My Great Mexican Misadventure

My Mexican adventure began in about 2002 when I was in my early fifties. My career was going downhill and so was my income but real estate prices in Canada were rising. I came to the realization that financially I was poorly prepared for a retirement which no longer seemed far off.

In 2004 I began researching options for retirement abroad, now easy to do because of the internet. That research soon led me to consider Mexico and the Lakeside area in particular. In December 2006, Pat and I traveled to Ajijic for a one month vacation and an exploratory trip. We were favourably impressed. In December 2008, we returned to Ajijic again for a month to determine if we would react the same way. Yes, we did.

My Great Mexican Misadventure began in April, 2011. Pat and I were headed once more to Ajijic, this time for three weeks. In hindsight there were warning signs which we failed to notice at the time.

Neither of us were in a good frame of mind. Pat was almost worn out at work by a very difficult supervisor to whom she had reported for many years. She did not know how much longer she could cope. I had been terminated without cause from my last place of employment a few months earlier. Now almost 60 years of age, my prospects for new employment were very limited.

The day of our flight was Saturday, April 2, 2011, and it did not get off to a good start. We had booked a cab to take us to the airport the previous evening. But we awoke to a snowstorm and the cab was late, or so I thought at first. When I dared not wait any longer for fear of missing our flight, I phoned the cab company. I was informed that because of the weather many cabs were not operating and those that were were running hours late. Determined, we loaded our luggage in our SUV and rushed off to the airport.

We boarded our flight without any delay but we did not leave the gate. We sat. Soon the flight crew informed us that the runway had been closed for snow clearing. To the best of my memory it was about 45 minutes before we left the gate but not to take off. No, our plane now needed de-icing and we had to wait our turn as other planes faced similar circumstances. I think we were about 90 minutes behind schedule when we finally departed. I remember being very disgusted. What was I doing living in a city with such terrible weather In April, so-called spring?

We made our connection and arrived at Guadalajara on schedule. After clearing immigration we took a cab to Casa Flores Bed and Breakfast as we wanted a change from La Nueva Posada where we stayed in 2006 and 2008. After a long and difficult day I am sure we were ready for a good night of sleep.

I remember how quickly I began to feel relaxed on our first day in Ajijic. It felt familiar and pleasant. Over the next few days Pat and I became more and more relaxed. I had no doubts that I could live a good life here. After three or four days I said to Pat, “What the fuck are we doing in Calgary? Let’s move here already.” Pat agreed. 

We were serious. We immediately went into action mode. During our previous two trips we had walked all over Ajijic looking at neighborhoods and houses but never saw anything that we would actually consider buying. We had had a good experience custom building a house in Calgary in 1994. We decided to repeat that experience at Lakeside.

With a real estate agent we began looking at properties. Pat liked Chula Vista Norte but lots there were very expensive. We looked at a lot with a great lake view in Racquet Club but we had reservations about the location, about five kilometers west of Ajijic. After a day or two I decided to make an offer. However, I quickly learned that it had been purchased the previous day.

At the same time we became uncomfortable with our real estate agent and decided to make a change. Steve Cross, our host at Casa Flores, recommended Tom Barsanti and that proved to be a good move.

Tom took us to several lots including Lot 7 on a street named San Juan de las Colinas (Saint John of the Hills). Pat and I had been talking about how much we thought we would like a walking lifestyle and the location was perfect. We made an offer and after some negotiation we made a deal. 

 

So far this story has no major missteps but it is not typical of Pat or me. We are generally cautious people and we rarely act impulsively. We had no intention of buying land on this trip when we left Calgary. Pat had some difficulty imagining what our newly acquired property would look like. But I was confident and Pat trusted me.

I had also discussed my plans of moving to Mexico many times with my good friend Al Hubbard. He advised me to be careful, to not make decisions which would limit my options. He thought renting for a while to see if we really did like living in Mexico was the best way forward for us. That is now the same advice I give to newcomers.

I did not listen to Al. Pat and I are not people who move easily or often. Sure of myself, I wanted to get settled quickly and avoid short term accommodation. And I was also highly motivated to provide Pat with a house with which she would be very pleased, even more so than our very nice home in Calgary.

On our trip to Lakeside in 2008 we had met a builder who impressed us. He was very pleasant and spoke good enough English. We looked at a couple of houses he had built and we liked what we saw. In 2011, with only a week left in our trip, we contacted him again and began discussing a construction contract.

From now on I will only refer to this man as Our Mexican Builder and never by name. He became the central figure in My Great Mexican Misadventure. But there is risk in Mexico, particularly for a non-citizen, to say negative things about someone and the truth is not necessarily adequate protection.

We toured three recently built homes with Our Mexican Builder and his associate, an American woman working for him at the time. In each case the owners were present and were satisfied with their experience. This gave us the confidence to proceed. We discussed specifications and the day before our return to Calgary we signed a construction contract.

I have made other mistakes in my life but this was one of the big ones. It is a part of my life, a story I want to tell as honestly as I can. And this mistake will continue to impact me for the rest of my life.

Pat had decided that she could stick out her job for one more year. Accordingly, our construction contract was for eighteen months. We would take about six months to finalize the design and develop blueprints followed by twelve months for construction. We planned to be in Lakeside by September 1, 2012 so that we could be on site for the finishing stage of construction. We planned to have a new house to live in before the end of the year.

The purchase of our lot closed with no problems. But as I write this in 2019 I have no clear memory of how we paid for it. I think I had enough room in a line of credit secured by our Calgary home to close the deal. We certainly did not have that kind of cash laying around in a bank account. Strange how some of our memories seem clear and others not.

The next few months were fun. We had contracted for a house size of 200 square meters plus terraces and a carport. We had also negotiated a price per square meter for adjustments to the base size. Our final plan was for 230 square meters. That was bigger than our house in Calgary and I knew it would feel spacious because it was on one floor. And we would have a great view of Lake Chapala. Our Mexican Builder had recommended that we build up the level of our building site by one meter to maximize the view. The extra cost was reasonable and that was money well spent.

Our construction contract required a significant initial payment followed by twelve monthly progress payments during the construction phase. Our Mexican Builder was required to send us photos documenting progress. We were also again planning a trip in 2012 to be on site. It all seemed so reasonable at the time but in hindsight, I was naive and overly trusting, embarrassingly so.

Nevertheless, although off to a slow start, site work got underway and construction continued through our winter months in 2011-2012. Although the pace of construction seemed slow, I continued to be optimistic with only minor concerns. That changed in March, 2012.

Our Mexican Builder had advised me that material costs were rising. That was his problem, not mine, as we had a fixed price contract, a fact he acknowledged. But he had a win/win solution. If I would accelerate my payments he would in return give me a significant discount. Something did not feel quite right but the story of rising prices sounded reasonable and the discount was attractive. I accepted the deal and made the payment.

 

 

By May there was still inadequate progress, less than what had been promised only a month earlier. There were troubling reports from neighbors on our street. The tone of my requests for updates intensified but the results were unacceptable. One day late in May it suddenly hit me and I allowed the truth of my situation to clearly enter my conscious mind. I had a BIG problem. Our Mexican Builder was very nice but he was untrustworthy and his words were worthless. I had made a BIG mistake. I realized that I had foolishly suppressed my doubts a couple of months earlier and I had made a payment which I should not have made.

 

 

 

Pat had decided to submit her resignation on June 1st effective June 30th. I decided not to burden her with our big problem during the last month of her employment. That June was a very difficult month for me, carrying a burden and sharing it with no one, not even the person closest to me. I decided to let Pat enjoy the first week of her retirement in early July. Then I said, “Pat, we need to talk.”

I told her everything. She was not surprised. She had sensed something was amiss but she had decided to ask no questions because she too did not want to deal with problems during her last month of employment.

From July to September we prepared for Our 5000 Kilometer Road Trip which was complicated by the failure to sell our Calgary home. Yes, we were moving to Mexico but we were now facing a big problem rather than starting a glorious retirement. And My Very Strange Illness began on our roadtrip.

At this point in the story, I began to utilize excerpts from Pat’s emails to her sister, Linda Goodsir, slightly edited to remove certain names. I often helped Pat with those emails. It is very helpful now to have this contemporaneous record of this story.

Date: Sat, Nov 24, 2012 at 4:05 PM

After several good meetings with Our Mexican Builder and a schedule of progress from him and a promise that he would have a full contingent of workers on site 2 weeks ago, we went to the lot about 4 times over the last couple of weeks, and there were no workers on site. The Canadian engineer has been trying to reach him and Our Mexican Builder is not returning any phone calls, text messages or emails. We met with The Canadian engineer on Thursday. He told us that the Mexican culture is such that they do not want to deliver any negative news so they hide. Apparently the foreman is no longer with him. In addition, we are getting more complaints from our neighbours that the workers are always ringing the doorbell and asking for drinking water and that should be Our Mexican Builder's responsibility, not the neighbour's. We found that puzzling because that means the workers are there, but we have never seen them. We told The Canadian engineer that we have been more than patient and that we would talk to a lawyer next week. John does not want to jump the gun too soon because the first preference is that we continue to work with Our Mexican Builder, however, we want to get an idea from the lawyer what we should be prepared for. So, we have lost hope again. I talked to my neighbour Betty and she confirmed that this is the Mexican culture. Of all the people she knows that built houses, things have gone smoothly for only a very few. It is enough to make you go screaming into that good dark night! Betty and Mike are really nice and we have been getting some valuable tips from them on all sorts of little things. They were the ones that recommended the doctor to us. They also recommended a handyman to us, which we hired to fix a few things that had fallen apart.

 

Date: Sun, Dec 9, 2012 at 4:04 PM

"Our Mexican Builder is continuing to do nothing after making a bunch of promises, so we decided to take the ugly step of consulting a lawyer. We had a good meeting. The lawyer said that taking him to court is the absolute last recourse, because it is a long process. He knows our builder well and is familiar with his antics and his excuses. He will try to mediate a solution. At any rate, this will take time. I don't think we will have our house next year, if at all. It is very disappointing and we have to rethink our future. Everyone we have talked to thinks that Our Mexican Builder is not being a crook intentionally; he is just a lousy administrator and uses one person's money to finance another person's project, which apparently is the way a lot of builders work to one extent or another. At this stage, though, I think he will have a tough time getting a crew to work for him because his reputation of not paying his workers is spreading. So it is an ugly mess."

We will also not identify by name Our Mexican Lawyer because he too turned into another disappointment.

