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| 'Before' - Cool, but with stained tile, crumbling walls and overgrown plants |
In my mind these posts should be the easiest. There's no real writing or creating. All's I need to do is throw a few pictures up. Right?
Turns out there's a reason I've been putting them off. It takes forever.
Narrowing down a subject, as usual, is a challenge for me. But, also finding photos that illustrate a project, then editing and explaining them is tough. I have a whole new appreciation for all the home improvement-organization-lifestyle-type bloggers I follow. These 'easy' posts take some real doing.
Anyway, here we go...the first Mexican casa renovation post...
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There's a small inner courtyard in this 'new' house we bought. The idea of it was cool, in principle. But our first views of it included a stained tile floor, borderless beds that poured dirt onto the patio, and crumbling walls covered in unkempt vines that were dropping leaves and stone and dirt all over everything.
We got big visions of what it could be, but on first sight it was mainly damp and depressing.
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| During: Lots of rubble getting moved around |
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| During: More destruction and rubble |
We went through months where this area (and the whole house, really) looked a whole lot worse then when we started. For a while I'd look back nostalgically at the 'before' pictures. It started looking like we were going in the wrong direction altogether.
We had the walls sealed to slow down their alarming rate of deterioration and added or updated a lot of infrastructure stuff. This caused all kinds of chaos. With the (very) thick walls everywhere putting in additional electrical lines (for more lighting and outlets) and plumbing (for water purification systems), made a huge mess. There were seemingly endless bags of broken stone and concrete and a constant haze of dust. (Polvo is the Spanish word for dust and for a long time we were referring to the house as Casa Polvo.)
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| A (very) nearby lamp shop and one of the many locally-made works of art |
Eventually, our amazing team of workers and their fearless de facto general contractor, Michael, got through this stage.
We, finally, got the excitement of seeing some of our original vision start to fill in. We had pictured hanging Mexican metal-work lamps in the atrium.
Michael went to the artisan's market (only about a block from our house) repeatedly hunting down the perfect lights. This is no easy task because each one is more beautiful than the last. Little works of art.
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| When we first saw the lanterns hung |
We ended up choosing some traditional star lights, and one kind of hot-air-balloon-shaped light.
Originally, the workers hung 3 stars and the balloon from the beams above the atrium.
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| This lantern found it's home in that niche...plus more destruction to run wiring |
Michael went back to the market for a fourth star light (two big, two small) to hang where this one had been.
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| Finding our niche(s). Hee hee. |
Three of them are still empty. We figure at some point we'll see just the right things to put in them. Or maybe just keep enjoying the varied brickwork inside each one.)
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| We thought these were the prettiest lights ever... |
Until...
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| Wow! The difference putting in a clear lightbulb made. |
Michael changed the lightbulb during the day, then walked by at night and saw this.
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| Magica! |
The result that night?: Absolute
MAGIC!
As Michael says: "It's like being inside a kaleidoscope."
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A lot of restoration surprises are not happy ones. This is a project that gave us results beyond our wildest imaginings.
If there's a breeze when you're sitting out there at night, the lanterns sway and the light patterns dance and play on the walls.
It is spectacular.
Even when we've been sitting out there surrounded by all sorts of debris and dead plants, it was still nothing short of bliss.
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| Decorated with Marigolds for Day of the Dead. Michael enjoying the results for a nanosecond before moving on to the next thing on our 'prepare for the family visit' list. We're looking forward to years of morning coffee in this gorgeous space. |
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