We are in the last throes of finishing up the house in Punta de Mita and the owners are due for arrival on Monday. Nothing quite like an imminent deadline looming, we’re working furiously to finish up all those last minute time consuming details or in other words we’ve been trying to cram a month’s worth of work into the past two weeks. I’ve been managing the crew, the past couple of days, and it’s been so much fun being back out on the job site after having spent most of the last 5 months or so, behind a computer designing the marketing material for our other project (which is coming along nicely and shall have a debut of it’s own very soon). This is the point in the project where you can see the most dramatic results. and it’s definitely the most gratifying. My job is basically to answer a hundred and one detail and design questions and to make things happen as easy as possible. There is no shortage of “what the hell are we gonna do” moments, when a problem comes up that looks like it can’t be ironed out easily. With our design instincts and the crew’s craftsmanship and knowledge of materials, we always end up coming to some kind of compromise that makes the potential disaster work out ten times better. With our crew and anywhere from three to four vendors (a/c, electrical, plumbing, wood work) on site all day, people can get in each other’s way, and it’s my job to make sure everyone is taken care of and can do their job as best they can. Mary and are the pickiest of bosses and no little detail is missed, questions come all day long as the crew have come to an understanding that all tiny design questions are better asked, then redone later. We are most certainly perfectionists but we also have a good understanding of the mexican saying “only god makes things perfect”.
On one of our trips to Guadalajara, Marcia and I found the most amazing clay lamp shades (I guess that’s what you would call them), here they are called “lamparas”. They are a pretty standard outdoor wall lighting feature in Mexico, but these are special. There is no hint of mass-production and you can literally see the cuts in the clay where the shapes were made by hand. They have a boxy feel to them, almost like something you might see in Arizona or New Mexico. They are much simpler and low profile then the ones I see around and add an interesting design element to the mix. They’re what I would call a perfect example of warm, organic mexican modernism. Yesterday I prepared the lamps by coating them with a sealer and then measured and drilled the walls and hung all 20 of them. The crew appreciated my effort and I was glad to lend a (working) hand.