 

Date: Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 3:05 PM

Since Our Mexican Builder sent us those pictures at the end of December, we have not received anything from him since. We went to our lot last week and it didn't look like anything else had been done and, of course, there were no workers on site. So we sent our lawyer an email telling him this and he tried to catch a hold of Our Mexican Builder but he was leaving as he was coming in. He is going to try to find him this week and if he can't he says he will call him and make an appointment. Well, good luck with that!

December 26, 2012

John and I went to the Annual Meeting of our condominium association. I was nervous as our building project had been creating a lot of angst for our neighbours. During the meeting, our neighbour (one of the Johns) brought up the topic of our project and was wondering if he was allowed to go on to the lot and tear down the flimsy plastic shed that had been erected because it was an eyesore. The President, Don, said that he didn't think that the condominium association had any jurisdiction to go onto someone's property to do that. Wayne, who is the Administrator of the meeting and who was chairing it, then asked us if we would like to say something. John got up and apologized for the grief that our project was causing in the community. He explained that we are sensitive to their concerns and have asked Our Mexican Builder to address them. He then said that Our Mexican Builder agreed, that he says yes to everything and then does nothing and that this has been very frustrating for us as well as for them. I then added that we do have a consultant and a lawyer and, other than putting a gun to his head, we can't do much. We did receive a lot of sympathetic comments after the meeting and our neighbour, John, came up and said he didn't mean anything personal in his comments, that he likes us and wants us to be his neighbours. 

 

Date: Fri, Feb 22, 2013 at 4:15 PM

Next week, John has a dental appointment (we are getting some of our teeth bonded to help slow down the gum recession), we have an appointment with our lawyer (a few days ago, there were 3 workers on site - we had heard that Our Mexican Builder got a bank loan)... 

At the beginning of April, Pat and I returned to Calgary for four months to make some improvements to our house and to sell it.

Date: Sat, Aug 10, 2013 at 6:30 PM

When we arrived here, we stayed at a B&B for about 10 days and focused on finding a place to rent. Then it took us several days to settle in so we were just taking one thing at a time and planning on meeting with The Canadian engineer and then hoping to set up an appointment with Our Mexican Lawyer. So things were moving along at a leisurely pace and we finally met with The Canadian engineer who we hired to help with quality control. The neighbours had been complaining about a breach in a corner of the unfinished wall on our property. They felt it was an attraction for thieves as there had been several break-ins on that street. We didn't feel that closing that breach would make much difference. It is not a gated community so if someone wanted to break in, they could just walk into the community by way of the street; they didn't have to come in the back way through the breach in our wall. Anyway, to appease the neighbours, we had discussed with The Canadian engineer via email while we were in Calgary to see if he could find someone who would close that breach, since Our Mexican Builder had gone AWOL. He did and when we met with The Canadian engineer last week, he said he was going to get it going the following week...

I think it was the very next day when we were at a restaurant right next to La Reserva that we ran into Chris and Terry, a couple of gay guys who were our neighbours in La Cristina last winter. We got to chatting and Chris mentioned that another couple they knew who were having the same issues as we were with Our Mexican Builder were finally having their house built. When we got home that evening, John had an email from Tom, another friend we had run into downtown a few days earlier, asking John to call him immediately. He told John that Our Mexican Builder had contacted him and asked him to contact us. He wanted to meet with John and me regarding the building of our house. We were gobsmacked! If we hadn't run into Chris and Terry, we would have been very suspicious.

We met with Our Mexican Builder a few days later. He appeared to be a little nervous and more humble than in the past. He had told Tom on the phone that he was embarrassed by this whole incident. He said (once again) that he had resolved his financial issues and was going to build our house. He says he is planning on completing all of his outstanding projects because he is a moral man. He said he was putting his best foreman on our project and that they had already started on the wall a couple of days ago and that they were going to finish this house quickly. John told him that quality is more important than speed and he assured us that it would be of the same quality as his previous houses that we had seen. And for our security and peace of mind, he handed over a signed cheque in pesos which came to the equivalent of about $100,000 US and asked us to hold on to it as a gesture of faith and when the house is finished, we can return it to him. Although that was nice of him to do that, we realize that it is just a piece of paper and a cheque can always bounce. He said he would meet us again the next morning at our site and introduce us to his foreman (who speaks only Spanish). After the meeting, John phoned The Canadian engineer to tell him about the latest development and to cancel the job with his guy.

The next day we were at the site. There were 3 guys there working on the wall. Our Mexican Builder showed up and introduced us to his foreman... So John shook his hand and said, "Adios" to him. I was so mortified. He meant to say, "hola", which means "hello" but instead he was saying "goodbye". Neither one of them said anything, but I was SO embarrassed. Anyway, this foreman was just a little guy. He looked like a hobo with ragged clothes, the kind of guy you would see in a Mexican western, leaning against a crumbling wall and chewing on a piece of grass.

Our Mexican Builder had to take off and go to Guadalajara so we left. And wouldn't you believe it, THAT VERY AFTERNOON we got an email from Our Mexican Builder asking us for more money because materials had gone up in price!!!!!! John was furious. How stupid does he think we are? John has not yet replied. He is waiting until he has cooled down, ... and has also booked an appointment with Our Mexican Lawyer next week. So, once again, an emotional roller coaster ride! OF. ALL. THE. GALL.

So, is he serious or is he just going to play the same games with us? He sounded sincere in the meeting. Here we go again.

So we will see what will happen in the next few weeks.

Date: Sat, Aug 31, 2013 at 8:16 PM

So you are probably wondering what the deal is with Our Mexican Builder. After that second meeting with him and then receiving the unbelievable request for more money, John was furious and waited a few days to cool down before emailing him back and asking for another meeting. Our Mexican Builder is always pleasant and pleasantly asked us for more money because the price of materials had gone up. John pleasantly told him that we are not prepared to pay any more until we receive value for the money we have already paid. Our Mexican Builder was persistent and kept pushing, all along promising that he would give us many extras and would pay our rent for us. He even offered to take us into Guadalajara the next day or Monday (this was a Friday) to buy furniture because he could get good deals for us and said that he could store it for us. Imagine! Buying furniture for a house that is not there! We said no, of course. John told Our Mexican Builder that if he has enough money to pay our rent, then he has enough money to buy materials. Our Mexican Builder then backed off and said that he would accelerate our project to get our house built fast. John said that quality was more important than speed. Our Mexican Builder assured us that the quality would be up to the standards of the houses he had showed us before. He said he would add a bigger crew to the 3 people that were already there (which we have heard before). He also gave us a new building schedule which shows house completion by February 28, 2014. So it was friendly enough and we left it at that. That same afternoon, we got an email from him saying that he had another proposal for us. He had talked to his electrician, plumber, window guy, carpenter, and said that if we advanced $22,00 to him right away, they would hold their prices low for us. (That is the way he typed it, so I am not sure if that is $2,200 or $22,000). John was so turned off that he didn't even reply. We went to the site a few days later. Still 3 men working. Met with lawyer and then went back to site again. No one there.

We met with Our Mexican Lawyer last week on Wednesday. We hadn't heard anything from him the whole time we were away. He told us that he had investigated Our Mexican Builder to see what assets he had and Our Mexican Builder does not have any assets in his name. The land he owns in Chula Vista Norte is in his daughter's name and the land in San Juan Cosala actually belongs to another guy who Our Mexican Builder is trying to develop a subdivision for and selling lots, but the land is not his. And the restaurant is in someone else's name...

Our Mexican Lawyer feels that if Our Mexican Builder does not receive any money, he will stop working on our house and focus on someone else's project. He suggested baiting Our Mexican Builder. The concept is that we would complete the project over 40 weeks and over that period of time, each week we would pay 2 1/2% of the balance owing and Pedro would complete 2 1/2% of the remaining work. This is on a week by week basis and if at any time the work is not completed, the payments stop. This way, our maximum exposure is only 1 week. This is still a risky proposition because Our Mexican Builder could stop work on the house at any time and then we are stuck with a partially built house that no one will want to buy. One option would be that we would just borrow the money to finish the house with another builder and put it up for sale immediately after, but it depends on how far along we get. Our Mexican Lawyer said that the next step is to draft up another contract and get Our Mexican Builder to sign it so that we have something in writing. We thought about it for a couple of days and then decided to go ahead with it. John emailed Our Mexican Lawyer several times, but he has not responded, which he never does.

As for Our Mexican Builder's cheque, Our Mexican Lawyer was not sure but thought that it was only good legally for a couple of weeks from date of cheque. He said if  Our Mexican Builder knowingly draws up a cheque without adequate funds, it constitutes fraud.

Our Mexican Lawyer sure talks a good fight but apparently it is typical to have to hound everyone here to get anything done. Steve, the gay guy who runs the B&B, said that Our Mexican Lawyer is a good lawyer and he would want him on his side. We have our doubts. We have yet to see any results. So it looks like John is going to phone his secretary for an appointment, and we are going to have to go into Chapala to meet with him, because he is not getting back to us. It is all very frustrating! John does not think that Our Mexican Builder will sign a new contract.

Date: Fri, Sep 27, 2013 at 6:17 PM

The situation with our builder is progressing slowly. Yes, he has closed up the hole in the fence. We had a meeting with him last week. He has hired an American... This was one of the guys whose house we toured several years ago... The American had worked for Our Mexican Builder before, right after we had bought the lot and signed a contract, but they had a falling out because of the financial mess Our Mexican Builder got himself into but he is now back in and will be handling the finances. We told them that we wanted to draw up a new contract which our lawyer is working on, and that is where it sits now. I think Our Mexican Lawyer finally has his head into it and he is looking to come up with something that will protect us and give us some legal leverage without spooking Our Mexican Builder. It is a fine line and we will see if Our Mexican Builder will sign it or not. Yes, refusing to pay him one red cent until he catches up would be the right thing to do, but, like John says, do you want to be right, or do you want to be effective? Our Mexican Lawyer  feels that Our Mexican Builder will give preference to those that he is getting money from, so refusing to pay will just push us down to the bottom of the list or right out the door.

The American will also remain nameless for the same reason I am not naming Our Mexican Builder or Our Mexican Lawyer. I lost trust in him. And we think he may have gone back to the USA as we have not seen him in Lakeside for several years. 

Pat's emails capture our emotions quite well. But they do not reflect how difficult some of my decisions were. I probably sounded more confident to her than I really was. We were also at times getting recommendations from Our Canadian Consultant which were different from what our lawyer was advising. Our Canadian Consultant was well-intentioned but, all things considered, did not help us very much.

