Poco un Poco (little by little)

(lBuilding a house is traditionally a slow project, building one in Mexico is renowned for being even slower. Not sure why it takes so long, or maybe it just seems to take longer as it's not being built with framing & then filling in the gaps with insulation & gib.

It's building everything from scratch, onsite, in the burning sun, on the side of a hill a long drive from the building supplies places.

Here are a few of photos to bring you up to date.

From the time of pouring the slab for the ground floor until now (having completed all the walls for the first floor), a lot of time has elapsed & we have had a trip back to NZ & back (for the funeral of Steve's dad).

We were getting despondant about the time it seemed to be taking, & how little we had achieved for the money, but we're almost to the point of laying the beams for the ground floor ceiling & first floor floor.

It feels like a real house now & we can see it from miles around. We've pictured ourselves swimming in the lap pool & dining from the terrace. We've imagined friends sleeping in our spare room with the doors open to the pool & we've seen the neighbourhood kids playing in the kids' rooms (all imaginary, but much more real than it was).

Things are getting clearer, we can even almost imagine moving in...

moving on up...

Well - or should I say cystern, is dug, swimming pool is mapped out, garage walls are going up.

Note the "forms" (in the photos) & the supports either side, this is what holds the walls in place while the concrete/mixture dries. There is also rebar (iron rods) in the concrete, for structural support & if there is electricity or plumbing needed in that section, it is anchored in place.

Next the concrete/mixture is poured in between the forms & after, the forms are removed to produce one big solid wall.

Most walls will be 8 inches thick, others will be 12 inches thick.

The foundations have been completed, the lower perimeter walls have been poured & the garage is on it's way. With the pouring of the walls for the cystern & the garage wall we will also inherit the swimming pool. Almost deeper than it is wide - we'll have to take up vertical laps. Steve is promising a hook & bungy cable for some resistance training in the water, he'd better make sure his boardies are securely fastened...

Hiccups cured (hopefully for ever)

The suspended works order lasted but a week or so. With a visit to the public works office & many discussions about the best strategy for solving the Mr Loco & Mr Pom issue, it was the visit to the officials that worked. Mr Loco's land was cleared & restored & the works suspension order was lifted.

Full steam ahead, building forms, pouring concrete, taking down forms & putting up the next ones etc etc.

It's a small team at this point, usually about 5 guys (& the night watchman), but the team is expected to expand when they finish work on another job...

With things looking a little "un-noteworthy" at this point, (basically some concrete pads, & some concrete walls below ground level) we're only visiting the site with Brian once a week for updates & Q&A time. Not to mention the odd changes to plan along the way, with "bright ideas" from Steve & me...

We're expecting to visit daily when we get to ground level & there are more decisions to be made.

Also, Brian assures us this is the slowest part of the project, when there is a lot of work but it's not obvious (like tonnes of buried footings for example) & things will start to rocket along when we reach ground level...