Bedeviled by Details

It’s been over a month since our last excitable post about our pool, so we thought it was high time we resurfaced and assured everyone that we are still alive and kicking.

We’d love to say we’ve been relaxing poolside while our crew wraps up around us with efficiency and outstanding speed. Alas, that would be a lie. Instead, we find ourselves mired in the painful phase of corrections - a process that seems to take us two steps forward, just to bring us back another three.

For instance, our guest bathroom vanity is supposed to go here.

There was in fact a moment when it was here, but due to some issues we had with the positioning of the drawer (it was wrong) and a curious downward slope on its left end, the vanity had to be pulled from its spot and sent back to our carpenter’s workshop.

This patch of missing pasta tile has been like this for about a month now.

We have the tile and could install it tomorrow, if not for the fact that the temporary steel door (shown in photo) was installed too low and would not open if we were to install the tile now. To finish up, the temporary door needs to go.

For that to happen, however, the colonial wood door beyond must be restored, which entails first removing and replacing the rotted door frame. Although the frame could go today, a new one can’t be installed until the facade is refinished and the new frame cemented into place while the door opening is reconstructed.

This long chain of events involves our carpenter, a couple albañiles (masonry guys), a tile guy, and electrician (for the doorbell). Time to completion? How long is a piece of string?

This mess in our rear garden is due to the fact that lines of conduit and plumbing were incorrectly positioned directly underneath our future garden. At a depth of 20cm, our concern was that there would be nothing but trouble when we (or our gardener) began tilling the soil and split a water pipe (or worse electrocute ourselves when we cut through a conduit). The solution? Dig it all up and push it to the right so it falls underneath a brick walkway.

These three items have 137 “friends” nailed to a board in the kitchen. As is typical during the end of construction, the list is long and we are measuring our progress daily. A lot of people worry about these things further down the line. We, however, have the energy and inclination to get things done right now.

Some days the issues list drops by inches, other days not so much. On those days, we remind ourselves that although we are sweating the small stuff, we still have a pool to cool off in.

Never the Same Second Time Around

What would a home be in Merida without hammock hooks? We opted to fabricate ours from wood, to complement some old existing horse posts that remain from the original house. The brief we gave our carpenter was simple: replicate the one shown below.

Of course, even the simplest of things cannot be recreated. The result, ironically, looks quite phallic. Our construction crew was most amused the day we showed up with them on site.

Now that most of their length is embedded in the wall, they look a bit nipple-like. We can’t decide which “look” is best - perhaps it’s a personal preference?

Revealing the Wood Beneath

About two weeks ago, our carpenters came by our house and removed all our door panels for restoration. After stacking them carefully on a truck, they whisked (okay, more like sputtered) them away to the wood shop.

Since that time, two guys have been appointed the task of restoring our doors. Not only have years of caked on paint been painstakingly stripped away by hand, but major cracks and chips have also been treated with new wooden implants.

Tomorrow, our doors will get three coats of primer, with a round of hand sanding in between. They will then be wrapped up and put in storage until we are ready and able to pick their ultimate paint color.

As standard residential-grade paints tend to wear very quickly in this climate, our doors will be painted with industrial automotive paint. In case you’re wondering, they won’t be new-car shiny. Instead, we are selecting a matte finish in keeping with the rest of the house.

Like Designers in a Candy Store

We are giddy today. We stopped by this morning to check out our first delivery of tzalam wood.

Stacked together, the wood looks almost deceptively like mahogany or even cedar. But put it through a planer, and this is what you get:

Note the beautiful dark grain and the nice chocolate tones. It is definitely in a class of its own. Now all we have to do is wait two months for the wood to be properly dried - a process that is frequently skipped among other carpenters with ensuing problems. Once dried, the production of our cabinetry, wood flooring and furniture can begin.

Working the World of Wood

While negotiating our way through the permitting process for our house, we’ve been spending a lot of time investigating wood.

Since our house will be painted white throughout, the primary source of color and texture will come from our garden as well as key pieces of wood furniture that we’re having custom made.

