We’ve had workers in the backyard for a week and a half now, and they have made a lot of progress! The plan is for a long roofed patio to be constructed next to the house, and grass in the rest. Sounds simple, but it’s not. We need to maintain the slope towards the drain, reroute drainage from our other courtyard, and various other tasks.
We are using salvaged column bases, columns, and vigas. New tile will sit on top of the vigas, and concrete with imperazante coating on top of that. We’ll use colored concrete tile for the patio floor and get some new lighting, too.
At the top is a picture just after they started.
And then they cut holes in the concrete to pour the footings for the five posts.
Below is a picture of the beams that go into the wall that will hold crosswise
beams that the vigas will rest on.
Below is a picture of the length of the wall. They poured a new slab but someone
must have not been thinking and they are going to have to come back and remove the handrail!
The windows on this side leak because of the drain pipes being positioned right over them, so I look
forward to the shade and the shelter from the rain. You can see some of the salvage ebony
posts and vigas, too.
Below is a close up of the posts. They’ll be scraped and filled and beautiful.
Below is a close up of one of the bases. They only found two the same, so three
have been made out of concrete using these as a form.
Below is a pile of vigas that will be used in the project.
As you can imagine, we are excited about what we have seen already. We’ll be visiting a little old man who makes the concrete tiles in his garage sometime soon. We are planning the field tile in a terra cotta color set on the diagonal, with a border around that of blue and another border of terra cotta, kind of like a rug.
I’ll do another update in a couple of weeks.
Steve Cotton
September 11, 2008Nice update. Great photographs.
I tried updating your new address on my blog list, but eBlogger must be upset at your departure: it would not take. I will keep trying.
Steve Cotton
September 11, 2008Sorry to post again so quickly, but the update worked today. You are now on the new revised updated first-to-be-read list.
Nancy
September 11, 2008Steve, Thanks for making the change! Now shouldn’t you be sorting papers?
islagringo
September 11, 2008(lmao at your chastising Steve! you go girl!) Anyway….you two are so creative. I know you don’t do the actual work, but it is your ideas. I would love to see your home someday. Especially that magnificent mural you had painted. I sometimes look dreamily at my walls……
Nancy
September 11, 2008Thanks Wayne, We are excited to add this nice space to our house and have it look as though it’s always been there. We really feel lucky to have the mural. The planets just aligned, I guess.
Cynthia & Mike
September 11, 2008Geeeez…it took me forever, but I have finally realized that the beautiful turquoise in your pics here (and the earlier one) are a wall that you must have painted. I love the color of that wall!
American Mommy in Mexico
September 13, 2008Thanks for the pics – it is fun to watch your project from afar. Also like the new blog!
Jonna
September 13, 2008Wow! You have some beautiful salvaged wood there. Ebony! That will be gorgeous. What a find to get salvaged wood that you can use. Did you do the planning and shopping or do you have an architect or a contractor that found them? I absolutely love the column bases, those are an incredible find. This is going to be a beautiful space, I can’t wait to watch it develop.
Nancy
September 14, 2008Our contractor was in the salvage business in San Francisco and he brought his love of old things here. He has been stockpiling materials, and has done three restorations using old materials. He is a real find, we kind of wish we had known about him when we did our courtyard but I guess I shouldn’t look backwards!
Right now they are getting ready to flood a couple of towns in Sinaloa near us for a new dam. The people have been relocated and he is negotiating with many of the individuals to salvage the old timbers and things from the houses. It’s a delicate thing to negotiate, he has some people with ties to the towns working on his behalf. I SO hope he’s successful.
Does Merida have salvage/reuse places?
Jonna
September 14, 2008I don’t think there is a salvage yard as we think of it in Merida. There are old furniture places that also carry doors and stone columns and some beams or the metal used in colonial ceilings.
We used a place extensively when we were remodeling our house in Marin, it was called Urban Ore and was in Berkeley, or maybe Albany but near the line. I’m trying to remember one in San Francisco, I think there was one in South SF. What a small world.
It was one of our favorite Sunday outings to go and root around in the yards and bins of Urban Ore. What fun.
Nancy
September 14, 2008I’ll have to ask him the name of the place in SF. I was raised there, lived there until my mom died when I was 16. We lived in the city and had a weekend place at Stinson Beach. So Marin was on our regular route. The good old days.