living room remo: Phase II cement

(The reason this print is so odd is I did not originally write in in Blogspot.)
I have very little internet time ~ maybe 5 minutes after the workmen have left.  We scurry over to the house, hook up the modem, send and receive in a flash and then come back to the apartment.  I am writing this on MSWord and will copy and paste it onto the blog tonight.  It’s quiet in the apartment right now so it’s a good time to get caught up.  Mr. C has taken Jack into Tecoman to do battle with Telmex over his lack of phone and internet lo these 13 days.  The rumor was that technician would be in town either Monday or Tuesday but alas, nada.  So Mohammad is going to the mountain to see if he can get some action. 

More information about what we’re doing to the house.  The living room walls have been patched, re-patched and then patched again over the years.  The “sofa” wall is a weather wall.  It’s on the east side of the house that gets all the rain.  The cement has become porous over the years, holds the moisture, the paint bubbles up and looks awful.  Then the cement cracks and there you have it.  So we decided the only thing to do is to take it down to the bones and start again.  Monday morning Jaime and co. started in, as you saw in last evening’s  posting.  When they were finished we had two Greenwich Village loft-style walls which I sort of like but aren’t really the style of the house.  They also opened up some large sections of the ceiling where water had leaked through the impermeablizante and membrano that cover the roof.  (That needs to be completely redone, too.)  Yesterday they spent sanding the bare bricks to a smoother finish, enclosing some exposed electrical lines in new plastic hosing, and then re-cementing.  The new cement was smoothed, the wite Cal was slathered on, and walls will now cure for a few days before they are painted.

 Meanwhile, the workers will move on to the kitchen.  The same thing needs to be done but only on the east wall and on a smaller scale.  One of the countertops is beginning to crumble from beneath and the tilehas cracked and has to be taken up, the structure rebuilt, then the top retiled (another job for Eve).  Everything gets very moldy in the cupboards and drawers but by emptying them all out before we go and leaving the doors and drawers open we might not have as bad a case of mold and stink.    That’s the plan for the season’s departure.

When we went over to check on progress in the mid-afternoon, the place was a mess; cement droppings from the front door down the hallway up the stairs and into the living room.  Dust an inch thick.  I groaned inwardly, thinking of the horrendous cleanup we’d have.  However, when we went back last night at about 7:30, it was absolutely pristine; not a fleck of cement where it didn’t belong, no dust, no debris.  I remember Jaime’s rules of engagement the last time he worked in our house:  nobody leaves until everything is cleaned up and put away.  He does a walk-through while his crew awaits the verdict.