Our Mexican Lawyer had a comprehensive strategy with practical, legal and financial dimensions and it sounded convincing. He told us our original contract with Our Mexican Builder was not worth the paper it was printed on. He drafted a new contract which, if signed, would put us in a strong position. We proceeded but at the slow pace of Our Mexican Lawyer. I have one good thing to say about Our Mexican Lawyer. After paying him an initial fee in advance, he never once asked for more money.

Our Mexican Builder had verbally agreed to the terms of a new contract but we were nervous when we presented it to him. I was wrong about him not signing it. He did so without batting an eye. 

We had a new 40 week plan which would start in the new year and we would be working directly mostly with The American. Our Mexican Lawyer assured us we would have recourse if this plan fell apart. We had some hope again as we neared 2014.

At the end of 2013 we received the email below from Our Mexican Builder with an offer to use his condo in Puerto Vallarta in 2014.

January 1, 2014 at 3:05:23 PM CSTRegarding the Weekly Payments i will appreciate if we can Start Year 2014 with the payments every Wednesday, so please in order to make it possible, can you take out the money from the Bank on tuesdays than we can meet every Wednesday early morning around 10 or 11 am!

One more thing, i am not sure if you have all ready plans for Vallarta but Please feel free than let me know when ever you like to travel down there, here i am sending you some of the pictures of one of my Condos!

Mon, Dec 30, 2013, 7:09 AM

John met with Our Mexican Builder this morning and did not give him our weekly payment, because what was promised to be finished at the end of week 3 was not. Our Mexican Builder said it was because they were building the steel columns offsite and would then install them on the site, more efficient. But he said to John that he was absolutely right; the agreement was that this work was to be finished at the site and he agreed with him. He then called his foreman, talked to him in Spanish, and told John that they would be installed at the site tomorrow. He was very pleasant and accommodating about the whole thing, after John had been feeling some anxiety about meeting with him and telling him he wasn't going to pay. He does not like confrontation, but Our Mexican Builder was his usual charming self and took it in stride and even gave John a bottle of red and a bottle of white wine from last night's party at his restaurant. John has been meeting him at his restaurant, which is close to our place, for the payments and he said the floor was covered with streamers and whistles and Our Mexican Builder had hired a couple of young guys to clean up the mess. John is going to be reasonable, but also showed he was not going to be a pushover. The way it stands now is that Our Mexican Builder is going to email John tomorrow when the columns have been installed on site, and will expect payment on Friday, which John will give him after we go to the site and check it out. Another issue John brought up was that The American was supposed to be a part of these meetings, and that we haven't seen him for a few weeks, and why not? Our Mexican Builder always has an answer and said that The American went to Las Vegas...  but that The American will be involved from this point on. All plausible explanations, but who knows how much is bs and how much is the truth. But Our Mexican Builder is always pleasant; it's hard not to like him! And he keeps reminding us that we are welcome to use his condo in Puerto Vallarta.

Date: Mon, Mar 3, 2014 at 9:53 AM

We decided to take Our Mexican Builder up on his offer of staying at his condo in Puerto Vallarta. Goodness knows, he has caused us a lot of grief and we don't feel a bit guilty in accepting a freebie. We came down yesterday.

Date: Sat, Apr 12, 2014 at 5:54 PM

Progress on our house is slow, but at least there is progress. I am enclosing some pictures that we took today when we went to the lot. The walls are a little higher now and they have put in the steel beams for the roof in the back of the house.

 

 

 

Date: Thu, May 15, 2014 at 9:12 PM

Our house is progressing - slowly, but progressing. We went through the house with The American because they are getting ready for doing the electrical work for the parts that are going to be wired down from the roof. The workers are starting to put beams up for the roof in the front part of the house. We were watching them and it was making us cringe. There is no crane and we watched about 5 workers carrying one steel I-beam on their shoulders and hoisting it into place. We watched as another worker cut one steel beam to length, not with a power tool, but manually with a hacksaw. Aye carumba! They did have a power generator there one day for the welder. Because the walls are brick and plaster, the wiring is very different than in Canada, where there are studs. We have been told that after the plaster is on, they then chip away channels for wiring. Backwards to us. One of our friends laughingly refers to this process as "unbuilding". Building and then unbuilding. No such thing as efficiency here!

Date: Sun, Jun 1, 2014 at 2:22 PM

Our house is progressing - an inch at a time. The walls are up. Most of the ceilings are up, except for the big boveda ceiling in the living room, which they have now started on. It is quite the intricate process. They can only do a few rows of bricks at a time. Those rows have to harden before they do the ones next to them. If they did it all at once, the ceiling would collapse. They are starting at the corners and working their way toward the centre and, by some miracle, they have to meet.

May 28, 2014

Our Mexican Builder has shot a ton of pictures and sent them to us, so I am enclosing some of them. One is of the wiring. They actually chip away part of the brick wall and lay the wire in the channel and then they will later plaster over it.

Also enclosed are a couple of pictures of the workers and their lunch. We were on the site a few days ago with Our Mexican Builder. It was time for lunch (they eat around 2:00), so they stacked some wood in a pyramid in our kitchen and lit it on fire. Then they put a round metal sheet on top of the wood and threw some tortillas on and some fish that they caught out of the lake the night before. They probably brought some hot sauce with them; they all had backpacks. Then they squatted down on buckets or whatever and ate. Our Mexican Builder said that if we gave them a new campfire stove, they would not use it but would revert to their traditional way of cooking. Now, that is primitive!

Sat, Jul 12, 2014 at 4:27 PM

The plan for our house this week is to put a sealant on the roof to prevent leaks. We now have a shell of a house. The American took a vacation to the U.S. for 3 weeks and subsequently extended it for another 2. In the meantime, we dealt directly with Our Mexican Builder and met with him a few times on our lot. We had some good discussions and he has plenty of good ideas.

On about the fourth week, Our Mexican Builder said he was going to Puerto Vallarta to an "architects' conference" for about a week. That was the last time we saw him. The American came back and has resumed overseeing the building of our house. He told us that Our Mexican Builder has some serious issues with his son and wouldn't be back until the end of the week (that was last week). John met with him on Friday and  The American said Our Mexican Builder would be back at the end of next week. In the meantime, we have heard rumours from one of our neighbours in San Juan de las Colinas that they heard (from the Chapala Web Board) that Our Mexican Builder is in jail. So I went on the Board and there was a lot of discussion regarding that and several people there confirmed that they had heard the same thing. It was a hot topic and the discussion has since been closed by the moderator. Rumours have a tendency to run rampant on the web board, but where there's smoke ...

We have not mentioned what we have heard to The American. John did tell him, however, that he wants a meeting with Our Mexican Builder as soon as he returns to discuss certain issues. So, we shall see what happens. I wonder if the conference was a smoke screen for a court case. We shall have to wait and see what develops. This thing is not out of the woods by a long shot. John would also like to get the facts. He and I are discussing asking our lawyer in Chapala if he is able to do this on our behalf. It does seem that it was Our Mexican Builder's intention to fulfill his obligations to his customers. However, he will probably not be able to act on those intentions if he is, in fact, in jail. John would also like to know if he is in jail, what has he been charged with? Our lawyer can then advise us on whether or not we should continue any kind of relationship with Our Mexican Builder.

Contingency plans? We now have to consider the possibility that we will not recover our money and that we may have to hire another builder to bring our house to a saleable state and then put it on the market (probably unfurnished). So, the roller coaster of emotions is tipping downwards again, but we are managing to keep the negativity at bay - so far.

The American did tell John that he had advised Our Mexican Builder to declare bankruptcy when the shit hit the fan the first time, but Our Mexican Builder did not want to do it. He said he wanted to make good to his clients. But maybe one, or some of them, were tired of waiting.

I am hoping that these rumours have been embellished, but the truth of the matter is that we have not seen Our Mexican Builder for several weeks. The workers have been working on our house, but progress has slowed.

Sat, Jul 19, 2014 at 1:59 PM

So ... Here are the sequence of Our Mexican Builder in Jail rumours, since we originally heard them. (Incidentally, a lot of ex-pats are rubbing their hands with glee and saying it's about time).

First of all, we went to Guad on Thursday to do some grocery shopping. We go to Mega first and then Costco. They are right beside each other and Mega is owned by Costco. I prefer it, actually, because you can buy individual items, whereas Costco sells most things in bulk or in huge containers. I ran into a former neighbour of ours from La Cristina who knows about our building situation. The first thing she said was, did you hear? I said it is probably all over town. She said she was talking to someone who said that Our Mexican Builder's bail was set at $3 million U.S.! Frankly, I don't know how people find out that kind of detail. Anyway, I thought there goes any money Our Mexican Builder may have - towards his bail.

Then, when we were in Costco, we ran into Tom, our real estate agent who brokered the sale of our lot to us, and with whom we have had dinner with several times. The story he heard was different. He heard that Our Mexican Builder was in San Diego helping out his son. The American had originally told us that Our Mexican Builder was dealing with a serious issue with his son. We have no idea what that is. Apparently the lady who owned the lot that we bought, and who had worked as a real estate agent for Our Mexican Builder for a couple of years and got screwed out of her wages, started a rumour that Our Mexican Builder was in jail. Our Mexican Builder has since found out about this rumour, is furious and is going to retaliate when he returns. We had heard that slander laws in Mexico are very strict. This story doesn't make sense to me. How did she know Our Mexican Builder was going to be away for several weeks? Anyway, she is out for vengeance and has a big mouth.

John tried to make an appointment with our lawyer because we want to know the facts but he was out of town and wasn't available for 2 weeks. So John said forget it for now. His associate is going to try and see if we can get in sooner. We are now considering looking for another lawyer who is not too busy to look after our needs. Anyway, John said he was going to have a face-to-face with The American and see what's what. Before he could email The American, The American emailed him asking for money to do next week's work. The last payment we had made a week ago was less than the usual weekly payment. John told The American that he only wants to pay for the actual work that will be done during the week, because the bigger costs are going to come at the end. So The American was asking for the next week's (reduced) payment, so John made an appointment to meet him at a coffee shop Friday p.m.

So this is The American's story. He said he is not privy to all the details of what is going on. He does not think that Our Mexican Builder is in jail because he has been keeping regular contact with him via text messages and he doesn't think Our Mexican Builder would be able to do that from jail. The American told Our Mexican Builder that he keeps promising to come back and is still not here. The latest now is that Our Mexican Builder will be back on Tuesday. 

So, The American is still on the job, work is still progressing, and we are still making payments. We might as well get this project as far along as we can while we have the chance.

