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