De-tiling the Roof

Destejado.  Here are some pictures of the tiled roof before any work was started.  These baked unsealed clay tiles are in the basic traditional curved or arabic style.  Originally, in colonial times, these tejas were laid concave face up nested on closely spaced open vigas (rafters) to form rain-draining channels, with another layer convex curve up capping the rafters and lower tiles.  On this roof, the same colonial look was achieved, but the alternating tiles were bedded in mortar on a 10cm thick sloping rooftop reinforced concrete losa (slab).

It was clear that these tiles, on the house only since it was built 15 years ago, were not the best choice for a low maintenance roof. A person must be extremely careful setting one's weight down when walking on the surface, to avoid cracking the tiles.  The only people up there would have been installers of the TV cables, and perhaps workers periodically cleaning the tiles.  Easily 25% to 33%  of the tiles on the roof were damaged in some way--broken, loose or missing.  It was an easy decision to make our first renovation job stripping and removing everything off the techo (roof) down to the bare slab.

The temporary chute at the front corner of the house allowed drop-delivery of bucket-fulls of escombro (debris) off the roof safely, deposited streetside in a big bin.  We also bought a raspador, a heavy chisel with 4' handle.  That with palas (shovels), martillos (hammers), cinceles de corte frío (cold chisels), barretas/grifas (pry bars) of various kinds, plus some well used/abused empty cubetas (5gal buckets) given to us by Frank, were all the tools needed for this job.  The 10' extension ladder (escalera de extensión) was separated into its two pieces, and one provided access to the lower roof over the comedor (dining room), with another set up on that small roof to access the main roof above.

The first job was to strip the old roofing from the dining room roof, since any trip to the top of house would tread across here.  This meant that the upper section of the ladder could then sit on something more secure than moss-covered, fragile, rounded-top tiles.  The escrombro from that small job was lowered by bucket down the ladder and deposited outside the yard along the edge of the avenida.  Then the de-tiling job moved to the upper roof, where the plywood chute sped up the process of disposing of the debris.  The tiles that came off easily without breaking, and could be cleaned by chipping with a hammer, were a material that could have a future life somewhere.

The tejas that could be saved were stacked on the roof, and eventually carried down the ladders on young shoulders, or tossed down individually to a careful catcher, to end up on the growing stack below along the back wall of the yard.  Since we had determined that newly manufactured tejas árabes (a few inches shorter & narrower than the old colonial style that were on the house) were for sale locally at MX$8 (eight pesos or approx US$0.60) each,

I put up a sign on the front gate offering to sell our excess.  After saving some for future repairs of the remaining lower roofs, we had maybe 900 tiles to dispose of.  There was sporadic interest by passers-by, but invariably when the homeowner-prospective purchaser would go home to consult his albañil (mason), nothing ever came of it.  Even at a reduced price of  MX$3, nobody bit. Towards the end of the renovation job we gave the tiles to our work crew, and they hauled them away up to their village outside of Coscomatepec for personal use.

The piles of escombro in the box and at the side of the road continued to grow, almost bursting the triplay (plywood) bin.  In addition to stripping the two larger roofs, the marquesinas (awning roofs) over the dining room door, the laundry ventana (window), and another in the sala (living room) had to come off for the planned new full bathroom on the ground floor.  This of course add to the volume of debris to be disposed of, and more used tiles to the huge stack against the wall..

Eventually we located a dump truck owner who provided two guys to pitch the debris up into their vehicle and haul it all way, all 6.5 cubic meters of it.  I  also spent one afternoon on the front porch roof, sweeping concrete grit and mortar chips down into the rain gutter, and then cleaning out the huge gutter. Despite all the care, lots of debris from the upper roof job ended up on this lower roof, but only one lower roof tile was cracked in the process.


Next: Re-roof

Getting Ready

Mobilización.  It took about a month for our belongings to follow us down here, transported by a series of moving companies coordinated by Strom-White Movers in Ajijic, Jalisco.  We spent that month planning the changes we wanted to make in the house, and getting settled in a bit.  In mid-October all the "stuff" arrived, and we had to find room for everything in places that wouldn't be impacted by the upcoming renovations.  All our tools couldn't get moved into the cuarto de servicio (laundry room) which would be our eventual shop, since that would be ground-zero for staging the work on the house.  So in the meantime, all the tools and supplies were stored on temporary shelves along the south wall of the dining room. Now that we were moved in, some of our ideas for changes we wanted to see firmed up, and I generated some sketches so we could illustrate our intentions to our crew when they showed up for work.

Our labor crew still had obligations to our friends Frank and Ania, who were still working on their new house about nine blocks from here.  Those obligations took another two months, during which time we worked by ourselves on smaller tasks, which will eventually get covered here: painting, weatherizing, furnishings, etc.  We also had to locate stores and suppliers for the various supplies we would need, and buy a few tools, so several visits to the next-door cities of Córdoba & Orizaba figured in here too.  We had a great resource available to us, as we had confirmed with Strom-White that the five liftvans in which our household goods had been transported to us were, indeed, ours.  We instructed the delivery guys to move them into our backyard, where we could disassemble them for their component materials.