John also addressed the rumours that people had walked away from their house because nothing was happening and The American said it could be true; he doesn't know.

So, right now, again ... We will see. I hope for our sake, and Our Mexican Builder's, that he is not in jail. At any rate, his reputation, which he thought he could rebuild, has taken another beating. He may never recover.

Date: August 17, 2014 at 3:26:34 PM CDT - This was my email to my sister -in-law, Linda Goodsir

Everything moves forward more slowly in Mexico. Our lawyer promised us answers in about two weeks so we shall see. We will also consider walking away from our situation with Our Mexican Builder unless there is a good chance of successful legal action. It is too soon to know which way to go.

Our lawyer advised us not to sign a new construction contract yet. We need an accredited appraisal first that is appropriate for legal action. Also we do not know if Our Mexican Builder got a proper building permit. We will deal with these issues before we start over with a new contractor.

And we will need a mortgage, not part of our original plan. I have had a couple of good meetings with a mortgage broker and one meeting with an investor. He liked our property which is encouraging. This option looks good but until a deal is done there is always some uncertainty.

We have had meetings with two builders which also were both quite good. But it will not be a quick process. They want construction blueprints which we are trying to get from The American. But since we are not flowing any more funds in that direction I am not optimistic. We may need to start over completely, including new drawings which are appropriately registered in Chapala.

Another challenge we face is managing our own wish list. The builders we talked to have their own good ideas. One encouraged us to make the front terrace bigger. He thought our design had the terrace too small for the size of the property. We agree but of course we have to live within our resources as well.

Most difficult for me is coping with the uncertainty. Pat and I both want to finish the house the way we want and live in it for 3 to 5 years and than re-evaluate our options. Until we get estimates to complete construction we cannot be sure we can afford our dreams. We hope so and we think so but we will not know for sure for who knows how many weeks.

Date: Sun, Aug 17, 2014 at 5:11 PM

Yes, our lawyer did do a check previously on Our Mexican Builder's assets, but I think it was just a cursory check as the motivation was to create a new agreement, not to sue. He did tell us in our last meeting that he had talked to a lawyer friend of his after our first few meetings and this friend said that Our Mexican Builder owned some land in Guad, so he is going to see if it is still in his name and, if so, will put a lien on it. But John and I do not expect that we will recover any of our lost money, and if we do, we will consider it a bonus.

The American said he will try and get the blueprints for us. And guess what - Our Mexican Builder is expected back this weekend (same story for two months now)! We think that he has been trying to raise bail all this time and is having a helluva time doing so, since nothing is in his name! It's come back to bite him in the ass. And if he does get out, he will have no money left to do anything. I don't think he will ever recover from this. He will have to leave the area as I am sure no one will ever do business with him again. His restaurant has been rebranded as Las Calandrias. We drive by it all the time and there are hardly any customers, so it will probably fail.

Of the three potential builders we have talked with, John and I have the same feelings about each of them and agree on which one we like best, but we still have to talk to one more, and we have to see some of the houses they have built.

Date: Tue, Sep 30, 2014 at 3:34 PM

Well, as soon as I checked my email, there was one from Our Mexican Builder. He sent it last night. It was written in poor English (it sounded quite funny reading it) and it was clear that he was angry when he was composing it. It was full of capital letters but he wanted us to know the TRUTH about the very personal problem he has been dealing with. It sounded like he had just gotten out of jail. The email was somewhat confusing but here is the gist of it.

Yes, he was in jail. He knew that we knew so The American must have told him something. Our Mexican Builder received an Order of Apprehension which means an order from the Nayarit Court to take him and put him in jail. He said that the third party who instigated this and the local judge were 100% full of CORRUPTION and that the charges of fraud were completely FALSE. He contacted his lawyer who had to go above the local court to the Federal Court to submit his defense arguments. He claims they won in Federal Court and the final decision declared him innocent. He is now going to sue these people for moral and economic damage.

He says he didn't contact us because he didn't want to make us uncomfortable with his personal problems or have us worry about our business relationship. (!!!). He said he hoped The American had been honest in telling us what was going on. (He wasn't. He told us Our Mexican Builder was in San Diego dealing with a personal problem with his son.) 

He claims he had the option to make a bond deposit on the first day and then fight these allegations from the outside, but it was HIS DECISION not to do so, because he was innocent and decided to wait until the process ran its due course until he received the official document of innocence to take back with him to Ajijic, which he now has. 

He has hired a professional firm from GDL who are experts on cybernetic investigation, whatever that is, and they will be determining the source of all these rumours of fraud and GARBAGE that he has been accused of. They already have 7 names who are guilty of this "first hand" but they say they have to have at least 14 more names which become "second hand" and Our Mexican Builder says he will take all these people to court. Sounds very confusing.

Our Mexican Builder says he needs a few days in GDL to see a doctor and then get his head back into the real world. And he thanked us for our support!

We don't know how much of this is BS. We are beyond the point where we believe anything he says. Our Mexican Builder knows how to tell a story. John is not planning on answering this email right away and will wait until he contacts us again. We suspect he will tell us he is ready to start the job on such and such a day and that he will have workers on site and that they will be working on blah, blah, blah. And that he is going to want the next weekly payment.

John is going to try and find someone this week to clear out the weeds on our property.

His plan at this point is to sit down with Our Mexican Builder and remind him that he had problems before this latest debacle, that he has taken money from us and others and not delivered. He is going to ask for the money that Our Mexican Builder owes us and then offer to make the weekly payments from the money he has in hand. He is going to tell him that trust works both ways, and why should we be the ones doing all the trusting. We are presuming that Our Mexican Builder does not have the money to give us so then we can extricate ourselves from this situation. But if he does call John's bluff, that will be unexpected, however it is unlikely.

The fact is that we have lost confidence in him and The American and just don't want to deal with them anymore. And is anyone who is any good want to work for Our Mexican Builder? His track record of paying his workers has been very poor. Sure, he can get a truckload of workers from GDL who will do a slip-shoddy job. Who wants that?

We have an appointment with one lawyer on October 7 and we have received no communication from the other one, so we don't know if a building plan was ever filed or a permit ever issued, so we will probably have to light a fire under them. Lots of fun!

A lot of news on our first day back. Will keep you informed as the Stokdijk building saga unfolds.

Date: Sat, Oct 18, 2014 at 5:05 PM

John hired a guy to clean up the weeds on our lot and his crew did a nice job. They also discovered several marijuana plants on the adjacent lot.

On October 7, we met our lawyer. He found some property in Our Mexican Builder's name. Some of them had liens on them. There was one big property that had a partial lien on it and Our Mexican Lawyer was going to put another lien on it. He wants to argue in court that Our Mexican Builder abandoned our job and is going to ask for the money we are out of pocket plus damages. We have had extra expenses that we had not anticipated because of all of Our Mexican Builder's delays, such as all these months of paying rent, hiring someone to clean our property because of all the weeds that had grown on it during the summer, not to mention all the anxiety he has caused us. Our Mexican Lawyer said he would sue Our Mexican Builder on a contingency basis and will take 25% of whatever he recovers, which was much lower than John expected. So we may even get some money back, who knows? I would consider that a bonus at this stage because we thought the money was gone for good. However, I don't know how he will prove that Our Mexican Builder abandoned the job, when it is clear he wants to continue it (more on that below). Our Mexican Lawyer provided us with an engineer, who has to be properly certified and have the credentials to hold up as an expert witness in court, to do up a report on what percentage of the job has been completed. Apparently not just any engineer will do. So he did a preliminary walk-through and is going go come back and go through our house again in more detail and do a report. And that will probably take forever!

We met with Our Mexican Builder at the beginning of the week. He said he was shocked when he learned that no work had been done on our house for over three months. He assumed everything was fine and was perplexed why we didn't email him and ask why there were no workers on our lot. John told him that we had continued to make payments to The American for a few weeks after he disappeared but that the work being done was less than what was on our building schedule. The work was falling behind and our payments were ahead and John told The American that we were not going to make any more payments. The American told us that he did not have access to Our Mexican Builder's funds and that the workers would not show up for work on Monday (this was a Friday). So Our Mexican Builder again asked us why we didn't email him. John said it was his responsibility to keep in touch, not ours. I then said why would we email him when we already knew there were no workers on site. I should have mentioned, but didn't think of it until later, that since he was in jail, we assumed he had no access to email. So then Our Mexican Builder apologized profusely... He then said our job was his first priority. He asked for another meeting at our lot, which John did today. I didn't go because I don't like unpleasantness. John had asked him to give us an accounting of where we were on the schedule, both payment-wise and work-wise. Our Mexican Builder thought we had paid up to week 25. John's records show we had paid up to week 25, which agreed to The American's records. Our Mexican Builder then said he would like to get the work going again and then had the GALL to ask for next week's payment. He said we could pay the first half of each weekly payment for the rest of the construction contract and pay the second half when we were satisfied at the end when the project is finished, as sort of a guarantee. John finally told him that he was not going to make any more payments until the work was caught up and we received the signed and stamped drawings, which we asked for several times since December and which were never given to us.

John and Our Mexican Builder have been emailing each other this afternoon. John asked him not to proceed on construction. Our Mexican Builder emailed, what do you mean? John told him that he wants this job to be done legally and that he needs those stamped drawings first. John reminded him that 47 weeks have passed since we signed our new agreement and our house is still only half completed.

John then sent an urgent email to Our Mexican Lawyer and outlined what Our Mexican Builder had said and asked how we should proceed - because Our Mexican Lawyer had told us not to fire Our Mexican Builder, but John is wondering how we stop him from continuing construction on our house without firing him. He marked this email URGENT but we expect we won't hear back from him, because that is his pattern, so we may just have to go ahead and fire Our Mexican Builder, which will destroy the whole issue of abandonment.

So this is a stinky kettle of fish that we are dealing with now. I, personally, would prefer that we just be upfront with Pedro, tell him that we have lost confidence in him and want to go with another builder. But we know he won't just hand over the money he owes us.

So that's the way it stands now. In the meantime, we continue to walk every day and make the best of it.

Say hi to Mother. We will keep you apprised of the developments as they unfold.

