Front Room, Dining or Living?

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The Original Survey

May, 2007

During the survey

Okay, so now we know. Never, but never, perform a house inspection during dry season, especially if it's the end of a very dry year and the house has been newly painted. Except for the odd roll-up door that opened into the front room, the house looked to be in great shape, matter of fact, it looked pretty darn spiffy.

Then the sky opened up, and
so did the roof, soaking through faster than we could sweep it off

Rainy Season

Late Summer, 2007

Water seeped into the house just about everywhere

Ceiling paint flaked off in sheets. By the end of our first rainy season, the ceiling looked leprous. It took another year to, first, repair the roof from the outside, then attack other parts of the house that were so much more needy. Finally, Stan scraped, chiseled, and filled the damaged front room ceiling and walls. And he's done so much more.

Filling, Faring and Fixing

Spring, 2009

This time around we installed dust curtains in an effort to keep grime out of our sandwiches. Big black plastic sheets sealed off the kitchen and the great hall from the front room. They were much better kitty toys than dust barriers, but they cut down the mess, some.

The dust barriers stayed up for months, while Stan worked on the ceiling, walls and wiring in the front of the house.

Filling in the air vent with concrete, then bricks, then more concrete

Our house was built with high ceilings and vents way up on the walls for air circulation. Although we haven't totally convinced ourselves that we're going to do it, installing air conditioning is a possibility; therefore, we're going ahead with blocking off the air vents. Since they weren't screened, closing them off has greatly decreased our indoor bug population.

Air vent filled, doorbell rewired, new light installed;
even a new electrical outlet added underneath the window

We had no idea how much water had leaked into the support columns, nor how much damage it had caused, so another little repair job was to strip away the outer layer of concrete to check their integrity. The columns actually looked pretty good, but just for kicks, the contractor added another layer of chickenwire and concrete.

In the meantime, Stan added another electrical plug and rewired the lights so we can install a ceiling fan. Heading into our second rainy season at good ole #11, the front room is complete -- poised to receive a ceiling fan.

Painted and ready for a fan ... and roll-up door replacement

Curtains and Paint

10 August, 2009

Some items just aren't available in our local tiendas, or even in our local Home Depot. Curtain hanging had been on hold for three little plumbing parts, the disk-shaped wall mounts to screw plumbing pipe into. We picked them up in Seattle between eating binges.

Attaching the curtain rod to the wall,
end angle dangling while Stan measures

Stock curtain rods don't come in custom configurations, so we designed a special one out of galvanized pipe. It had to be deep enough to cover the roller at the top of the roll-up door, and wide enough to attach to the far wall, one end right-angled and one end straight-on to the wall.

Although the design was ours, the curtain rod idea came from one of Editha's Good Housekeeping magazines.

One thing that the magazine didn't mention was that the pipe would be greasy and draggy on the curtains, so even though we won't be opening and closing them, we added PVC pipe over the galvanized pipe to help with the glide.

Before and after, the finished product and the new paint job