LIVING IN AN OLD HACIENDA - OUR HOME

Our home is part of a large hacienda.  It sits very high up on a hill.

This picture was taken several streets away from our home.  Our place is the one with the two tall cypress trees.

This shows the road in front of the house.  Notice that there are steps instead of a sidewalk.  You hit this road in first gear and floor the gas peddle or you never get up it.

This is taken from the balcony of a section or our place.  You can see that the first floor roof continues on and there is a wall built that sections off the two houses.  Once they were one continuing home.  The owners of the house below us (separated by the wall) took the house out to the porch wall and made it into living area.  Ken's bedroom is the one with the blue door.  

Hacienda's had the sleeping rooms with exterior doors and most of them did not have connecting doors inside the house.

As this picture shows, both bedrooms have outside doors to a sitting patio.

I have no idea what they did with the cement here or why, but once this was a courtyard.  The owner of this house also sectioned off the house into different houses.  So above us is a house and then there are two other houses that are also connected.  No one but us rents here so we have the place to ourselves.

This shows one lower door that is open and that is just storage.  Then the window that has window coverings is a house and the steps going up to the balcony is another house.  The window on the right is another house that goes to the upper section of our house.  At one time all these were one place that had stairs and step down area's in the floor plan.  

This is my Kitchen, and below is the dinning room.

On the far wall of the dinning room you can see a door and a wall that is framed in.  Once that was open to the other sections of the house.

This tub would take so much water to fill that the water would be cold by the time you got it full.

This is the door leading to my bedroom.  Notice that the door has an opening.  This had to be an exterior door that the opening was used to see who was on the other side before you open the complete door up.

Beyond my room is the bathroom and then Ken's bedroom.

There is no heat in this house but that is not unusual for Mexico and old houses.  The floor is cement and there are only throw rugs that are hand made out of wool.  It is a cold house in winter and will require a fire burning most of the time to keep the chill off.  You put the lava rocks in the fireplace and then you put the wood fire on top of them.  The lava rocks heat up and hold the heat so you do not have to use as much wood as you would without them.

For 311.00 US dollars a month this is not too bad a place.