Many old colonial homes built in Mérida were decorated with ornately painted friezes.  Due to the humid conditions in the Yucatán, they have not weathered all that well and most are either lost or in bad repair.  They are, however, wonderfully elegant and lend charm to the grand buildings in which they reside.

We walked to our local market this morning to buy a kilo of eggs and saw this house along the way.

Sometime during its life, it was split into five smaller houses (two on either side of the corner unit).  Divisions like this exist all over Mérida and have resulted in many long, thin houses - some no more than 5m wide and 50 to 60m long.

When looking to buy, most of the houses we saw under 100k (USD) were between 6 and 10 meters wide.  We told ourselves anything under 10m was too skinny and we weren’t going to buy it.  Turns out we changed our minds.  Ours is 9m.

Many renovations in Mérida add new structures and buildings that purposefully look old in an attempt to make them fit with the existing building. The result can at times be a bit Disneyland.

We love the outdoor bar at Hacienda Ochil. It demonstrates how a new and modern structure can work with an old building.  Instead of remodelling to accomodate a new bar in the old style, the old walls act as a backdrop for a new idea.

We had lunch at a hacienda about one hour south of the city a few weeks back. Hacienda Ochil was once a major producer of henequen - a fiber derived from agave that made the city flush with cash in the late 1800s.

The hacienda is magical. The way the old stone walls have been left to showcase their age makes us constantly question how much we should intervene with the existing surfaces and structures of our house.

The enjoyment of lunch in this cool and covered dining area also reinforces the need to encourage the use of outdoor spaces in our design.  After all, who wants to fly all the way to Mexico just to sit behind glass staring out at the garden?