I thought that you might want to see pictures of the salitre repair project in one of our bedrooms. We’ve learned a lot about salitre over the last couple of months.

Salitre is a kind of cancer on the cement skin of the house. It’s caused by water leaching out the salt in the cement mix. It could be happening because of a water pipe leak, a drain problem, or ground water coming up from under the house.

So usually the first thing to do is to figure out what has made the problem in the first place.

Sometimes though it just appears on a wall and hasn’t caused the cement to become weak. In those cases you can scrape off any loose concrete, clean with muriatic acid, and then seal it.

In worse cases, once the underlying problem is repaired you may want to remove the bad concrete, clean the bricks underneath with muriatic acid and seal them before you put new concrete over the bricks. That’s what we had to have done in the bedroom pictures you see here.

Here’s a picture of the salitre before.

They spent a couple of days chipping off the old concrete and washing and sealing the wall. (This is from the other room they did – I forgot to take a picture in this bedroom)

Then they put on several layers of concrete and the final layer is nice and smooth and feathered in with the existing wall surface.

Now all we need to do is paint.

Here’s a picture of Adam and Martha on our sail on the Patricia Belle.

We had such a good time! In addition to the sailboat cruise, we went to the beach and boogie-boarded, ate out a lot, stayed up late and in general hung out a lot.

One thing that was really helpful was asking the two of them a ton of questions about Spanish. They really were generous and patient with us, and we appreciate it a lot. Adam also helped me out when someone called on the phone and I couldn’t make out what they wanted and chatted with the guys working on the courtyard. Sometimes I know people just hate to have to talk to us because it is as much a project for them as it is for us! So having them here helped with a few of those kind of things.

I hope they both got a bit of a rest since their jobs are pretty intense. Come back anytime, you guys….and next time maybe Martha won’t be the only winner at dominoes!

Jonna of Blah Blah Blah Ginger (in Merida and Akumel) just tagged me with a bloggers game….here are the rules:

When tagged, you must link to the person who tagged you. Then post the rules before your list, and list eight random things about yourself. At the end of the post, you must tag and link to eight other people.

So, here goes:

• I am a bit over-obsessed with vacuuming up dog fur.

• The only coffee worth drinking is espresso, and good espresso is heavenly!
• I am really enjoying our transition to a tv-less life. Thanks, MegaCable!
• Last year I read 77 books and this year so far 44. I keep track here.
• My best friend and I have been best friends for 40 years!
• I can’t imagine a life without a couple of dogs.
• I am going to write a book.
• I have a hard time sitting still.

Now, TAG, you’re IT:

Jennifer in Mazatlan

Andee in Chacala

Dropped in in Chelum

Elliott in Ajijic

John in San Miguel de Allende

Viva Veracruz

Ann in Zihuatanejo

Sans in Mazatlan

I guess I had better go tell these folks they are TAGGED!