Author: Dad Page 19 of 201

This post is an update because I have not written for a long time. We continue to make progress on both our little places down in Mexico. As a reminder, we bought the first one because my lawyer brother-in-law who also has a construction business ran into a very good deal for a house with a nice view on the less affluent side of the valley that passes through San Pedro Garza García, Nuevo Leon Mexico. Right about when he had finished up the demolition and cleanup, a deal came up for another great place on the last street with houses further up Sierra Las Mitres, the mountain where both of the houses are located. At that point, we decided to turn the first house into a small apartment complex and build out the one up on the hill for ourselves when we stay in Mexico with Lorena’s mother Conchita.

That was quite a while ago. The apartments are almost finished. At first, we were going to stop with four apartments and an azotea (grilling and entertainment area on the roof), but Lynn, the lawyer, figured out a way to add an additional two apartments for six total and an additional azotea on a roof at the back of the house. Construction continues, but we are in the process of getting the apartments appraised and hope to put it on the market soon. The picture at the left is the appearance of the apartments from the street. The one below is the view of the mountains on the other side of the valley from the second azotea that will be poured in the the next few days.

There is a lot of work going on at the house further up the mountain, too. Most of the demolition is complete, electrical and plumbing infrastructure has been add, and new stairways to the basement, second floor, and azotea are in process. I will save a description of our progress on that house for another post, but Lynn sent me a video of the valley from the balcony at the back of the house that I thought was nice, so I included it. Construction on the new Tesla Giga-Factory is planned to start in a few months. We are about 15 minutes away and there is a good chance we will be able to see it from the azotea which is higher than the balcony from which the below video was captured.

The red box in the image marks an area of the ceiling of the main floor of the house that used to be open to the second floor. Lynn is filling that area with a heavily reinforce concrete and Styrofoam placa that will increase the size of the room above. The second image shows the same staircase and placa from the side.

Just a few snapshots of the house as we near completion.

This is the before and after of the area that is planned to be the garage with the master bedroom above it. The third image is what the back side of the wall looked like. Actually, it had a full bathroom there previously, but the walls were knocked down before the picture was taken.

About half of the demolition is now complete and cleaned up on the half of the second floor that faces the valley. The plan is to replace the balustrade with glass and a very sturdy aluminum rail. The beam at the top of the opening leading to the balcony is a support beam so we are working with a structural designer to find a way to remove it or, worst case, leave a 5-6 inch beam above the opening and add a long horizontal window above it. The entire opening is planned to be four sheets of thick, tinted glass. The outside two are to be fixed and the inner two are sliding doors. The bottom image is some of the stuff that was removed to open the place up.

This is one of the front doors we had made for the apartments. Excited to see what they look like when they are installed.

Work started today on the second house. It is a lot higher up the hill so it has a better view. We want to take advantage of the view by completely removing the current balcony (shown to the left). I will be replaced with a thick glass, 3 ft. high muro con barandal. The second image shows the wall across from the balcony openings. That wall will be completely removed and replaced with ceiling to floor glass walls and a doors. This glass area will have to have some thin, unobtrusive vertical stripes or hanging strings to prevent bird hits, but the idea is to open this up as much as possible both for lighting and to expose the view. This is going to go pretty slowly as resources allow. Of course, if we are able to sell the other house that we converted to apartments lower on this same hill, we can use some of the resources to speed up the changes. Lynn is planning to use the house (above) as his office, so we are hoping that will allow him to keep the focus on the changes there.