the tiles are set evenly across the floor. As the pasta tiles are reclaimed and have the occasional chip, rough edges are being cleaned up with an edging tool. Tiles that have large pockmarks are being reserved for the edges where the imperfections can be cut off to square the diagonal edge.