Casa Wabi Sabi

A big day today, a wonderful completion to many man hours of preparation for all. Today we poured the concrete slab (losa de concreto). Here in Mexico this is a milestone and mas o manos 20-25 % of the way to completion of the entire home. Our construction workers, one of José’s best crews, live an hour drive from here and arrived at 7:30 this morning to make some final checks and adjustments before the concrete pump truck arrived to set up for receiving one cement truck after the next until we’re fully poured.

The concrete pump used to get the concrete from the trucks to the slab.

Many homes are built here Mexico by mixing the concrete on the dirt with a bucket of water and men stirring the mix with shovels as skilled as a pastry chef with a spatula and a bowl. Poco a poco, little by little the concrete is mixed and poured in small areas until eventually, wallah, one has a slab.

Spreading the concrete.

The crazy gringo...this is why he loves it here...very few rules.

Francisco smoothing with trowels.

Boys will be boys...

As you can see by the pictures (notice the crazy 60-year old gringo sitting up on the boom overlooking the slab for one final picture) we poured the entire slab in less than a day to both save time and get a stronger concrete mix because we’re making a polished concrete slab floor. Now that may not sound like shag carpet to some of you. It isn’t, but it will be beautiful and receive many handmade carpets to warm the space. Now, for those of you that enjoy a little detail-we seeded the top of the concrete today with small reddish-colored aggregate rock by simply tossing them like a handful of seeds for a new lawn.

Jota Remédio washing the aggregate before it was spread onto the wet concrete.

José smoothing the concrete after the aggregate was spread.

Notice José our builder using a bull float. That’s the long handle with a wide metal blade at the end for troweling the concrete to a smooth finish and setting the aggregate just under the surface for later. The next step is to wait a week and keep the slab wet daily to help it set up strong enough to receive rotary grinding to remove about a 1/4′ – 1/2″ of the top surface. This will remove any blemishes and show the seeded aggregate. We’ll grind the slab to a 90% smoothness, cover it and start setting the adobe blocks to construct the exterior walls.

While the slab is setting up this week, the crew will split into building the street wall and applying the smooth plaster needed on the inside of both cisterns. 

View from the top.

The foundation for the top wall of adobe...concreto ciclópia.

Please feel free to write out any questions about the process and I’ll be glad to write answers for all to see. Until the next blog update…Hasta luego,  Barry

Three of the little ones...

We had a little diversion this week…Barry called Friday at the end of the day and asked me to call the animal shelter. Talking with the workers, all he understood was that someone “malo” (bad)  had abandoned an entire litter of puppies at the site. I called a veterinarian and he agreed to wait until Barry got there with the puppies so he could check them. Halfway there, José called him on his cell phone, and in the course of the conversation Barry told him he had these puppies…turns out the men had all picked out a pup to take home the next day; between the two languages that important point was missed. Barry turned around, delivered the cuties back to their new owners, and I called the vet and explained there had been a “miscommunication.” They’re all at their new homes now…

Last week we drove to San Luís de la Paz to meet José and look at samples of local stone for the garden walls, steps and patios. There is a beautiful light gray stone called adoquin that we’ll use for the patios and entry steps. The quarry was a surprise; expecting at least the noise of a few jackhammers or trucks, we drove through the campo (counryside) and cactus, and encountered silence. Walking up the hill, we heard the faint sound of chisels hitting stone. We were stunned by the setting, and the beauty of the smooth walls of rock. We’re still deciding on what stone to use for the garden walls.

Worker hand-quarrying blocks of adoquin.

Some of the streets in San Miguel are paved with these squares of adoquin.

We also drove over to Pozos, a small village on the other side of the mountains from the quarry. José showed us a renovation he had done, a ruin brought back to beautiful life. He wanted us to see the rust-finished metal used for gates and windows…we love the way it looks, and will be using it on all the metal windows, metal exterior doors, the entry gate and driveway gates.

The rust finish for doors, windows, and gates.

The final touch before the pour...

We’ve talked about the many blessings on Casa Wabi Sabi. We added one more last night before the cement trucks came this morning (thanks to a suggestion from our friend Tony in Móntreal). I typed “For a New Home” by the late Irish priest, poet and author John O’Donohue, from his last book To Bless the Space Between Us. Rolled up and inserted into an empty spice jar still smelling of cumin (a spicy holder befitting its location), we drove out to the house and buried the blessing in the corner of Casa Wabi Sabi’s front entry, where it is now securely cemented into the foundation. Here’s the blessing—(slashes indicate line breaks…)

May this house shelter your life. / When you come in home here, / May all the weight of the world / Fall from your shoulders. / May your heart be tranquil here, / Blessed by peace the world cannot give. / May this home be a lucky place, / Where the graces your life desires / Always find the pathway to your door. / May nothing destructive / Ever cross your threshold. / May this be a safe place / Full of understanding and acceptance, / Where you can be as you are, / Without the need of any mask / Of pretense or image. / May this home be a place of discovery, / Where the possibilities that sleep / In the clay of your soul can emerge / To deepen and refine your vision / For all that is yet to come to birth. / May it be a house of courage, / Where healing and growth are loved, / Where dignity and forgiveness prevail; / A home where patience of spirit is prized, / And the sight of the destination is never lost / Though the journey be difficult and slow. / May there be great delight around this hearth. / May it be a house of welcome / For the broken and diminished. / May you have the eyes to see / That no visitor arrives without a gift / And no guest leaves without a blessing.