Casa Maintenance Pt. 2

There were several maintenance items on the list and we have made progress on some of them. It is unusual in Mexico to get 100% done in the first go around. Jose Luis finished clearing the brush along the driveway on Wednesday. He did a good job of that which was expected. Jose Luis is always very thorough in his work. He always does the job better that we asked for.

At the same time Jose was working on the brush, we had Antonio arrange for a tractor to come on Monday and do some work on the driveway. Much of the fine material had been washed down to the bottom of the driveway or into the ditch on the uphill side. He pushed it back up and cleaned out the ditch at the same time.

Here the Tractor is pulling material out of the ditch.

And scraping the top surface and pushing the excess up the hill.

The operator spent about 5 hours working and here is the result looking down the driveway from the curve at the top.

And looking up at the curve.

It's a lot smoother now, and should do fine for the rest of the dry season.

Another of the job's we had set aside for Antonio was to rehabilitate the steps at the front of the house. These steps lead off the front terrace down onto the grassy area at the front. They were made from rough stone and the treads were covered with just a thin coat of mortar. We wanted to make the finished treads out of flagstone which is plentiful and inexpensive down here. Antonio suggested that we extend the bottom step to create a landing so you don't just step off into the grass. Here is a photo of what we started with:

Antonio started by chipping off the mortar treads with his pick and then he dug out the area in front of the step where he was going to build the landing. He set up guidelines tied to pieces of rebar to level and define the shape. Many Mexicans use the old fashioned water level method using clear plastic tubing filled with water to set levels. They are able to level a wall for dozens of feet to within a 1/16 of an inch. It uses no batteries, and is cheap.   Using some left over rock from building the walls several years ago, he built the base of the landing following his lines.

Here is Antonio mixing a quantity of mortar on the ground.

Below is the finished landing. While he let the landing set up he proceded to put the new flagstone on the top two steps.

The next day he started to laydown the flagstone on the landing leveling as he went and then filled in the middle part.

 We have decided the leave the natural stone on the risers as it complements the flagstone. Around the outside perimeter of the landing we had Antonio apply 4 inch mexican tiles to give it some color. Below is the finished product.

Since we still had some left over tile mortar and grout, we also had Antonio tile under the little gate through the stone wall into the back garden area. This was just plain cement before.

Things are coming along, we still have a few small tasks left to do and Antonio should be finished this week.

Thats all for now so until later,

Rick