To that end, we are choosing our wood based on a few key criteria:

1. The wood must be able to withstand the heat and humidity;
2. It must be able to resist wood-destroying pests, like termites;
3. It must play well with our other key materials including steel, terracotta and limestone; and
4. It must be beautiful to look at and complement other second-hand pieces we’ve acquired.

Finding a pest-resistant wood that works well in the climate typically means choosing a hardwood, preferably one available in the region. Choices here include cedar (often used to make colonial doors), pucte (a hardwood from South America that is yellowish in color), American poplar, tzalam, and a few others.

The above image shows a box made from Ziricote and a plank of American poplar sitting on a mahogany table.

Ziricote is an incredibly hard local wood. Popular for making small items, such as the box above, it’s too rare and expensive to use in our house. Poplar on the other hand is cheaper but ruled out because it’s too pale.

Amazingly, our wood guy says that mahogany is technically a soft wood, but due to its natural resistance to termites and other pests, it also works exceedingly well in this climate. It’s a popular choice for cabinetry here in the Yucatan. We are ruling it out, however, as it’s a bit too red for our tastes. 

This image shows pucte (the lighter wood) and a reddish hardwood whose name we can’t recall that is similar in color to mahogany. We really like pucte and would love to use it in our house. Used primarily in boat building, it’s not a common choice for cabinetry. We love it because of how well it goes with our terracotta and crema maya tiles (shown above).

Unfortunately, our wood guy had a tough time sourcing pucte, and suggested another wood instead called tzalam. Similar to pucte, we love the grain and feel its varied yellow-to-brown tones will keep our house feeling warm without feeling overly hot (something we find happens when there’s too much mahogany around). The dark chocolate grains will also complement the dark steel that will be used for accents and structural support.

Tzalam, our choice for wood.

With our choice made, its time to put some money down and get some in our hands. Although we won’t start building our furniture for months, it’s important to get it now so that it has sufficient time to dry and shrink before our furniture guy starts cutting.

Finalizing Floor Finishes

We are getting mighty close to breaking ground, but until we get the green light from INAH, we’re in a holding pattern. This means that while our nails are getting awfully short from all the biting, we’re working with our contractor to finalize the build budget.

In order to do this, one task is to finalize our floor finishes. We’ve spent the past couple of days revisiting all our preliminary finishes and have made some solid decisions. Although we won’t get in to the nitty gritty details, we thought we would post these images to give you an idea of how our floor choices are coming together. And here is a link to our current plan just in case you want to reference it.

This black and white pasta tile currently exists in our front entrance courtyard. It will remain there. Additional black and white tile will be purchased and used in the adjacent media room.

We’ve posted about these reclaimed terracotta tiles before. All 1200 tiles will be cleaned up and used in our kitchen and back service room.

These limestone blocks will be used as transitional materials between rooms and doorways to help facilitate changes in material from, for example, pasta tile to crema maya.

Crema maya, one of three native limestones to the Yucatan, will cover our outdoor living room and dining room floors.

This fantastic pasta tile will be removed from what is to become our media room downstairs and transferred to one of our bedrooms upstairs (sorry about the terrible photo).

Our stairs and upstairs terrace landing will be made of unfinished hardwood similar in tone and texture to the ones pictured here. We have yet to pick the specific species, but understand there are several available for purchase.

This amazing monastery in Valladolid (which we will post about soon) has an incredible pathway made of limestone pavers. Similar pavers will be used throughout our garden and on our pool patio.

Cooking by Induction

As the summer advances, we find ourselves cooking less. Just the thought of boiling pasta water or baking a loaf of bread causes us to break a sweat. We love to cook, yet don’t want to add heat to our already sweltering rental house. A terrible conundrum!

As a result of this experience, we’ve revisited the cooktops planned for our kitchen renovation. Instead of going with the standard gas stove, we’re leaning heavily toward induction cooktops.

The principle behind these units is straight forward. A piece of magnetic material (for example, a steel sauce pan or cast-iron skillet) is placed within a magnetic field generated from the cooktop itself. Energy is then transferred (or induced) from the cooktop to the pan or skillet causing it heat up.

