It seems so long since we’ve been away, so I scheduled a trip to the Fontainbleu in Las Vegas for Deborah’s birthday. I’ll try to recap the good, the bad and the ugly for all the things we’ve got planned so you might have an advantage when ya’ll schedule a trip here for yourselves.
It’s exactly one month today since we left Vancouver. It seems so long ago that we held my mom’s COL, but we got it done. Deborah and I were chatting tonight on the Mirador, watching the sun go down on what was another hot and humid day. We had enough energy after a long, hot day that we stripped off, jumped in the pool and watched a glorious sun dip beyond the horizon. BTW, it reached 104F today without the humidex. I heard someone saying that yesterday with the humidex, temperatures seemed like 50C that’s a whopping 122F.
We’ve been in Merida since the 1st of May and we’ve accomplished quite a lot. We’ve met with our contractor just about every morning this week at 10:00 and we cover a lot of ground daily, adjustments here, changes there – but Casa Amigos is coming along quite nicely. The plan is that we’ll be moving from our VRBO rental on June 1st (which is very optimistic) into our Casita suite at the rear of the property. We realize that we’ll be faced with power outages, water stoppages, workers and jackhammer chatter in the background, but it’s something we think we have to do – we’ll see what happens. I just so happens that we have a back-up plan B. One of our friends here has a fantastic casa just around the corner from our construction site and she’s offered it to us for the month of June if Casa Yucatan Construction can’t get things ready for us on June 1st. Her place is absolutely gorgeous, she has a new one-bedroom Casita with it’s own dipping pool and it will certainly fit the bill and allow us to cut down on our daily walk to Calle 66. From our current rental we’re about 4 big blocks down to the construction site, so while it’s close – it’s still getting there with the high temperatures even at 9:45 a.m.
Our main focus has been to work with Adam but our secondary focus has been to buy stuff. That’s the part that Deborah likes the most. So far we’ve purchased our stove/range, dishwasher, washer, dryer, king-size mattress, cover, sheets, kitchen island lights, BBQ, lounge chairs for the pool and tomorrow we’re planning to add to the appliance purchases with a new refrigerator, TV and microwave oven. With these important things out of the way, we now only have about 1,000 more things to buy to get us ready for our December stay.
It’s been great to be back in Merida. To be able to see friends that we haven’t seen for months, to be able to sit on the Mirador and hear the bells of the church at night, the cooing of the doves in the trees overhead, the food, the smells, it’s all things that we’ve come to enjoy here in Merida.
When I was a young boy, my Dad would always say after a big job involving lots of manual labor “It’s only the tail of the beast left”. In just 7 short days the crew of Casa Yucatan Construction have managed to tear down both of the old structures with the help of some heavy machinery. Now that most of it’s gone, you get a good sense of just how enormous our new casa is going to be.
The Rear Master Suites are starting to take shape
Jean’s Shower is Now Complete
Looking from back to front.
Flip Flop’s – C’mon.
This week I received an email out of the blue. It seems than we have neighbors that shortly will be developing the property on the other side of our south wall. Here we thought that this was an old abandoned property, only to find out that this American family (Texas) have owned this property for seven long years, just waiting for the opportunity to bring this property back to life as well.
We’ve finalized arrangements for our next trip down, we’ll be heading down midway through November and coming back before Christmas. In Merida they have their big Black Friday Sales on at that time so it wii be good to get in on the savings. It will be especially nice to be there just before Christmas as they decorate the whole city with lights, particularly the huge main drag on Paseo de Montejo. Kudos to the whole Casa Yucatan Construction gang – great job, we hope you remembered to save those front doors from Unit B.
Machinery does Help !
Still some edging to cut out.
Where’s WSIB when you need them ?
Well, Friday rolled around again and we have more pictures to share. It seems we have some footings and foundation going in on the north/south property lines. We’ve been told that the INAH document as been seen and it’s signed so it won’t be long before we’ve got more to show y’all.
If you look closely at Picture #2, you’ll see the approved safety shoes of the workers on our project, thankfully Yucatan Construction is looking after the Worker’s Compensation payments. More pictures to follow soon.
