Our Future Home in the Making

As you read in my last post, we bought property in La Cruz!  I didn't include any specifics about the house we're planning to build because the post was getting too long-winded and yada, yada... So, here are the deets.

But first, some super exciting photos of the interior of our dirt patch...

Standing where the front entrance to the property will be looking in... The house will be two stories, so the tallest walls in this photo will be double in height, because most of the perimeter walls (a.k.a. fence) and the house's exterior walls are one in the same.  (See further explanation in the next pic...a lot of people are confused by this for some reason.) 

Here's a (super blurry) Google Earth view.... The blue is the perimeter of the lot and the red is the future footprint of the house.  It's a small lot, so this is the best way to maximize the square footage of the house.  The green area will be a terrace and small yard.  Make sense now? 

Our future kitchen...  The top of the wall will be the height of the first floor ceilings, about 12 feet high after the foundation is poured.   

Ty is standing near the front entrance where the garage will be... These plants will all be relocated to other parts of the yard or given away.  (They're currently planted in the laundry room, so they gotta go.) 

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The previous owners had the plans already drawn up and the property walled-in when they decided to (or were forced to) put the project on hold 5 or so years ago... The blueprints were included in the sale of the property, so we're basically just picking up where they left off and adding our own style to it.  We kept the same footprint as the original design, but I pretty much rearranged every interior wall and revamped the entire layout to suit our preferences.  (I was planning to add some pics of the plans on this post, but the only version I have digital copies of have several incorrect parts...so you'll just have to use your imagination, sorry!)

The biggest change I made was to the ground floor... Ty loves to cook and to host get-togethers with friends (and I want to give my bestest friend his dream chef's kitchen), so we're making the kitchen the "main hub" where we can socialize around the large island or outside on the terrace.  The original plans had it reversed... With a large living room as the main gathering area and the kitchen in a much smaller corner of the ground floor.  To us, living rooms are for watching movies in your PJs and cuddling with your pup on the couch...or like, business sit-downs with your accountant, I guess?  I mean, how often do you really hangout in someone's living room if there are other options (and if it's not football season?)  So, we flipped the two spaces and now we'll have a spacious kitchen for entertaining and a cozy couch corner for Netflix-bingeing.  

The house is going to be 2 stories... The ground floor will include the kitchen, living room, a half bathroom, laundry room (hooray!) and an office nook.  We nixed the dining area because we are not "dining room people"...we have never used the "official" dining spaces in any of the 8 houses or apartments we've lived in other than as a catch-all for clutter or as a makeshift computer desk.  There will be bar seating at the island and a table on the patio.  What more do you need?  

Upstairs will have the master bedroom and a guest room, each with its own full bathroom and private terrace overlooking the yard.  I only made minor changes to the bedrooms, but I reconfigured both bathrooms to make room for a larger walk-in closet in the master suite....because, priorities. 

There will also be a bonus 1-bedroom apartment over the garage that I'm more excited about than I probably should be... Having worked in the hospitality business for the past 3 years renting out other people's properties for them, I'm really looking forward to having my own little rental to have full control over... I totally reworked the living areas to allow for a larger kitchen and terrace than originally planned and I can't wait to make it a super cute and functional vacation haven.    

The apartment will have its own private entrance and we'll rent it to shorter-term tourists during high-season and use as overflow when we have friends or family come to visit... We only plan to rent it for a few months each winter though, because we like our privacy and having our own space without feeling like people are always around and we've had VERRRRY little of that since moving here.  Living in a hotel for 18 months constantly surrounded by guests and staff was like living in a fish bowl... And our last two rental houses have been so close to the neighbors that I could literally reach out the window and touch the house next door...while also giving one of the ten groundskeepers who are constantly circling our house (and startling me!) a high-five.  We also currently have a problem with little neighbor kids "doorbell ditching" us and people looking in our ground floor windows as they cut across our front or back lawn.  We're over it. 

What else.... We'll also have a 3rd-story, covered rooftop terrace that will (supposedly) have an ocean view...but I'll believe it when I see it with my own two peepers.  The original plans had a couple vaulted ceilings on the second floor, resulting in mostly unusable rooftop space above, but I'd rather have more square footage on the roof (especially if there really is going to be a view), than have a vaulted ceiling in the master suite where all we do is sleep.  Ya feel me?  So I nixed those too.  The roof will have a covered entertainment/hangout space on the long "arm" of the L-shape and on the shorter arm, I'm going to plant a veggie garden!  Lastly, even though the yard is going to be very small...we're gonna have a small dipping pool and outdoor shower, because why not? 

