Friday, April 15, 2011

Carl's Shots of the new Patio Project

Ah, life in Mexico...neighbors knock at your gate to chat or borrow money, a guy from Guatemala comes by to test your Spanish with a friendly chat (and asks for money for food), the neighborhood kids come by to ask for dulces (candy), but now say por favor and gracias. And work is pouring in! I now have a part time job creating funeral websites for a company. It's surprisingly fun, not stressful, and pays not badly. So I'm cheerfully -for the most part- busy.

We decided to finish the patio, so Osvaldo brought over the bricks and sand, and Santiago worked his magic again. Carl took these shots throughout the project.

Just prepping:

Reverse angle towards existing patio:

Bricks have arrived:

Up driveway, guestroom on left:

Cloudy day and Santiago has started to rough it in:

Getting close to the water cistern- Osvaldo has a clever plan.

A shot down the driveway:

Brick pile's getting smaller, a good sign.

Santiago's rough placement of the bricks is complete.

The water tank cover and frame are in place. At first the cover was bouncy. I thought it would be fun to watch people's faces as they walked across it, but we decided to make it firmer.

Down the driveway, bricks are almost gone!


Up driveway towards guestroom:

Santiago has done the final fitting and edges:

More on the water tank cover. Osvaldo welded together a frame that fit over the tank that had room for bricks, then screwed on a plywood base.

Bricks meet the edge of existing driveway.

Guest room entrance area:

Back yard- original brickwork we did a few months ago:

View from opposite corner:

View across laundry area and sand & cement mixture has been swept in.

Water tank cover removed for tweaking:

Some cleanup completed.

Guest room entrance with reflection of dork photographer:

another angle minus dork

Straight on

and finally the water tank cover is in place and we have a patio. Whoopee!!

Friday, April 1, 2011

Drive to Sonoyta and Spring Planting

We've been so busy lately, we're very lucky in this recession to be getting all this work. I'm now doing an extra 4 hours a day for a company who puts up funeral websites. I'm doing about 3-4 a day, creating headers and color schemes then putting it all into their template. It's a great job, not too challenging, slightly creative and it pays pretty well.

I also am still working for Greg, magickitchen.com, and I have other websites to either build or maintain. Busy!

So here are a few pictures. One is a trip we took to Sonoita to pick up mail. The others are pictures of our various spring plantings.



























There are more flowers and trees, but that will have to be for a later blog! Gotta go.