I really can’t believe that it’s been four months since my last posting. I said that I would update the site when we’ve received our Building Permit. But that still hasn’t happened. As of today we’re #10 in line for approval and we’re being told another 3 to 4 weeks so who knows.
On a positive note, they’ve just started to clear off our two lots – all the overgrown trees, bushes and termite hills are being removed to make way for the excavation and masonry/foundation work which will be the next step. Our understanding is that our contractor will be sending us pictures every Friday, so what they’ve sent us so far is four shots of a somewhat cleared lot and some pretty ugly walls. These walls will all be replaced new with new ones walls that are likely to be some 20’ high.
We’ve all but finalized our casa designs with INAH (they control the design components in the Colonial area of Merida) but we continue to tweek things to add just a little Mexican flair. It won’t be long now that I’ll provide some regular updates on this build, so stay tuned and we appreciate all of you who will follow us on this road.
Stay tuned, more pictures to follow next Friday. Hopefully.
On Monday, March 12th we got the email from our architect that we have been waiting for. We submitted our application for building permit into INAH (they are the office that grants building permit approvals) the last week of October (2017), some 4 1/2 months ago. We’ve had no news, no indication of any problem, but it seems with all the construction going on in and around Merida from all the expats there are huge delays. Our architect, Jesus tells us that they have been unable to make any changes with respect to staffing in INAH, so things are just trudging along.
It seems that the lady inspector arrived about 11:10 on Monday morning to inspect our two properties. She apparently walked around the houses, asked several questions. Inspected our Permit Plan that was submitted by Jesus and asked me a few more questions. Finally she said she didn’t have any problems with our design and that she would summarize her inspection and give her observations and opinion to the Committee who would make the final decisions on approval. She has asked Jesus to go to INAH next Tuesday (March 20th) where there will hopefully be some resolution and decision.
Since we started this process beck in March 2017, it’s been twelve long months to purchase the lots, get the design and layout finalized and get close to building permits completed. Since that time, I’ve looked at so many expat properties that are for sale – properties that have been renovated and put back up for sale. In hindsight, I’ve thought that maybe this was maybe the way we should have gone instead of the ground-up build. It has certainly occupied my mind on a daily basis, I’ve probably walked through this casa a thousand times, thinking about each detail. Hopefully it has done some good in the overall design.
If we’re lucky enough to get approvals before April Fools Day, we hope that our contractor can start to knock down the walls of these two old dilapidated structures and put a shovel into the ground. The agreement that I have with our contractor is that we are to receive updated pictures every Friday so that we can see the progress and then arrange a SKYPE call to discuss what we’re seeing.
I’ll be 65 years of age in October and it looks like the completion of the build may be just outside this based on their 8-month requirement for completion, barring any weather or construction delays. I guess that big bash will just have be delayed until we get the keys and some furniture in the casa.
Casa La Iguana – our last VRBO home in November ’17
We’re getting so, so close it’s only a matter of weeks we hope. Once the walls come down and the jungle gets cleared I’ll update my site, hopefully with some pictures. I want to thank all those friends who have “LIKED” http://www.farfrumwurken.com. Hopefully you can follow along with us over the next 8 to 10 months while we get this casa constructed. THANKS again.
It’s been over four months since I’ve posted anything here. Much much too long. There’s eighty-one days left until we start our Maritime Adventure and when we return after the month-long driving trip we’ll be doing a quick turnaround heading to Merida, Mexico with Jean for the month of November.
We decided to switch from Casa Miss on this trip, trying to get a house closer to Centro. I’ve attached a couple of pictures on the new spot.
I moved to the west to get away from the snow. I just couldn’t handle it anymore, fifty-two years was enough. It seems it’s on a 11-year cycle here on the coast. When we arrived here in 2006 we had the storm of the century, since then no snow. For the most part I wear shorts every day – not so much lately.
According to the news cycle, this is the worst storm here in Vancouver since 1950. I’ve attached a few pictures just to make sure that we all remember this historic event.
To all my friends in eastern Canada, please take back your snow – I’ve had just about enough !
farfrumwurken 