Home owners

It’s ours now—Casa Abeja—sadly the bees had to go, but it will still always be Casa Abeja in their memory. We own it lock, stock and barrel. Its either a great Mexican investment property or we’ve squandered our hard earned cash (its sort of like looking at the glass as half full or half empty). Anyway you look at it its not going to be one of those houses that is ready to just move right into.

Yesterday as we were walking around it a nicely dressed older Mexican lady came over and started taking pictures of it. Was she trying to document it, does she want to show how we aren’t going to keep with its heritage nature (which we are) so the government can sue us, is she taking photos for her friends or the previous owners? We didn’t think to ask her, but it seemed rather strange to us at the time, especially since she didn’t even speak to us and was doing this right in front of our faces. I would have to say she wasn’t especially friendly. We are really curious what that was all about.

The owners came up from La Paz to clean out the rest of their stuff and get their money. When we walked through the house yesterday we found the previous owner had forgotten to remove a lot of stuff including religious poster art, an old brass crucifix by the window, a cowboy hat, some men’s shirts, an Eskimo cooler in the kitchen and a child’s toy. They were surprised that anything was left as they thought they had emptied the house. I guess they weren’t very attached to any of this stuff or maybe just couldn’t see it for the shock of finally selling the house.
Esperando had it fumigated yesterday morning for creepy-crawlies and the fire department hosed out the beehive. The Lads removed the large dead tree that was growing right against the east wall. All this has happened in the space of 4 hours. Next on the agenda was the removal of the old water tank. Esperando and the Lads borrowed a forklift to pull the old concrete water tank off its tipsy stand. This morning was the big day. The forklift came hauling down the road with Esperando driving. Next was the sawing of attached piping and securing the tank with a rope. I was sure one of them would get crushed while the pipes were being sawed through. The nimble Gardener climbed up on the roof and over to the lift which had been raised level with the tank. Flaming Mike had tied a rope around the tank already, so the Gardener tied the knot onto the liftblade and we were in business!! This is only the beginning. Next will be hauling away a yard full of large trash such as an ancient refrigerator, the old water tank and stand, and other large metal debris and garden trash.

How will we keep our hands off bringing it to life? It’s his nature and mine to want to fix things up, but is now the right time with the economy so sour? It needs re-roofing, new exterior doors, entire rewiring, plumbing, bathroom and kitchen remodel, not to mention cleaning, polishing, stripping interior floor, drywalling interior walls, painting interior and exterior walls, and the list goes on.