Unlike a standard electric stove that uses radiant heat to transfer energy (and thus takes a bit of time to warm up), a pot placed on an induction cooktop starts heating instantly and delivers a speedy performance similar to gas.

So why dump gas in favor of an induction cooktop? The answer is energy efficiency. A typical gas stove is only 30% efficient, meaning a whopping 70% of the heat generated is wasted on heating you and your kitchen rather than your dinner. Induction cooktops are around 90% efficient. With almost no wasted heat, cooking this way will produce less sweat, a happier cook and more yummy dinners.

The induction cooktop is made even more attractive by the fact that we can now install a fan over the countertop to keep us even cooler when cooking up a storm. This would be impossible with a gas cooktop, as the breeze generated by the fan would blow the heat away from the cooktop before it got a chance to heat up our frying pan. We have experienced this problem in other houses we’ve rented and can say that it makes for some pretty underwhelming stir-frys and a whole lot of misery.

There is, however, no free lunch. Induction cooktops are more expensive and require cookware made of magnetic materials (like steel or cast iron). No aluminum, no copper and no earthenware. For us, this means our favorite Oaxacan clay pots and the delicious slow braises they contain will have to move outside onto a gas ring. Given the heat, this is perhaps not a bad thing.

Locking Up More Details

We’ve been MIA planning our latest remixto brunch (we have some photos posted and even a video), but after a couple days rest, we’re back and ready to go.

Today we swung by Galeria Tataya, a fantastic art gallery located on Calle 72 between 53 and 55 near Plaza Santiago. Our friends François and Gerardo travel around the country in pursuit of the best arts and crafts, and lovingly ship them back to Mérida for all of us to purchase and enjoy.

The reason for our visit was to photograph the door lock pictured below.

Hand made from wrought iron, our plan is to order modified versions of the lock and install them on most of our colonial and steel-screened doors throughout the house. They will be a simple yet elegant solution to keeping our doors closed and secured.

Best of all, because they are made of a solid piece of metal, we won’t have to deal with those annoying chains found on typical door locks here in Mérida that swing to and fro, getting in the way of doors closing properly.

Details Up the Wazoo

We mentioned in our last post that aside from preparing documents for permitting, our on-going task is to flesh out the architectural details and finishes that are going to make our house shine.

Recently, we started to tackle one part of this list by focusing on hardware, which includes everything from hinges, screws, faucets, and drain covers. The list is exhaustive.

Normally, decisions such as what hinges to use on our doors would be left to our contractor. Well, like all architects, Stan is a control freak. He’ll sweat and fuss over every part of the project with zero relativism. For him, an unfortunately placed screw is just as big a deal as the color of the doors or the number of bedrooms.

So, we are now sweating over it all. As you can see from this partial list, it’s all a bit overwhelming. Just looking at it makes us tired.

• 8 Broom hooks
• 3 Toilet roll holders
• 22 Door handles (salvaged)
• 31 Screen door handles (salvaged)
• 11 Deadbolts and locks (salvaged)
• 20 Kitchen cabinet door handles (salvaged)
• 60 Colonial door hinges (salvaged)
• 8 Pairs of wooden hammock hooks (salvaged)
• 5 Bathroom basins and taps
• 2 Kitchen basins
• 2 Service room basins
• 10 Floor-to-ceiling door bolts (bespoke)
• 2 Tankless water heaters
• 1 Reverse osmosis water filtration system
• 2 Large bath towel rails
• 4 Hand towel rails
• 3 Towel hooks
• 12 Window hinges (salvaged)
• 15 Non-colonial door hinges
• 30 Kitchen cabinet door hinges
• 3 Mirrors
• 35 Electrical outlets
• 28 Light switches and dimmers
• 4 Ethernet ports
• 1 Doorbell
• etc.
• etc.
• etc.

Hooks, Hammock and Otherwise

We continue our exploration of the little things in our house. Today we document the various hooks embedded within our walls. These hooks are a common sight in old colonial homes as Yucatecans traditionally sleep in hammocks suspended between them. Given how hot it can get, it’s an ideal solution for a cool and comfortable sleep.