Date: Sun, Oct 26, 2014 at 2:56 PM

Now, on about Our Mexican Builder. Without going into too much detail, John and Our Mexican Builder emailed back and forth and met a few more times. John finally told him that as far as he was concerned, he had abandoned our project twice and that we would no longer be doing business with him. This was against our lawyer's advice. He did not want us to meet with Our Mexican Builder (because it was like collaborating with the enemy), but John wanted to put an end to our discussions, because he had every intention of continuing on with our project. We did not want him to bring workers onto our lot, so we had to put an end to it. Our Mexican Builder, surprisingly, said he understood. He apologized, said he has no cash, but has $8 million US worth in land, which he will work toward selling in the next couple of years and cleaning up his financial mess, and will come back stronger than ever! You gotta admire his optimism! So, it was a very civil parting of ways - no animosity or bitterness. In fact, when we walked by his restaurant a few days later, he waved to us in a friendly manner as if nothing had happened. So when we sue him, if he expresses his disappointment in us, John will say that, yes, we are suing him, but there is no reason we can't remain friends!

So, once we receive the engineer's assessment, and a building permit, we will be looking for another builder. We have already talked to several that expressed interest in taking over the job and we keep getting more names to check out...

Meanwhile, we sit and wait. I suppose that we will have to contact our lawyer and ask how the assessment is going. As usual, he won't get back to us for weeks and this will drag on and on.

Date: Wed, Nov 5, 2014 at 5:03 PM

Well, we have cut our ties with Our Mexican Builder. We are now trying to get a building permit. One of the potential builders we had talked to, and who we liked, Rudy, is helping us with that. We finally were able to get our building plans from Our Mexican Builder, not stamped and finalized, as he had never applied for a building permit, because that meant he would have to pay his workers health insurance and whatnot. So that saves us from an additional expense to have an engineer draw up a new set of plans. We have given these plans to Rudy who will now see to getting us a building permit. Rudy is a nice guy and said he will help with this step whether or not we hire him as a builder. He did submit a preliminary rough and undetailed quote if he was to take on our project and we found it to be high. We are going to get a quote from another builder...

We are still waiting for the engineer's report detailing what percentage of the job Our Mexican Builder had completed. We are going to the lawyer's office tomorrow to sign off on the lawsuit against Our Mexican Builder (Our Mexican Lawyer won't be there). John will enquire about the engineer's report, but we don't expect that his assistant will know much about what stage that is at.

Sat, Dec 6, 2014 at 12:06 PM

Which brings us to THE HOUSE. We have been talking to two builders that were recommended to us who we both like. People have been giving us more more names of good builders, but we like these two and don't want to add more confusion as it is going to be hard to say no to one of these two. We have seen a couple of houses of one of these builders, Jesus (pronounced Hay-soos) and also talked to a lady whose house is in the process of being finished. She is one of Our Mexican Builder's victims. All these three were very pleased with Jesus. We still need to see some houses of the other builder, Rudy, who the boys recommended. Rudy has been helping us get a building permit. He knows a guy, Paco, who works at the Chapala office where they approve the permits. Paco felt it would be better to redraw the house plans and submit them as if they were brand new, thus eliminating all the penalties we would have been subject to because of Our Mexican Builder's neglect. We looked at the drafts yesterday. There are a few minor changes to make, then we need to get them signed by our condominium association, hopefully Monday morning, and then Paco can submit them and get them approved before the office closes for Xmas.

We have heard nothing from Our Mexican Lawyer. We sent him two emails which he is ignoring. He told us not to start building until the court official and engineer complete their assessment so that we don't contaminate the evidence. But that was weeks ago, and we want to get on with the building early next year, so John is going to inform Our Mexican Lawyer, probably thru email, that we are going to go ahead with the building, since that is a higher priority to us than the lawsuit. So if he wants to sue and get his cut, he is going to have to move fast.

We have also noticed that Our Mexican Builder has disappeared again. We don't see him at the restaurant anymore. Earlier rumours had said that there was a court case in November, but Our Mexican Builder gave us the whole story about being exonerated, but maybe he just paid the bail and the court case was still going to be held. And maybe he got thrown in jail again. This is just speculation on our part, of course, because who knows what part of his story is true, if any. But there is no sign of him in these parts now. Whenever we mention Our Mexican Builder to anyone, they all ask us if we saw his ad and just shake their heads at the cojones (balls) that man has.

Date: Tue, Dec 16, 2014 at 6:12 PM

We are leaving for Mexico City on Sunday for 9 days and returning Monday, Dec. 29. We are really looking forward to it. We received our itinerary on Friday and will be quite busy during the day seeing a lot of landmarks... 

Our house situation continues in a state of inaction. We talked with some people who have lived here for 7 years and have had business dealings with lawyers and they say that this is typical behavior of most lawyers here and that you have to be on their case constantly in order to get any sort of result. Since building a house is greater priority to us than suing Our Mexican Builder, John sent the lawyer an email on Monday of last week saying that it is very hard for us to plan our future when we get no progress reports on what, if anything, has been done and that if we did not hear from him by the end of the week, we are going to assume that he has lost interest in pursuing the case against Our Mexican Builder and that we were going to restart construction as we are anxious to get on with our lives. Well, we received no response from him until Friday night. He apologized and said he was out of the country, and that it has been a complicated time for him and blah, blah, blah. He again mentioned that it is important that we do not start construction until a person from the courts and an engineer complete an assessment. So he just squeaked in under the wire sending us that email at the very last minute and from the tone of his email, it did not appear that the documents had been filed with the courts yet, even though we were told at the beginning of November that they would be filed within a few days. I feel like strangling the guy. I told John that this will drag on for a couple more months. We are getting pretty worn out by this. John replied Monday morning and said, let's meet. It is Tuesday evening and he has not replied, so John said he is just going to let it slide; he is not going to chase after him any more and we will go ahead with the construction in January. We still have not seen Our Mexican Builder for several weeks already and nobody is gossiping about it, so we don't know if he is in jail or what is going on.

So that is the state of affairs now and we are looking forward to forgetting about it for 9 days.

Date: Sat, Jan 10, 2015 at 2:31 PM

We have not heard back from our lawyer after John sent him the "let's meet" email. Hell with him, we are not going to chase him anymore. We have 2 good prospects for builders and could choose either one. For various reasons, we will probably go with Jesus. We are going on recommendations and have seen some of his work - the same as we did with Our Mexican Builder. Hope this time it turns out better. The other builder, Rudy, has been helping us with getting the building permit. He knows a guy, Paco, who works at the Chapala land office and he was able to finally get a permit for us and saved us $30,000 pesos in penalties, or so they say. But it rings true, because Jesus told us we would probably have to pay $60,000 pesos in penalties. However, get this, the house number they assigned us was #12. That is Glenda's house number. She owns the house next to the 2 empty lots on the right side of our lot. The boys' house number is 10. So that leaves 11, but that number will probably be reserved for the other side of the street, since it is an odd number. So what are we left with? Probably something like 10A, which sounds like an apartment or something. So we took the papers back to Rudy's assistant, who is going to give them back to Paco so that we can get another number. Ayeyiyi! So typical!

We got back from Mexico City on Monday, Dec. 29 and John went to see his doctor... It turns out that John had 2 hernias - inguinal (inner groin) and umbilical (belly button)... As soon as John feels up to it, we are going to hire our builder so we can get this construction going again.

At last, after months of inactivity, we were ready to move forward with construction. The house was at the roughed in electrical stage when we finally cut ties with Our Mexican Builder. As advised by Our Mexican Lawyer, we took many pictures to document this point in time.

 

 

Date: Wed, Jan 28, 2015 at 5:17 PM

Construction on our house has started. We have hired Jesus and we met with him at the site last Tuesday for 2 hours to go over the electrical. Our neighbour, Glenda, is thrilled that we picked him. She was the one who recommended him and she even went to his wedding. He does not speak much English, but his sister translates for him. We went by the lot on Friday and there had been no work started yet, but we received an email from Glenda yesterday who said there are workers on site using "real" jackhammers and bulldozers. We had mentioned to Jesus that we wanted the termite treatment. He said that he did not think there was a termite problem in that area, but that it would cost 14,000 to 16,000 pesos if we wanted to do it. John subsequently sent  an email to two of our neighbours, Wayne and Glenda, and asked them if they knew of anyone on our street that had problems with termites, and they both said yes. So John sent an email to Liliana, Jesus' sister, and asked that they go ahead with the treatment. She replied and said that the exterminators confirmed there had been problems in that area with termites, but, really, would they say anything else?

Date: Sun, Feb 8, 2015 at 5:37 PM

We have been to our lot a few times since Jesus started building and it is nice, after seeing rubble for three years, that now our house is beginning to take shape and I am starting to feel a few twinges of excitement. If we can pull off what we envision, it will be a nice house. But our new neighbourhood will not be as quiet as La Reserva. We were on the lot yesterday, and could clearly hear our neighbours. They have several dogs who are always yapping. Richard told us that there is friction between our new neighbours and the neighbours next to them, who also have yapping dogs. He was kind of chortling about that and said, "what goes around comes around". Apparently, their yapping dogs bothered the boys, so now they have to deal with the additional yapping dogs of their new neighbours.

Our house is going to be cool, which will be nice in the hot season, but it will certainly need a fireplace and some heaters during the winter season. The estimate is about 5 months to completion, but I would add at least another month to that, so it should just about be finished when our lease expires. Georgina said that she is sure we can get a monthly extension if we needed it.

The termite treatment involves injecting a poison into the ground before the subfloor is poured, and that has been done.

We have not heard anything from our lawyer since we requested a meeting, so we are not bothering with him anymore. I took pictures of our property before Jesus started working on it, so we at least have something if our lawyer decides a year from now when business is slow that maybe he should look us up.

The building permit is still sitting on some bureaucrat's desk in the Chapala municipal office because they don't know what to do with the house number!!!

John made up an invoice of the money that Our Mexican Builder owes us and requested a meeting with him. He felt that he should take that final step so that Our Mexican Builder would know that what he did is not OK with us and what we think he owes us. The meeting did not take place because Our Mexican Builder had an emergency and they agreed to meet the following day. I did not go, but John said that the meeting was very friendly, as always. The emergency was that Our Mexican Builder's 95 year old mother died. She had been very healthy until about 4 months ago when she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and then went very quickly. John used that topic of discussion to say to Our Mexican Builder that he also has an elderly mother that he wants to visit but with the money he has lost may not be able to and that he had promised to take me to Paris and that he couldn't do that either.

Our Mexican Builder went through the invoice item by item and couldn't disagree with anything. In addition to the money we fronted him, John added on the extra we paid for the back terrace, the cost of the building permit, new plans and penalty, our rent since the Feb 2013 completion date of 24 months and the cost of storage of our belongings for 2 years, all coming to a total of about $$$. Please don't share this amount with anyone else, because we don't want everyone to know how big our stupid mistake was. And Our Mexican Builder agreed and said HE WILL MAKE UP A PLAN!

