joypix: January 2005

Working on the house

Since getting back from Australia in early December most of my time has been taken up with working on the house in Coatepec. First of all Roberto and I built a small tiled courtyard at the front of the house. This almost finished off the entry area to the house, following earlier work to close the garage off from the entry from the street -- which involved choosing some nice colours for the wall and the garage door. The only work remaining to be done in the courtyard area will be to install a small fountain, plus a switch box on the wall by the door to the street for turning the fountain on and off, and (as with the area at the back of the house) a strategic placement of spotlights and other lights for the evenings.

Roberto and I then built a tiled area around the garden at the back of the house to make a compact but attractive outdoors living space. After Roberto and I finished that work Michele returned for her Christmas break and worked on the gardens at the front and back -- taking the soil back, putting scoria in for drainage, replacing the soil and replanting. I busied myself building a tiled roof over the dining room window and the barbeque. This work is lamost finished. When it is done and the area cleaned up I will post some pix of the back garden area to complement the single pic taken from the first floor balcony that is among the posts that follow.

There are around 15 new pix following this post. They begin with the first firing of the barbeque after putting the roof on, show the roofing work in various stages, and show the tiling work and small mosaic tiled walls that mark the garden borders. There are a couple of inside pix thrown in for good measure.

Meanwhile, Happy 2005, and I'll get back asap with more pix of the back garden area.