Home remodeling completed !!!

[jim_mex]

24 Oct Update

Please scroll down to the thread post #14 for my update



28 Aug. - For todays update plus piccies please scroll down to thread post #10


Its been just 2 weeks since the wrecking crew moved in to start on remodelling our home and the progress is going incredibly quickly by Mexican standards.

Our single storey home is not so big and consists of a living room of approx. 24 x 12 ft, 3 bedrooms of approx 12 x 14 ft each, a small kitchen of 12 x 8 ft and an internal corridor leading to the bedrooms and a small bathroom (shower but no bath). Outdoor there is (was!) - a small covered laundry area and my outdoor storage room of 14 x 8 ft. My narrow workshed is attached onto the side of the house and is out of bounds to all of this work!

Within the first couple of days all doors and closets were taken out of the house followed by the bedroom windows and one living room window. Additionally work began on removing the roof and front facade, windows and doors, of the storage room as well as the roof of the laundry area. By the end of the first week the kitchen outdoor wall, window and door had also been removed in preparation for a small extension. Additionally the internal entrance door to the kitchen was taken out and the interior wall of the kitchen entrance was opened up to reposition a new door to a central position in the wall in order to open up use of the adjacent long wall A team of plasterboard specialists then moved in to begin fitting false ceilings in the living room and bedrooms which include embedded indirect lighting.

Work on rebuilding the outdoor storage room is scheduled to finish this weekend at which point I will be using it short term as a work area to build office furniture and wall to ceiling storage units for what will become my office and organized store room – emphasis on the word organized!

The small laundry area is being converted into a patio ‘green’ space open to the sky and decorated with a variety of plants hanging from the walls in planters. There will be room for a small patio table and chairs to provide a relax area.

At the front of the house the entrance steps are being narrowed to give a little more width to the narrow area to park our car and the steps will be clad with some sort of covering material in keeping with the new look of the house.

I've purchased 950 sq ft of large format 4x 2 ft tiles which will be laid throughout the house on top of the existing concrete mosaic tiles.

The house has now been totally rewired with sufficient breaker boxes strategically placed to stop me blowing fuses each time I switch on the table saw or do some spot welding work!

Hopefully all the work will be completed in around 4 – 5 weeks time.


My only concern now is that at the end of this work we will eventually have a very nice modern looking functional home but it will probably be empty of furniture since Norma wants to replace almost everything we had. I’ve suggested a large carpet and plenty of cushions for the living rooms and the adoption of an Arab living style to save on furniture but I can't see me getting away with this!

A few photos to show the progress


1 – 5 . Demolition of the roof and facade of the outdoor storage room and of the covered laundry area between the room and the house and reconstruction of the new office/storage room

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6. Conversion of the laundry area into a small patio garden

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7 - 8. The kitchen minus outside wall and the ceiling plasterboard work in the living room.


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9. Work on narrowing the entrance steps.

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That's all for now

[Bill Wilson]

Are you still living in the house, during the remodel?

[cwmagee]

Jim,

When this renovation project is complete, how much of the original house will be still standing?

[Hobbyhorse]

It is a major undertaking Jim but you must be pleased to see it well underway. Are you managing the one day a week on the bike?

[jim_mex]

Bill - we are fortunate that my sister in law lives next door and has a house recently converted into 2 apartments and we have moved into the upper one. This is also convenient because I can hang out of a window like a sentry in a watch tower keeping an eye on what is going on below next door!

Fibber - structurally most of the house will remain untouched apart from moving the location of a couple of doors and extending the kitchen area into the small patio in front of it. Compared to a lot of older Mexican properties the house, despite being a little small, was originally designed and built well so we didnt have to think about major structural modifications. It just needed a good facelift and all the wiring replaced.

Rhys - do you need to ask about the bike rides? We've been having a lot of afternoon rain recently so my trips out have been local and fairly short, in fact I just came back from one visiting an engineer friend who tinkers with all sorts of odds and ends. I picked up from him an idea for something we talked about a few days back during our chat session - yep, another strange jewelry box. I just need to iron out a pattern. Stay tuned!

[NC Scroller]

Love to see before and after pictures. None of us can wait to see the finished project.

[Jim McDonald]

I will be willing to bet he invites us ALL for a big fiesta when it's done--but he is counting on the border still being closed.

[cwmagee]

Jim,

Is wallboard construction standard procedure in Mexico? My reason for asking is I know that when my In-laws built their home in Fla in the mid 1970's that wire lathe and plaster was the preferred building material of choice. I do not know if that is still true.

[jim_mex]

Fibber - typically here in Central Mexico homes still tend to use block or brick construction and then plaster indoor walls and use mortar facing outdoors. Wooden frame construction doesn't exist here. Whilst using plasterboard is becoming more popular this is the first time I have seen concreteboard being used for exterior surfaces.

The architect we are using is versed in plasterboard and concrete board techniques and the team he brought in have worked in the US and are familiar with using these materials and because it is much quicker to build with them this was the way they decided to go.

I also learnt a lot watching them and asking questions!

[jim_mex]

UPDATE AT 28 AUG

Well, its be little more than 2 weeks since my last update and although it might seem impossible to believe the bulk of our house remodelling project is almost complete.

All the major structural work is finished. All new windows have been fitted, all tiling throughout the house will be finished by midday tomorrow, all new windows have been fitted, all ceilings have been totally modernised and have had both indirect and direct lighting fitted. The whole house has been rewired and ample breaker boxes strategically located. The painters have carried out most of their inside work apart from the kitchen but will be back next week to finish up all detailing. After this the carpenters will come in and fit doors and closets plus the exterior doors for the kitchen and living room will be fitted. Outside the front entrance steps to the house have been narrowed and will be given a facelift and it looks like the front facade of the house including the main entrance gates will be remodelled.