Ha! Ha! When John told me about this, we laughed, because what else can you do. And we will continue to wave at him when he drives by. At one point, John wanted to beat him up with a baseball bat but the anger is now gone. Our Mexican Builder would make a fascinating case study on sociopathic behaviour. Experts say that people like that lack the capacity for empathy and have to pretend to have it because they know they should.

A couple of weeks ago, we went to take a look at a house that Jesus was finishing up on another one of Our Mexican Builder's messes and were impressed with what he had done. There were some very nice touches such as an indoor water feature, boveda ceiling in the hallway, nice utilization of the  corner in the kitchen cabinets, the stone walk leading to the house. There were also things that John and I did not care for but that is personal style. The house was very white, which I think is the absolute worst color to have in Mexico. But to each his own.

Date: Sat, Feb 28, 2015 at 5:26 PM

The construction site is a beehive of activity and we have now regained our excitement and have ideas of what we want and if the end result is what we envision, it will be a very nice house. Our builder, Jesus, does not speak much English and his sister, Liliana, translates for him. It is working well. We are making weekly payments for time and materials and every Friday, Liliana goes over the invoice line by line explaining what they did that week and what materials they bought. Jesus then adds 10% for his fees to manage the project.

A couple of weeks ago, we met on site to discuss where every light switch and every plug-in goes. We have never been so involved with that type of detail. It is exhausting and I know that once everything is done and we have moved in, we will say, "We should have done this." "We should have done that." "Why did we do that? What were we thinking?"

This week, John and I have been busy drawing out the diagrams for the various closets we want. On Tuesday we met with Jesus, Liliana and the carpenter on site to discuss our built-in cabinets in the bedrooms and bathrooms. It was a productive session and we appreciate when Jesus makes suggestions. There are so many details to think of.

Jesus and Liliana took us into Guad on Wednesday to pick out our sinks, toilets, faucets, shower heads, floor tiles and shower tiles. I had definite ideas about what I wanted and had a bit of a panic when I couldn't see the floor tiles I wanted from the samples on display. I had resigned myself to selecting a substitute which I didn't like as much only to discover in a different part of the store a display set up with the EXACT tiles I had envisioned. What a thrill that was! John and I made all these selections in only 2 hours, much to my amazement. Liliana told us that we were easy customers. She said sometimes their clients take a whole day and then are mad at each other because they can't agree, so that was nice to hear. John and I are lucky that we have similar tastes. Needless to say, this week's bill was a whopper! If things continue on course, we should be able to move into our house by the time our rental lease expires on August 4. From the time we initially bought our lot to the time we move in will be about 4 YEARS! It has been quite a journey! We will have to figure out later if we can afford to live in our house.

Next week, we will be meeting on site to discuss the kitchen cabinets and my walk-in closet. John is going to be checking out glass bead fireplaces online because we will have to import one from the U.S. We will also probably go to Tio Sam's, an appliance store in Ajijic, to see what is available. A lot of people here have bought their appliances there and are pleased with them. I am suspending my Spanish lessons for a couple of weeks because we are just too busy with house stuff. It's a lot of fun.

Date: Wed, May 6, 2015 at 7:02 PM

Yes, we finally got a house number. They gave us #11, which is what we were hoping for. There are two empty lots between 11 and 12, so who knows what they will be if they ever get developed. I don't know if I told you that we were driving by some houses and there was a 36 1/2 beside a 29A. Ah, Mexico! You gotta love it!

And now to Our Mexican Builder. Several weeks ago, we got an email from Our Mexican Builder requesting a meeting. We were curious and said yes. We expected nothing but did speculate on what he could want. Did he sell some land and decide to pay us back first?

Well, did he have a deal for us. He contacted us first because we have been so nice to him and he likes us (translation - they're easy marks). He said we were the first of four couples that he was offering this opportunity to. He has identified a niche market for Tapatios (this is what they call people from Guad who come to Ajijic for the weekends). Apparently, they are having a hard time finding places to stay. The hotels and B&Bs are full and they end up driving back to Guad at night. Pedro is on the verge if getting a loan from the bank (how can that man get a loan?) and he is planning on building a 12-unit condo complex close to a strip of seafood restaurants that the Guadalajarans love. He will give 1 condo to each of the 4 couples for us to rent out on the weekends and the other 8 will be his. He was addressing most of these comments to me because the woman is the hardest to convince. I managed to maintain a neutral expression but was sitting there thinking, "over my dead body". When he finished, we very politely told him we would think about it. He told us where his land was located and invited us to take a look at it. We walk by it all the time and went to take a look at it next time we walked by, just so we could tell him we took a look at it. A week later John sent back an email saying that there may be a need for a development of that kind but we did not want to own any more property and just wanted to finish paying for the one we had. John closed by making reference to a payment plan from him.

What a delusional con man! To have the balls to try and do another business deal with us and then to think that we actually would!

I will send you another email in a day or two and give you the details of our house. In the meantime, I am enclosing a couple of pictures. The first is a picture of the aluminum doors at the side - one is for the side entry into the house and the other is a storage area for the hot water heater. I got this design off the Internet, gave it to them, and they copied it. The outside walls are in a taupe color called Dusty Canyon. It turned out lighter than I expected, even though it matched the color on the swatch. It is surprising that the effect on a full wall can be quite different from the one on a little square. I still like it though. The second one is of the back terrace, which is turning out way better than we had envisioned. The tiles are very dusty so their true colors don't show. The back wall looks quite orange in the picture, but it is the color of pumpkin pie.

Date: Sat, May 9, 2015 at 4:04 PM

Last week we took a trip with an expat, who advertises this service, and his Mexican wife to Ocotlan, which is the area of furniture factories about an hour away, for a preliminary look to see what they have to offer. We visited about 7 or 8 showrooms. We were looking mainly for sofas and dining room tables and found some possibilities. You have to sit on the sofas because so many of them here in Mexico are uncomfortable. The ones we have here in the rental unit are too long in the seat area, which is weird as the average Mexican is shorter than the average gringo. John does not want leather as it sticks to the skin. I like the look of it, but kind of agree with him. Maybe we can find something made out of both materials - leather on the outside and fabric on the seating and back area. Or all fabric. There are a lot of choices. We hear that these showrooms will customize things for you if you ask. We will just have to see. I am obsessed with gray lately.

On Tuesday, we went with our builder to Guadalajara to pick out more stuff - the slide-out shelves for the kitchen cabinets and a couple of slide-outs for the master closet. The pantry was the hardest to sort out. We had calculated all the measurements of the shelves that we wanted, but the supply in the store did not necessarily have the configuration we had planned, so we had to adjust things a bit, but we got it done. And then at the house, we watched as the builder discussed the kitchen cabinets and counters with his subtrades, and they drew the outlines on the painted walls! We also picked out the granite for the kitchen and the marble for the bathrooms. The marble is a very close replica of our gray slate tiles and we picked those out right away. The granite was a little harder to choose. There were tons of selections and I didn't see exactly what I had envisioned, but we picked out a nice one. There were actually many that I liked if I would have had a different color scheme. Some were quite dramatic. There was even a beautiful rose colored one that would have been lovely in our Capitol Hill home. We are going to have some luxurious touches in this house that we would never be able to afford in Calgary.

The custom cabinets for the bathrooms, both bedrooms, den, my computer station, and part of the laundry room are almost completely installed. They do them offsite and then bring them in and install them. What is left are the kitchen cabinets, master closet and the bank of shallow drawers for my jewellery in the bathroom and a few shelves.

The front door is beautiful - work of art inspired by a picture off the Internet.

We will be going to the house later today. Our builder said that the bathroom mirrors and glass shower doors will be in so we are looking forward to that. The perimeter wall to the east has been built to the street, not plastered yet. Next week we will get the railing on the terrace and stairs and the toilets will be in. Everything, with the exception of the back terrace and John's den, has a very modern feel to it. Well, the den is modern, except for the blinding mango color on the walls. The tile in the showers is gray and goes very well with the floors. I thought when they first opened the package, which was very dusty, and before they put it up that it looked boring, but now that it is up and cleaned off, it looks nice. Both the ensuites off the bedrooms have two sinks. We have never had two sinks before. I hope I won't regret that decision when I am cleaning house. The broom and linen closets are in the master bedroom because we had no other place to put them. The house has turned out to be bigger with the walls up than it felt when it was just chalk lines on the ground. Not counting the two terraces, it is about 2,314 square feet. Our house in Calgary was 1,917. We have one less room in this house and no staircase to take up space, so it feels quite roomy.

There will be a huge storage area under the terrace at the front for garden tools, water treatment and softener and miscellaneous storage.

There are five skylights, but they are small and not vented. The sun doesn't beat down through them the way it does in La Reserva. Now with the weather so hot, the upstairs bathroom in our rental is like a sauna and so is the stairwell. I think people like us from cold climates are enraptured at first with all the skylights here because of all the daylight it brings into the house, but after having experienced it, I would rather have a cool, dark house.

The fireplace still needs to be put in. We still haven't contracted out the stained glass and the metal work above it. Don't know when we are going to do that.

There are tons of pot lights throughout the house. I hope that we can put in solar eventually because that is a lot of electricity!

I am attaching some more pictures. The first is the crew drawing on the wall in the kitchen. Jesus is the stocky guy on the left. The second is our front door. The third is a picture of the style of railing that we want. It is sleek and modern with wire cables under the handrail that will not obstruct the view too much. The fourth is the granite and the fifth is the marble. I will probably take some more pictures this afternoon, and if there is anything of interest, I will send them to you. I hope this isn't too much information, but I can't contain myself. I have verbal diarrhea; I am so excited!

Date: Wed, May 13, 2015 at 11:33 AM

On Monday we met with our builder at the house and he had some samples of the kitchen cabinets. I had requested a gray stain. The sample I picked had a light gray wash over the wood, with the taupe color of the wood showing underneath, and I thought it was a nice blend of taupe and gray and we picked it. It was not as gray as I had originally envisioned but I had John hold it against the wall and I thought it looked good. So the carpenters are now working on the kitchen cabinets as is the guy who works on the marble and granite, so when that is all in, it will be a big change.

At the end of May there is a furniture expo in a hotel here, so we are excited and hope to find something we like or at least get some contacts. I hope it's not all Mexicano rustico.

I have enclosed some more pictures.  The first one is another shot of the den with the cupboards installed.  John made a mistake. The shelves for his books are not high enough. Oh well. These things happen. We are not going to ask them to change it.

