So, You Want to Install a Pool?

Your offer has been accepted! Time for a celebration. We are going to live in Mexico. You send your hard earned dollars off to something called escrow, which is about 3,000 kilometres away. Not like your own lawyer holds your funds until he or she is satisfied that title is good, no dedicated right of way through your back yard for public access to the lake – things like that. Then there is closing, where one lawyer seems to represent both parties. You release your funds from escrow. You should get your keys tomorrow. Really, didn’t we just hand over our money? What is wrong with today? Just the way it is done, apparently. Tomorrow arrives and you eventually get the keys. Big sense of relief. They have our money and it looks like we own the house. Muy bien!

We took possession in late July and the combination of temperature and humidity got all of our attention. Time to talk about the pool we had envisioned. Quite a process. Our house occupies 100% of the lot it is built on. Back yard pool is not an option. We chose a room at the rear of our house that we thought could be converted to a small pool, and game on!

We chose a contractor, Manages Bahia, Baldo Garcia, managesbahia@gmail.com and negotiated a price which was within our budget, and then came face to face with reality. Not sure how I envisioned the excavation happening. One of those, “I am retired, and so is my brain,” moments. Of course they can’t use a machine, this is in our house. Picks, and shovels, wheelbarrows, and when the hole got too deep, dirt was carried out in 20 litre pails. They estimated 8 weeks. To their credit, we were using the pool after 7 weeks.

What a wonderful testimony to the work ethic Mexican folks have. Monday to Friday 8:00 am until 6:00 pm. Saturday 8:00 am until 2:30 pm. Most of the cement was mixed on the street in front of our house, and was carried in those 20 litre pails.

We hosted a “Burgers and Beers,” BBQ for the workers when our pool was finished. Start to finish, sixteen guys who all shared the same things, courtesy and smiles.

The end result is we got the saltwater, heated pool we wanted and were able to conclude another chapter in our adventure!