Finally, and most important for yours truly, my new office/work store is now built and only needs a coat of exterior paint.

One expected by-product of all of this work is that our small grassy area of the garden has been destroyed and we will be needing to either returf the grass and or completely remodel the garden. I favor the latter to my design!

So, it appears like the house will be finished after 2 more weeks making the project a shade over 6 weeks from start to finish. Amazing really!

I took some more photos this morning with my phone. Sorry if the perspective looks a bit skewy...

Overhead shot of the office and kitchen area before and after

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Kitchen extension,. small new patio area in what was the washroom, part of my new office

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Inside yet to be finished kitchen extension

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Living room, after tiling - natural daylight and with lighting. Corridor from living room to bedrooms and bathroom

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My office and store room - already partly filled with articles stored in my workshed.
Currently building new floor to ceiling cabinets to sort all my stuff out!

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So thats it for the moment, Stay tuned!

[jim_mex]

Bragging rights! - As you can see from photos inside the house I decided to go with large format 4ft x 2ft porcelain tiles throughout the house.

Our architect was a little bit put out at first when I told him that I wanted to choose the tiles with Norma and I would also calculate our requirements. He suggested I order 10% overage for cutting losses and breakage . I didn't want to do this because these large format tiles are quite expensive per piece.

According to my layout calculations I estimated the job would require 130 tiles. I ordered 6 additional ones, two of which I was hoping to save to use as work bench tops. Fortunately we had on board two very experienced tilers with considerable experience working in the US. They did a fantastic job following my layout pattern and used just 131 tiles, leaving me with 5 spare tiles which I know I will find a good use for.

I admit to being a bit smug when I provided our arqui with this information!

[cwmagee]

looking good!

[Hobbyhorse]

Thanks for the photos Jim, it all looks just great. They contractors have been remarkably quick when you look at the scope of the work ... you must be very pleased with it all.

[jim_mex]

24 Oct - Home 'make-over' completed!!!

Hi again all – time flies when you are busy and Norma and I have certainly been that the past couple of months since we embarked on our home 'total make-over' project but the good news is the work is now complete and we spent the past week moving back into our ‘new’ home.

The house interior was actually completed 5 weeks back – 6 weeks from the start date - but we couldn’t move in because of the amount of exterior work we had to do which included a fair amount of ‘project creep’ issues we hadn’t contemplated at the beginning. It also didn’t help that the during most of September and the beginning of October we had a lot of rain here in Central Mexico which dramatically slowed down the outside work.

I took some photos to share a couple of weeks back before we started to move back in and I am glad I did because if I took photos today most of the interior shots would show rooms full of boxes we still need to go through and sort out to decide what we will keep and what we will get rid of. One thing I am convinced of is that we brought back more stuff into the house than we originally took out!

To recap – our house is a smallish one storey affair with a living/dining room, 3 bedrooms – one of which Norma will use as her office area - a kitchen and a bathroom. We have a small garden at the back along with an outdoor building which was originally our junk/storage room. My narrow workshop is squashed between one side of the house and a boundary wall. At the front there is a drive-in area to park one car and there is a narrow concrete area between the house and the boundary wall road to the street. The whole plot area covers around 2400 sq ft.

The original remodeling project included complete home rewiring, floating ceilings with direct and indirect lighting in all rooms, replacement windows and doors throughout, new closets in two bedrooms, a kitchen extension including repositioning of the access doors to open up more usable space in the kitchen, installation of large format porcelain floor tiles throughout the house, transformation of the outdoor storage building into an office/work store for yours truly and finally, opening up of what was an outdoor washroom area to form a small patio garden between the outdoor office and the house.

About 5 weeks into the work ‘project creep’ then added the following items; a complete makeover of the front boundary wall facade of the house including new entrance gates and lighting features, a narrowing of the entrance steps to the front door to give a little more width to the car parking area and finally an add on storage room for Norma built between the house and the boundary wall. This was conditional on still leaving me space to park my motorbike!!

Just after all this work finished and we had said goodbye to the architect and his team of workmen Norma threw in a final curved ball. She convinced me to re-tile our bathroom floor with leftover tiles from the house work and then install a new WC and modify a vanity unit I built a few years back to fit a new top surface and modern surface mounted washbasin. I finished this just yesterday!

We still need to furnish the house but have at least equipped all rooms with some nice looking horizontal blinds and splashed out on a couple of sofas for the living room. Going forward I have a lot of carpentry work to undertake to keep me out of mischief.

I estimate we have spent a little over 35,000 USD on this project which is somewhat higher than we originally planned but having practically obtained a new modern looking home at the end of this much needed project both Norma and I are very happy with the end result and the money was well spent.

As I noted earlier once all furnishing work is completed on the house I'll be looking at redesigning the back garden, patios and hopefully extending my workshop a little

Here are some photos of the end results

Back garden showing my new office, the kitchen extension and what will be a small patio garden area in front of Norma's office

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Living room

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....with new sofas, looking out onto the garden!!

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Kevin's bedroom - I finally finished framing his window after just a 4 year wait - LOL!

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Hallway leading to the kitchen and bedrooms

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Kitchen - awaiting furniture on the newly available left-hand wall

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Bedroom closets

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Converted front patio area to include a storage room for Norma and bike parking space for me! Note the flat tyre on my mountain bike - I think my scorpion sculpture may have stabbed it -

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Street wall facade and entrances - crack of dawn early morning shots !

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And thats about it....

Any would be home robbers who want to travel south of the border now know the lay of our property, but don't expect to find anything of value inside. We are all spent up! - LOL!

[Jim McDonald]

Glad to hear you survived the remodel!