The second is what our interior doors will look like.

Date: Sun, Jul 5, 2015 at 5:10 PM

We have not seen Our Mexican Builder around for quite some time and just heard lately that he is in jail again - this time federal prison, which is much more serious than state. I wonder who put him there. I googled him but could not get any information at all on that. Our builder, Jesus, did a job before ours completing the construction of another client of Our Mexican Builder's and we went to look at their house before we hired him. At that time, they mentioned that there was a group of expats that was working with a lawyer from Guad on their behalf who had close ties to the governor, so we are wondering if this incarceration is the result of that collaboration, or if it was another Mexican. I don't think Our Mexican Builder is going to rebound from this one and we have no hope of ever recovering anything from him. Our Mexican Builder was a little further along on this couple's house than on ours and Jesus had to redo all the electrical wiring. I am sure that, with all his financial difficulties, Our Mexican Builder would have cut corners with us as much as he could and would have treated everything as an upgrade and charged us extra, so I am very glad we dumped him. We had not heard of Jesus at the time we hired Our Mexican Builder, but we are very pleased with what he has done for us.

I am aware of all the little imperfections in our house but, despite that, I feel that the overall outcome has turned out better than expected. We didn't have much of an idea for the back patio area of the house, but it has turned out quite nice and we will now be getting some furniture for it.

Like I expected, they did not finish the house by the end of June. There were just too many things outstanding but they are now working on the finishing touches and we will start moving our stuff in gradually over the next few weeks. I will start packing this week.

My iPad has been an invaluable tool in this whole process. I did a lot of research on the Internet for ideas, and would take it with me every time we met with Jesus. When he would ask how we wanted something done or what style we wanted, I would just whip out my iPad and show him my ideas. They were able to duplicate most things, but not everything. I had wanted a stainless steel surround around the fireplace, but for some reason, the Mexicans don't do much work in stainless steel. So I had to be flexible and accept another alternative. But for the most part, they were able to duplicate my ideas. The main front door, the side door, the garage doors, the look of the kitchen, certain parts of the built-ins, the metal railings around the terrace and the water feature were all ideas that I showed them on my iPad.

Right now, they are working on the finishing touches in the kitchen. All of the stainless steel appliances are in, the fireplace box has been built and is waiting for the burner to be installed, the moulding and the lights around the boveda ceiling are now done, the water heater, water pressure system and water purification system have been installed. This week, a guy is coming down from Guad to install our water softener. He is a Kinetico dealer, which was the same brand we had in Calgary which we were very pleased with, so I hope that we can make it work here. (This is Mexico, so you never know!) They will also be installing the cabinet hardware this week - the towel bars, toilet paper holders, clothes hooks, and the rest of the drawer pulls for the cabinets. As well, the metal doors to the storage area will be added this week. We told Jesus that anything that still needs to be done outside can be finished after we move in. We still need a staircase built in the back so that we can get to the roof. (It will be John's job to clean the skylights.) There is no way to get to the roof in our rental unit, so a person would have to hire someone to clean the skylights and the windows in the cupola, and by the look of some of them, they are never cleaned.

The carport is almost finished, the alarm system is in, although not functioning yet, and the perimeter wall has been built. They have started working on the water feature. We did not know what we were going to do there until just lately when I came across some modern ideas on the Internet. It will not be the old fashioned wedding cake tiered fountain. I will send you a picture once it is finished. The walkway is just being finished. We still need to do some landscaping. Jesus said he will help, but I am not sure how much he will do. The carpenter is working on our beds now. We bought the mattresses and they are in the house wrapped in plastic. The carpenter wanted us to buy them first so that he could build the exact size of platform for the bed. He is also making the end tables and the headboard - two sets. We went for a platform bed instead of box springs, because I am tired of struggling with a bedskirt when I am making the bed, and with a wooden platform, you don't need to cover it with anything. With all of the customized cabinets in our house, we have been keeping the carpenter busy the whole time since he started. You asked what type of wood he uses. A variety. He uses a type of pressed board for the inside of the cabinets, which looks better than the stuff we have in Canada. The doors for the cabinets are made of a higher quality. They told us what it was, but I don't remember anymore. The outside main door is a type of rosewood. That may also be the type they use on the cabinet doors. The other option was pine but we went with the better one. Even the pine here looks different from what they use in Canada.

Sometime this week we will go with Jesus to Guad to pick out our light fixtures. All the pot lights are in, but there are certain areas where we need fixtures, both inside and outside the house.

The whole house is stone, from the slate floors to the granite and marble counters everywhere, and the stone tile showers, creating a real echo chamber when John and I talk. It has quite an elegant feel to it. We would never have been able to afford anything like this in Calgary. I feel that there is enough natural light for me. In fact, I kind of like walking into a cool dark house on a hot day. I didn't realize how much I did not like all that light until we rented that unit in La Cristina when we first came down. It was a small place with 8 skylights and it felt like all the lights had been turned on every time you walked in. When the sun blasted in through those skylights, the place was like a sauna. Even in our rental unit now in La Reserva, there is a period of day where the sun pierces through the two big skylights we have and I don't even want to sit on the toilet upstairs for part of the day because the sun is shining right on the toilet seat. So, natural light is overrated in my opinion.

The front terrace has been expanded from our original idea to about twice its size. One half is under the roof, and the rest is in the open, with a storage area underneath it.

We have decided to go solar, so we are getting quotes now. We have a lot of lights in the house and electricity is expensive.

Jesus said he would provide a name for us to contact regarding the stained glass and we were pleased when he gave us the same guy that we had talked to earlier in the year when you were here. He is working on it now and will call us when he has a design. I gave him the one I had on the iPad and he will use that one for ideas. It won't be exact, because he doesn't want to copy, which is what I expected.

We also put a deposit on a couple of couches. We took a drive out to Ocotlan, where the furniture factories are. The first two times were scouting expeditions. We made our selections the third time we went. I am attaching pictures which were taken in the store. The gray ones are for the living room: the brownish one, which looks like leather but is not, is for the den. We did not go with leather. I like the look of it, but John didn't want it because it doesn't breathe. They said it will take 4 - 6 weeks for delivery. We may go back to Ocotlan for a fourth time and pick out a wall mirror. We also put a deposit in a furniture store in San Antonio Tlayacapan, which is the next little village east of Ajijic, on a marble coffee table and matching end table as well as 6 dining chairs. We went back a few days later and added a couple of rattan chairs and a rattan table for the back patio to the order, which will all be delivered when we give the go-ahead.

We also saw some outdoor furniture for the front terrace which we liked at Costco, so we will be ordering it later on at the same time we buy our TVs. It is not easy to find nice outdoor furniture. A lot of it looks ratty. We went to Guad to a high-end rattan furniture store (which I don't really care for, but I wanted to see what they had). The prices were obscene. 80,000 pesos for a grouping which consisted of a couch, coffee table and either two chairs or a loveseat. For rattan! I have been unable to find anything as nice as we had in Calgary.

One thing that is very important here when buying furniture - you have to sit on it. A lot of it looks nice but is very uncomfortable, and some of the proportions are weird. A lot of the seats on chairs or sofas are way too long, weird because Mexicans tend to be shorter than the average gringo. And a lot of the cushions are hard.

The only outstanding pieces that we still need are kitchen stools and a dining table. Nothing has really excited us for the stools. As for the dining table, we were thinking of getting one custom made of granite. We got one quote back for 32,000 to 38,000 pesos - a little too rich for our blood. People are under the misconception that everything is so cheap here. Not so. We may have to rethink this. There are a lot of glass tables, which I definitely do not want. Too much maintenance - wiping them constantly because they show the dust. Maybe we will have to get a wooden one.

We will be busy the next few weeks. Enclosed are some pictures. The first two were taken in the store. The third one is the railing on the front steps. The next two are the front terrace. Then the closets in the guest bedroom, then two pictures of the guest bathroom, another one of the terrace, and the last one is the granite and kitchen sink.

Things have progressed since these were taken. I will take more pictures and send them to you.

Date: Mon, Jul 27, 2015 at 11:22 PM

We have only one door that is made of wood and it is in an alcove so it is protected from the elements. Lots of people get custom made furniture, but I wouldn't say it is the norm. The solar panels go up on the roof which, hopefully, will be this week.

Well, as I expected, they did not finish by the end of June. We told our builder that our lease expires in August, so they had an extra month to finish up. And they are still at it. We have only a week left. We plan to move on Saturday. They will not be finished by the end of July - at least the outside won't be, but that can be done after we move in. They are still doing some finish carpentering inside. We have been keeping our builder's finish carpenter busy the whole time. With all the built-in cabinets in the kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, special custom desk, and shelving, as well as custom-made beds, we have really put him through his paces. There was some miscommunication with a few things and we had to improvise a bit. Instead of a bank of drawers by my desk, he built a bank of open shelves, so now we have asked him to install a door to close it off. So he is working on the last few things. The kitchen has turned out awesome. Most of the light fixtures have been installed now. But the place is still very dusty, so I am hoping it is all cleaned up by the end of the week.

The water filtration system and softener are supposed to be installed this week, as are the solar panels.

I now understand why so many of the houses look so rugged here. By that I mean the walls are not super straight but kind of "Flintstone" looking. It is because of all the "unbuilding" they do. When they add something like a light fixture or move an outlet, they chip into the wall, and then plaster over it to cover up the hole. There had been a few dings and gouges in the walls after they had been painted which have been smoothed over (somewhat). But I still know where they are! I have to learn to let go and let it be. Accept the imperfections, otherwise I will drive myself crazy. But in all fairness, we have been really pleased with Jesus and his crew. They really did try to bring our ideas to fruition and, in some cases, the end result was better than we expected.

And the view is terrific. Our builder and his sister, who is the recordkeeper and the translator, have told us that our house is quite different from others that they have done. I kind of figured it would be. People generally go for the rustic Mexican look, with a lot of arches and bright colored tiles, or the modern look, which usually translates into everything being white. I think ours is modern elegant, without being sterile.

We have some furniture on order, and are still looking around for kitchen stools. The decorative items will be added gradually over the next year. We wanted a custom granite dining table, but the price was just too high. Then we priced out a custom made marble table. Still too high. So we found a white onyx table in a showroom at about half the price of what we would have had to shell out for a marble one, so we ordered it. Onyx is not my favorite, but it is better than glass and I didn't want wood. Kind of surprising that with all the granite and marble here, the prices for getting one made are so high.

The custom beds and night tables are in the house now and look nice. They still need to attach the padding to the headboard.

