As I’ve mentioned here before, I live in a house that’s on the same property as the bungalow I built for myself in 2012. I left it in 2015 to return to Canada and make some money, having rented it to Ofelia, a local yoga instructor.
Ofelia looked after the house beautifully, and I resisted raising her rent after I came for a visit and saw what she’d done, with a stairway up to the flat roof put in, and plants all over. She was one of those people for whom plants somehow signal, “Buy me and put me in a pot near a window, and I’ll adore you!” I didn’t want to lose such a thoughtful tenant. Nor one who’d brightened the place as she had.
Sadly, in 2018, she had her second bout with breast cancer, and this took her life some months before I came back here in November of that year. The place was rented to a man who is an architect, a job-title indicating construction project management as much as design in Mexico. He stayed for a little over two years, before moving away to take on a major professional project, and I had to think about what to do with the house.
When I lived there, my friend Lucero (who owns the property) had her mother living in my current home, and visited often. I took care of their five dogs, and kept an eye on her mother, while her mom occasionally translated for me with tradespeople or on local issues. The dogs spent much of the day in the corral on the far side of the property to my own residence, but since I could just walk across to it, there were no practical issues of access to overcome.
Since Ofelia’s time, however, there’s been a fence between the two houses. And Lucero’s mom isn’t independent enough any more to live here. So, staying in my old place with its small amount of open ground, when the surviving dogs are again my responsibility, wouldn’t be convenient.
Anyway, nearly three weeks ago, I finally got into cleaning and painting the old place, after having a couple of structural problems fixed by a professional. It’s not the classic ‘renovation hell,’ but I’m a terribly sloppy painter. Also, I found it became slow going when I kept getting stoned on paint thinner. As a friend of mine quipped, “Yep, cheap drugs give you the worst highs.”
More to the point perhaps, the architect who’d lived there was as as much into housekeeping as I am into house painting, and there are layers of grime to remove. I began washing the windows this afternoon, and after two hours I was only half done. I still have to tackle accumulated grease in the kitchen. I was planning to rent the place in February, but that isn’t likely right now.
Still, the process of removing flaking or chipped paint, along with generations of spider webs, is having its effect. And it isn’t what I was expecting. This is, after all, my own old house, designed and redesigned over and over, during afternoons when I was supposed to be working at my old day-job. We have a bond, the house and I, and it’s probably starting to forgive me for abandoning it for five years.
A couple of people have asked me about renting it, since inexpensive places round here have become scarce, but I don’t really want anyone in there, unless Ofelia cloned herself before leaving us. After the architect, whom I did like as a friend, I’m wary of anyone having it. I also enjoy my solitude, even as I recognise that it’s practical at my age not to live in isolation.
So, I’ve noticed that I’ve been spinning out the work, rather than rushing to complete it. If and when I do rent the house, I want it to be in half-decent condition. But for now, despite paint fumes and having to be on my knees scraping the floor at times, I’m simply enjoying renewing acquaintance with it.
And renting it out won’t be easy.
Mexed Messages 