The exterior wall of our grand room, as with so much of our house, clearly needs work.  You can see the lime-based plaster has fallen away to expose the stacked stone construction.  Stacking limestone rocks to form walls, called mamposteria, is the traditional building method in Mérida.  It leads to thick walls about 1 1/2 feet that are incredibly durable over time.

The issue with these walls is the lime-based plaster expands in the humid climate, cracks and falls out.  This is what leads to the gaping holes seen in the image above.  The modern solution is to fill the holes with concrete instead of plaster.  Concrete, lacking the lime, is not as susceptible to humidity and therefore lasts a lot longer.

Mérida’s historic center has a few modern homes sprinkled throughout its streets.  There aren’t many, but when you spot one, it definitely stands out against the neighborhood’s colonial fabric.

Today, the government has strict rules that prevent façades like this from being built in the historic center.  You can make your home totally modern on the inside, but the façade (and to some extent the front room) must be preserved.  These rules are, for the most part, followed.

We are by no means strict preservationists (more on preservation). Walking around, we wonder to what extent historic neighborhoods should be kept homogeneous and static. Perhaps oddities like this house inject a level of diversity that allows a city to move forward while keeping a firm eye on its past.  Or perhaps modern forms like these should remain, as they are in Mérida, relegated to newer neighborhoods.

We did it! We bought this house. And like all good citizens of the 21st century, we are blogging about the renovation. As you can see from the tree growing out of the wall, it needs a lot of work.