We're guesstimating that our indoor living spaces (so minus the garage, apartment and rooftop) will be around 1600 square feet / 150 square meters...which makes it the biggest house Ty and I have ever owned together.  We both prefer smaller houses / don't like having more space than we need...and unused rooms that become "storage rooms" for "stuff you don't know what to do with right now" are a huge pet peeve of mine!  (I'm talking about your 4 sets of golf clubs, Tyler!!)  So, do me a favor and come visit us so our guest suite doesn't become one big junk closet.  Haha... 

As far as the timeline, we were originally quoted mid-December for the house being at least livable enough to move in (while they finish the apartment and/or exterior work, etc.), but we both have our doubts.  It's been a slow start with the permitting process and September through mid-October is the wettest time of the year....So, more realistically we'll get to move in after the first of the year.  But we're in no hurry... 

Well, that's all I have for you today... I've already started another post about all the little things I'm looking forward to the house having that are uncommon in our part of Mexico but a given up North (i.e. ice makers!) so stay tuned.  

Hasta luego!  

Sooooo, we did a thing...

Well, the keys have been in hand for a while, so I guess it's time to make it official and tell you all what we've been up to the last few months.... 

WE'RE BUILDING A HOUSE IN LA CRUZ!!!  

That's right... We're not going anywhere anytime soon, because we are now the proud owners of this ready-to-build chunk of dirt.  (These are just the perimeter/exterior walls...it's empty inside.)

Some backstory:

We've had a casual eye on the housing market since we moved to La Cruz three years ago, but never really saw anything the two of us could agree on.  Ty would often get goo goo eyes for acres of raw jungle land in the hills (only accessible by 4-wheelers, of course) imagining a sprawling, eco-friendly, self-sustainable, Mexican "ranch"... And then I would kindly remind him that there was no access road, no public water, no internet or electricity service...and that we'd blow our budget on just getting it ready to build and have no money left to build a house.  

I'd also remind him that he's about the least handy man on the planet (he's a self-proclaimed "idea guy," not a do-it-yourself guy) and that building and maintaining a "ranch" would be a ton of work - none of which he'd actually want to do.  Twice in six years, he's insisted we buy the worst house on the block and then says, "Okay, now fix it!"  And then I'd spend 6-12 months remodeling said fixer-upper while he "supervised."  

Our Portland house... 

Super tired and pouty!

Our Auburn house... Here we go again! 

Conquering a rotted shed... Haha.  

You get the point.... Needless to say, I put my foot down this time.  I told him that buying a fixer-upper was one thing, but if I have to buy a machete to ward against jungle snakes - then we ain't buying it.  

We chose to move to La Cruz for a reason... We fell head over heels in love with the little fishing village when we first vacationed here in 2013.  That trip was also the first time Ty said, "I could live here one day."  Little did we know at the time that "one day" would arrive much sooner than anticipated!  So, I didn't want to settle on buying something on the outskirts of town (a.k.a. the jungle!) or in a neighboring pueblo when it's La Cruz that feels like home to us and it was our inspiration to live abroad in the first place.  We've looked at properties in Bucerias, Higera Blanca, etc., and it always came back to, "It's a nice house, but do we really want to live anywhere other than La Cruz?"  The answer was always a resounding, "NO."  So... We kept looking at properties from time-to-time until we pretty much had all of the listings in La Cruz memorized.  

We got more serious about buying property this year, after trying to decide whether or not to renew our yearly lease on our current (super bland) rental house which is up next month... Fast forward through a bunch of uninteresting negotiating, document-gathering, wire-transferring and legal property-buying mumbo jumbo and lo' and behold... We're property owners again!  (If you're interested in learning about the actual process of buying property in Mexico...scroll up to the top of the page for a reminder that I'm not in the business of being helpful, because that's much too boooring for yours truly to scribble about.) 

So, there you have it... We're building a house!  After 3 years of living in other people's houses filled with their personal belongings, we'll get to finally create a home of our own again...and we couldn't be more excited!  

I'll be documenting the building progress only somewhat on this blog... I have a million do-it-yourself projects and design ideas rattling inside my head that I'm sure I'll want to write about, and I'm guessing no one wants to read about me learning how to tie macrame plant holders or what color I'm going to paint the bathroom, so I'll spare you the details.  (You're welcome.)  BUT, if you are someone who's interested in all things DIY and interior design... I'll be reviving my old home-remodeling blog here >>>  Martha Stewart...in Black  (For an explanation of the blog name, scroll back to the very first post.  Haha.) 

Okay, now back to Pinterest-ing!