TalkBaja.com » Baja Mexico Forums » Building your Baja dream home

Like my casa, this thread will take time to build....I have 658 pics in the folder for this casa! And NO! I won't be posting them all!

In the beginning.....

You paid $1,246,119 for your lot???

I sure hope that was in pesos...

Ummm, BG ... I strongly suspect that's the phone #, not the price!

I think Kate's right. That's Legz number to call if you need money.

Sure looks like a price tag to me...

Originally Posted by BajaGringo

You paid $1,246,119 for your lot???

I sure hope that was in pesos...

BG, Kate was right & you were mistaken in thinking that I mighta had more $$$ than brains!

I then studied the lay of the land & determined the best casa design & orientation on the lot to meet my needs & lifestyle, accommodate all my furniture & maximize all the views.

Having build two block construction casas previously (that's a topic best suited for it's own separate thread later!) I'd already researched & decided this casa was going to be foam block construction.

I had more than adequate time during the acquisition process to design my casa, then that time was extended out by an additional 6+ months getting through the Environmental Impact Study process! With the EIS final approval in hand, I could now clean the land & have the Elevation studies done to find where & out how much fill & compaction I'd have to do to create a level platform for my casa. And yes, the 6' step ladder was a valuable tool in helping me determine my final elevation.

Footings for retaining walls were started....broader footings were poured in areas where deeper fill would be required. Over various area, 0 - 4' of fill & compaction was done.

Over the majority of my property, the retaining walls were also the perimeter barda base.

I'd never had my floors poured until after the walls had gone up in the past, this builder engineered the footings, foundations & floors to all be done in one continuous pour....which totally eliminated cold joints & if this house ever moves, it'll be moving all together as one huge mass!

I also had the soil fumigated for termites several times throughout this part of the process, and I had heavy duty black plastic laid to prevent the high salt content in the local soil from eating into the cement. I've used both of these preventative techniques on all my constructions, in addition to the below soil interior/exterior cement & blocks being painted with black tar.

Wow; look at that 4 section pumper.

Thanks for all those details; especially about your thorough soil/foundation prep.

This was a super fast process! The cost of the pumper trucks more than offset the time, labor & Seguro Social costs! If it'd have been done by hand, a mixer-load at a time, it would have been measured in days/weeks rather than a couple hours! Not to mention the consistancy of the cement mixture would have been much different!

I like putting my cistern under the garage; saves space, keeps the water cooler & it's out of the sun, so it's not growing a healthy crop of algae....so the garage floor was poured by hand later, after the cistern was built.

Then the walls were started....for actual time-lines, hover cursor over pics....99% of my pics have dates incorporated into the name.

Geez Marty....who'da thunk....like a kid over a fire truck, huh? Here's a couple out of sequence bonus pics just for you....

The roof went on, emulsion applied to retard the drying process....the upper finish detail was installed....

Wow! Very cool.

Next, chicken-wire was affixed to the foam exterior to hold the plaster in place. The red metal plates in the exterior walls are to weld the metal shade roof support structures in place....later!

One trick I learned pretty quickly is to incorporate an exterior wall into the perimeter wall whenever possible or feasible. You can maximize the use of your land & doing so reduces construction costs....that's why you see a combination of both foam & cement block on the outer wall of the garage. The foam section of barda at the far left of that pic is the back wall of an exterior generator room. I had them do all 3 walls, the ceiling & the floor out of foam block to hopefully muffle generator noise. The floor is raised & sitting on two of the foam roofing blocks. My theory is why on earth expend the time, labor & materials to build TWO walls when you can incorporate a casa wall into the perimeter wall?!

Good photos. Shows a lot of detail.
Keep um coming.

Interior finishing begins....ceiling gets first base coat, then final finish yeso, bookshelf wall gets a dangerous start to it's existence (where is Woooo with those rebar caps when ya need him?)

The kitchen floor gets elevated for a 6" step-up....for all you purists out there who are wondering why on earth I'd go to the additional expense....there WAS a method to my madness! Because of my wide open living room/kitchen design, I wouldn't have had any outlets for a large portion of my living room & that just happened to be the area where I wanted to place my sofa, so the 6" step-up along the entire width of the kitchen gave me a 6" "wall" area to put 3 outlets & a phone jack! I don't like floor mount outlets, especially when they'd be exposed in the center of a large area! The step-up solved all those problems!

Also, the large pipe in the center of the kitchen floor is the downdraft vent for an island mounted gas cooktop.

The bookshelf wall....ah, the damn bookshelf wall! I had smoke coming out my ears when I saw how uneven the shelves were with the first technique they chose to use. Quality control obviously took that day off! THEIR solution to make them level & even involved adding more & more layers of plaster....to the point where no two shelves looked alike & more importantly, they bore absolutely NO resemblence to my original "11" deep x 2" height with 12" between each shelf for books requirement!"

The first shelves ended up as a pile of rubble on the floor! I threatened my builder with excruciating physical pain if he didn't come up with an acceptable solution....FOUR MONTHS LATER....he finally tells me about the prefab material shown stacked in the living room & attempts to convince me that their going to "Glue it to the wall"! I asked, "Do you have any idea how much actual books WEIGH?" The installers were standing there attempting to figure out our English conversation, while I'm trying to figure out what happened to my builders brains. I talked with the workers & they SWORE they put this stuff up all the time for shelves & had never had one come down....they pull out their book of past job pics showing dozens of jobs they'd done....NOT ONE pic had what could have amounted to 14 ounces of weight on it! I took them into the spare room, where all my boxes of books were stacked, they took one look at all those boxes & both of their jaws dropped, they both muttered "TODO??" under their breaths & kicked into way too rapid Espanol for me to get a word out of! They hashed the situation over back & forth & finally came to the conclusion that the shelves would work IF they had vertical supports between each shelf to support the weight. But the expressions on their faces clearly told me that this loca gringa had a totally different definition of the function of bookshelves than they did! Just to prove the strength to me, they put up the bottom shelf & BOTH STOOD on it to show me how strong it was. That convinced me & I gave them the go-ahead to finish the rest of the work.

They turned out great & haven't fallen off the wall yet!

MY vision of bookshelves!