There were a number of comments on my post about salitre, I am really no expert.   I think it has a lot to do with how careful your house builder was with the amount of salt in the sand used in making the concrete.  Less salt, less salitre, I think.  But certain spots in your house might just be inclined to it, and you will probably repair it over and over again.

I’d only put a couple small photos up before, I thought you might want to see a larger area.  Here it is just something you live with, and every once in a while it becomes enough of an eyesore that you do something about it.  Comex also has a product called Fin that supposedly seals it so it won’t come back, but they were out of it when I went so I am using plain sealer.

I had a bit of a meltdown the other day with the original dust plastic I installed to keep the sala fresca project dust out of the kitchen.  It was just so hot in there with only one window!  So I bought another tarp and cut the room in half diagonally.  That way I get the double window and double door opening letting air in with the added benefit that you don’t have to walk through a plastic doorway.  Much better!

Then our contractor came by with the antique hardware he bought on his visit to San Francisco last week.  The picture below is the picador (I’m almost positive that’s what the bolt that goes through the bottom to secure the doors are called)  - I think it is gorgeous.  When Paul gets back we’re going to visit the doors at the carpenter’s shop and see them in progress.

He estimates the job will be two more weeks beyond this week.  It’s been a bit of a challenge but that isn’t very much longer, and I know it will be worth it.

Me at Stinson, about 7 years old

I need to be close to the coast.  I can’t even imagine what it would be like to live in the middle of a lot of land.  South Dakota.  Nebraska.  Even Colorado.  Somehow it just feels wrong, just too far from the edge.

Some of my family lives in Florida.  I’ve visited, and can never get used to the sun rising over water and setting over land.  I’m just a West coast girl, and the sun needs to set over the water, ok? I spent three weeks on the East side of Baja once and couldn’t get oriented the whole time.

Stinson Beach

I was raised in San Francisco, middle daughter of three girls.  Both my parents loved the water, and all of us were swimming like fish by two years old. When we were little summers were spent mostly at “the club”, a tennis and swimming club north of the city.  (Watch me, mama, watch me!)  When I was about 6 my parents built a house at Stinson Beach, at Seadrift, a private community on a kind of peninsula.

Me, late 70’s, Stinson Beach

Wow, we had some adventures there.  I could tell some stories, for sure.  Lighting fires in the salt grass. (don’t worry, they went out)  Playing games that involved rabbit pooh “surprises.” (Didn’t you ever play “open your mouth and close your eyes and I will give you a big surprise?”)  A frantic rescue (by my dad) of Johnny the neighbor and I who had helped ourselves to a plastic dingy that was on the beach and were heading out of Bodega Bay on the tide. An encounter with a sea lion while drifting along on my rubber raft.

Me, 1980’s, Pacific Palisades, where my dad lived.

When I moved to Washington State and got married (yes I skipped a huge bunch of chapters here) I lived for about 5 years at Bay Center.  It’s a tiny community right on the water, with oysters and hunting being the main life sustaining enterprises.  Oh, and also sturgeon.  They would hang them like washing on a line behind the local tavern, and sell the dried meat like jerky.  In Bay Center we lived right on the water.  The tide went out for almost a mile and the sand would heat up with the sun…when the water came in it was like bathwater.  An incredible place to live  where most of the waters are ice cold.  I am so glad the kids had their preschool years there.

Son Adam with his “surfboard” in the San Juans, around 1990

Fast forward the kids and I living in Seattle in the late 70’s.  We’d go to the San Juan islands or  Kalaloch on the Olympic Peninsula  whenever we could.  One time I walked the beach in the early morning at Kalaloch and found the most amazing Japanese glass ball. (below)  I left it by the pond at our place on the Key Peninsula when we moved to Mexico.

Me with the glass ball I found with the Kalaloch Lodge in the background, around 1986

So all these thoughts came to me tonight as I was lying in the chaise lounge upstairs listening to the muted trumpet playing and watching the sun go down.  The cloud in front of me changed from gold underside to pink to grey.  Then the underneath part of the whole sky changed to pink.  We can’t see the water from here but we are about 4 blocks in and you really feel the proximity to the ocean even when you sit and look up at the sky.  Five frigate birds rotated slowly for a long time…then I blinked, and they were gone.

My home, Mazatlán

I love living by the ocean.  I think it must be in my blood.

Salitre on brick red wall (before)

When you buy an brick and cement house in México, you will quickly get up to speed on Salitre.  Salitre is kind of acne for walls, and it’s a fact of life here. I wrote about it before in the post Salitre 101.

It took us a while to be ok with living a little salitre here and there on the walls, our NOB (north of the border) perspective was hard to change.  But finally we realized that you can’t love these old houses and be into perfection.  It just isn’t possible.  So in the year and a half since we painted our house we’ve watched as we got a little bit of salitre – then a little more – and finally it got to be enough that it was time to repair it.

Before scraping

We went to Comex and got their recommended sealer and patching material, one for inside, and one for out.  I bought a wire brush and a putty knife.  I bought a sanding block.  And of course, more paint.  At the grocery store we bought muriatic acid.

The process is this:

1. Scrape with the wire brush and putty knife until all loose material is removed
2. Apply muriatic acid (50/50 acid/water solution) 
   Wait one day
3. Apply muriatic acid (50/50 acid/water solution) 
   Wait one day
4. Apply muriatic acid (50/50 acid/water solution) 
   Wait one day
5. Seal with sealer (1 part sealer to 5 parts water)
   Wait one day
6. Fill with appropriate filler.  Wait until it dries
7. Seal with sealer (1 part sealer to 5 parts water)
   Wait one day
8. Paint.  As many coats as it takes to cover.

Scraped and treated with muriatic acid

So as you can see it can take the better part of a week to get one area completed.  I have pretty much made a mess of the entire house as I go from place to place with my little routine.  The hardest part is that you need to turn off fans when you’re scraping in order to keep from spreading the dust, so it gets HOT.  I think I might be done with most of this by the end of next week, just in time for Paul to come home!

For those of you who are  contemplating just painting over the salitre, you can be guaranteed it will be back, usually before three months are up.  And if you paint with dark colors, the white salitre is really obvious, so you don’t want it to come back!