Date: Sat, Aug 29, 2015 at 3:38 PM

We still have a painter coming here during the week. What a hard worker he is. I feel sorry for him, toiling so hard in the heat of the day. He usually arrives early, before 8, and leaves late, after 6. And works for a pittance. He is doing the perimeter walls and the garage, and the last 2 days, he was pulling our weeds, which are growing several inches a day, while we wait for our landscaper to come up with a plan. There are still a lot of little things to be done, but work seems to have stalled and it is beginning to frustrate us. I hope we can get them done before we leave for Nova Scotia, but probably not.

Tomorrow we get our window coverings. One for the kitchen, one for the den and two for the master bathroom. It gets too hot in the bathroom in the mornings when the sun is beating in from the east.

So to answer some of your questions. What did we bring out of our rental unit, since we didn't have furniture or dishes? Well, boxes of clothes, shoes, books, makeup, lotions, linens, towels, and some kitchen stuff, like a lettuce spinner, which I had unpacked because I had heard that they were hard to find here (not true), and our coffee accoutrements, like a kettle, coffee grinder and French Press. We did not bring any furniture from Calgary, but we had a couple of small tables made for us here to put in the den of our rental unit, since there wasn't any place to put my computer or John's printer. These are now sitting in our bodega (storage room) underneath the front terrace. All of our stuff is unpacked now. We had stuff in storage for 3 years and it was like Xmas, unpacking it. I am now using that green frying pan you gave me, which I had forgotten about, and I really like it. I had to throw a suitcase of clothes out, because our storage unit got flooded during the heavy rains earlier in the year. They were able to move our stuff to another unit and thought they had saved it all, but this one suitcase that I opened had damp, moldy clothes in it, so I just threw the whole thing out. I thought they were mostly work clothes, but I am missing some stuff I really liked that I thought I had packed, like certain pairs of shorts, which I don't have, so they must have been in that suitcase.

Yes, the carport is more like a garage. It is partially open on the east side, but the rest are walls. It is located at the lower part of our property near the street behind the garage doors. Then there is a gentle incline up to the stairs, which we had to build to get up to terrace. There was no getting around that unless you put in an elevator.

I am getting used to my new appliances. I have been using a gas stove for 2 1/2 years now, so it is becoming familiar. It is harder to cook on it because the heat is so high. It is hard to simmer things. My dishwasher is so quiet I can hardly hear it when it is running. The microwave is set too high, my mistake, as I was asked where I wanted it, but until you use it, it is difficult to know. Both TVs are too high, also my fault, as John wanted them lower, but the builder said that where I wanted it was the standard height, so we went with it, but I WAS WRONG! Also, a lot of the kitchen cabinets are too high for me to use daily, but that's what happens when you have 10 foot ceilings. The stainless steel appliances do show fingerprints - that is their big drawback - but I try to be careful and not plaster my hands all over it. There is a simple solution to clean them off - just lightly spray a microfibre cloth with WD40 and wipe with the grain. It works great. It's funny. I was doing this in La Reserva and every week the maid would wipe them again with a damp rag and leave streaks. She would do this every week, and they would look worse and worse, until I couldn't stand it anymore, so I would give it the WD40 treatment again, and then she would streak it up again when she came. It would frustrate me but I didn't have the heart to tell her not to wipe the fridge.

There are a lot of hard surfaces here, so I will have to do a lot more dusting. I have been sweeping the floors a lot, and they look pretty good if I keep on it. I also have a steam mop, which I brought down, which I will use periodically.

We do not have a gas line for a BBQ. John decided he wasn't going to do anymore barbecuing. He was never really into it like most guys. If we want a steak, we will go to a restaurant. A lot of people here are into it though. It's just not John's thing.

The water softener is quite the story. We found a Kinetico dealer in Guad. That is the brand we were using in Calgary and we think it is one of the best, because it has a twin tank system, so when one tank needs to be regenerated, it automatically switches over to the other tank, and you don't ever run out of soft water. The rep came down from Guad and was excited because we would have been his first customers in Ajijic since all of their clients were in Guad. However, after dealing with him, we thought he didn't really know his stuff and was recommending more things than we needed and we lost confidence in him. Because this system is expensive, we did not feel comfortable spending so much money to buy from someone whom we didn't trust. So he lost the sale from customers who were really interested in the product. If I was his boss, I would fire him. He blew that one. So we got a standard one tank system through our builder's contact which, in my opinion, is inferior, but what can you do?

Solar panels are much more prevalent here than NOB (north of border), but we would say it is still less than 50% of people who have them. We have a nice water feature, which we will turn back on after the landscaping is done and after we get some lights and pellets for it.

I wanted a big garden with no grass. That big garden later proved to be to big, too much work. Pat foresaw this but at the design phase we did not have any other alternatives.

It is common practise in Lakeside to name houses. I selected the name of our house and Pat designed the art work. My name in Spanish is Juan. The name of our street is San Juan de las Colinas. It all fits together nicely.

 

Date: Thu, Oct 1, 2015 at 5:14 PM

It feels like we have hit the ground running since we got home. The landscapers were scheduled to start work on our lot on Oct. 5, but they saw us walking yesterday, and asked if they could start right away. John said yes, and they came over in the afternoon and worked until 7:00. Today, they did not show up nor did they phone to let us know what was up. Go figure. This is so typical Mexican. It is so frustrating!

We had some of our patio furniture delivered today - the loveseats and cushions that we ordered in Tonala and had custom made. I expected a big truck with a couple of burly delivery men, but when the driver showed up this morning in a half ton truck, he was just a young guy and there was only him and his girlfriend was sitting in the front seat texting. When he was unloading, I said to John that it looked like there were only 2 loveseats, but he said maybe it was buried under the cushions, but when the driver unpacked everything, there were only 2. They are very lovely, by the way, and I love the colorful cushions. So he phoned the store and talked to Sergio, the guy that sold the stuff to us. After Sergio checked with the warehouse, he called us back and said that the guys said that they had loaded 3 loveseats. He said that the driver had stopped at an Oxxo for 10 minutes and one of the loveseats was stolen off the back of the truck. I said that was strange - the driver's girlfriend was there with him. He seemed surprised by that, but was very nice about the whole thing and said that he will get another one made for us. So we agreed, held back some of the payment, and the 3rd loveseat will arrive in a couple of weeks. There is something fishy about the story. The back of the truck looked full to me, so if there was another loveseat there, it must have been precariously perched on top. So maybe it blew off. Still... Would a driver with a load go into an Oxxo without a backward glance or a glance from time to time at his truck? And where was his girlfriend? Did she go in too? Why? The driver was completely unaware that there was anything missing until we pointed it out, so even if someone stole it off his truck, would he not notice that his load looked lighter? Whoever is at fault, whether the warehouse guys or the driver, we feel that the driver will probably be fired.

So the only thing left for delivery are our lounge chairs. John just sent them an email in Spanish using Google Translate. We are also waiting for Jesus to finish up some of his jobs, such as the metal surround for the stained glass panel. We had decided on the design for it just before we left. And there are a few other things we need to address with him. The rest of the stuff are just little things that we will get a neighbour handyman (another guy called Danny) to do for us, because Jesus has gone on to other jobs since we moved in and is now too busy to finish it up. (The landscapers have just showed up as I am writing this at 4:00 p.m. and are assessing what they need to buy tomorrow morning in Guad for our yard). I can see that the house is going to be a money pit. Already one of the pot lights on the terrace has burned out. I asked John if he could replace the bulb. He got on to the ladder and couldn't make it past the third rung. He was just petrified. I was absolutely astounded. I knew he was scared of heights, but this was something way beyond what I had ever seen. I think it has gotten much worse over the years. It took him 20 minutes to calm down. I got up on the ladder (against his wishes) and would have been able to do it, but I couldn't unscrew the housing that was holding the bulb, so I guess that is a task that will have to wait for the handyman. Are we going to have to hire someone every time a light bulb needs to be changed?

Anyway, John is glad to be back and he considers Ajijic to be home. I still think of Canada as home. I really feel a need to get away from here from time to time. It was just nice to be back in an English-speaking country. I miss just making casual comments to the clerks. It is too much of an effort here.

Date: Sat, Oct 17, 2015 at 5:09 PM

We have received all our furniture now, the last piece arriving yesterday. The stained glass panel is in. It truly is a work of art. I have bought new bed coverings and just need to put them on the bed. The landscaping is almost finished. Just a few things to be done next week, and then it will be just small handyman things that we will get done in due course. Next week will be busy for me, as my friend, Carolina, is coming on Oct. 26. She had some airline points to use up and received a notification that if she didn't use them up by a certain date, she would lose them. So being very frugal, and not wanting to pass up a deal, she booked a trip here for 10 days. She is a former colleague of mine from McGavin's in Edmonton. We moved to Calgary around the same time she did when she got married and have kept in touch off and on. Her husband and she retired and they are now living in Powell River. So I will be busy next week getting ready for her.

Then John's friend, Dusan, is talking about coming on November 11, but he is so indecisive and keeps asking John what flight he should take. It is driving John crazy. He has more holidays coming to him than he knows what to do with, and is being urged to use them up, but he wants to get on the cheapest flight possible. So we will see if that happens. So you may be our third guest in this house.

We want to have an open house in early November and invite our neighbours and friends who have been aware of our four-year struggle with our house building. We are going to have it catered as I want to be able to enjoy it too. We plan to have it from 2:00 to 6:00 but don't know which day yet.

One of the things I wanted in our new house was a comfortable space for myself because I value my alone time. Pat made almost all of the finishing selections except for my den. Pat wanted a modern look and got what she wanted. I love her choices but I wanted a Mexican flavor for my area. Also, Pat and I have different taste for some of our TV viewing. I wanted a comfortable space for watching news and sports. And I got what I wanted.

 

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Our construction project had been planned to take eighteen months but actually took over four years. Emotionally, it was one hell of a roller coaster ride. To mark the end of this chapter of my life, a big celebration was most appropriate. We had neighbors from our time in La Cristina, La Reserva and San Juan de las Colinas, all who knew the main themes of this story. I also invited some colleagues from the Lakeside Freethinkers.

Greetings Neighbors,

Finally, at long last!

Pat and I would like to invite all of our neighbors to our Open House. Please join us as we celebrate the completion of our new home at Lakeside.

We will be providing a variety of drinks and snacks for your enjoyment. No house warming gifts please; bring only a smile.

Date and Time

Friday, October 30, 2015

2:00 to 6:00

Location 

San Juan de las Colinas 11