I found the various tools needed (wonderbar, crowbar, etc.) and  took apart the huge liftvan boxes, each approximately 4'x7'x7', constructed of 3/8" exterior CDX plywood over an interior frame of 2x4's. Many people stopped and asked the gringo if he had a use for the plywood or would consider selling it. If so – they would like some. We stacked the plywood and studs, after de-nailing and de-stapling, on the front porch,  Some of the plywood, suitably filled with  resanador  (wood filler) and sanded, was later turned into furniture, and the rougher pieces became concrete forms.

Just before our crew would start on our project, we put all our energy into building a disposal chute for the debris that would come off the roof, using plywood and lumber from the liftvans.  Pitching the broken tiles, mortar and concrete directly down onto the street would be hazardous to passing vehicles and make a real mess below.

The tall vertical box-like structure sat on the lower porch roof, tied into the roof beams that extend out under the eaves, and had a sloping bottom so the waste would end up along the sidewalk and street edge on the north side of the building. This required hauling materials, some precut on the ground, up ladders to the roof, and two of us working to get them nailed or screwed into place.

The third week of December the crew of workers was finally ours.  The day they arrived, I briefly explained what we wanted done with the house, and all agreed that working on the roof was the top priority, considering that we had experienced various leaks in some of the upstairs rooms in the rainy part of the past October.  As the first job for the crew, I set them to building a receiving bin on the road, below where the chute would discharge, using the pallet-like bottoms of the old liftvans.

Next:  de-roofing

Welcome

"Casa Azuledos" as purchased (but with graffiti on side wall blotted out)

¡Bienvenidos!  My intentions here are to cover the approximately seven months spent working on renovations and improvements to our home in Fortín, topically detailing each of the steps in the process.  To work within the standard date-ordered blog format, I'm tweaking a bit to make this work.  The list of numbered labels on the right will take you the various phases of the project, no matter when they might be posted.  The other labels/tags will take you a list of all the posts mentioning specifics of note.  

Should you wish a more time-line centered and mundane perspective, our Etepezin blog covers our life here, including the renovation stuff, but not with the detail intended here.  Some of the images there also appear here, but you'll find more pictures pertinent to the work being discussed in each post here.

Here are sketches of the two floors of the house, as it was purchased.  To orient yourself, remember that the front door of the house (at the left of the sketch), faces approximately east-southeast:

The 10m x20m lot is bounded on the west by a 3m high privacy wall, and on the south by the building walls and a 5m high privacy wall.  The house's street-side front garden and north side of the front porch are bounded by 2m high steel rod fencing, as is the small garden on the north around the chimney.  The entry and automobile gates are of the same steel fencing material.

The two front bedrooms look out over the sloping tiled porch roof, and the sloped roof over the dining room in the back is also tiled in this matter, with the bathroom window looking out over this slope.  All three bedrooms have two large windows, looking out over the street in front, and the patio in back.  The laundry has a parapet wall around the flat roof, where the propane tank is situated.

Some background:  Having selected beautiful Fortín de las Flores, a small town midway between the cities of Orizaba and Córdoba in west central Veracruz State, for our retirement living, we spent several months, in the winter of 2011, living in a convenient motel and house-hunting.  As pet owners, we quickly eliminated the option of renting, as this reduced our choices tremendously -- few Mexicans care to allow people with mascotas to lease from them.  Using several real estate agents (no multiple listings or shared commissions here), and just knocking on doors or phoning the numbers on the Se Vende signs, we saw over 30 homes, some of them new. Prices for a very basic home (minimal number of rooms, all utility connections, perhaps one off-street parking space, extremely small lot with maybe only several square feet of lawn, some in gated developments) seemed to start at about MX$450,000/US$34,000.  We chanced into one home selling for a half-million dollars, but instructed our agents to only show us places worth, at most, a quarter of that.

In our home search, we were looking for:  one bedroom and full bath on ground floor, additional guest bedroom space, all utilities available (including high-speed internet), functional/adequate electrical and plumbing, building in good repair, screened windows, plenty of natural light and ventilation, off-street secured parking for one car, outdoor living space protected from the street, small easily maintained garden area, within walking distance to the town center, quiet non-commercial neighborhood, not on but not too far from public bus lines, far from the railroad tracks that pass thru town, good views of surrounding countryside, in a house design/layout that caught our attention and showed some character.  And, all this had to be on offer for an affordable price.  Casa Azuledos, we knew immediately when we first walked in, was HOME.  Those few things that didn't jibe with our list of requirements could be fixed.  This blog is about the renovations that ensued.

This blog was actually created on 24 March 2012, and contained only the image of the house at the top.  Eighteen months later, renovations well completed, I picked up the ball again to write the text here. Chances are I will continue to edit each post after it appears, to fill in additional explanations or perhaps add some images, as the thought occurs or commenters ask questions that so prompt me.