This old house

 

I’ve never seen this show on TV.  I’ve only heard the title.  The title seems appropriate for this post.  If this content is at odds with the TV show, I’m sorry.

 I wasn’t going to write any more.  My toothache beckons Tylenol extra strenghs, but I just finished reading Mike’s recent post, http://www.amavericko.com/2007/06/house-problems.html and I cant leave the laptop until I comment on it.  I would have commented on his site, but it is so funny… really, really funny, I felt a serious comment would be like disrespectful. 

This is going to be short.. just touching on a few things that Mike mentions, to make sure no one out interprets his ‘rant’ as an argument against buying a property here and to add credibility to what you will think is just his bad luck.. it aint. 

First off, all of the problems he described are because the person who renovated that house, didn’t do it to fix it up.  They did it to make it look cute.  From Mike’s many problems, you can tell the renovation either didn’t address existing problems or it was so poorly thought out, the modern renovation caused dozens of problems by itself.  If Mike (or anyone else) were to buy an old house, his architect would have gone over the place with a fine toothed comb and picked out those problems, and others Mike hasn’t seen yet, lurking behind a wall or under a floor. 

No one buys a house here without having ‘their’ architect check it out first.   Up north, we use home service experts who do this.  In Uruguay, we use architects.  Would you buy an older house without a home inspection?  Of course not.  Would you rent a house without one, of course you would.  As Mike said, better to pay your way out of a lease than get stuck owning a disaster. 

The part about the drain pipe isn’t an isolated instance.  On top of my very expensive condominium building, they drain the entire roof with 3 pipes.  None of them are particularly large.  Each section is separated from the other.  Do you know what happens when debris blows into one of those drains.   One or more light fixtures in the penthouse become showers.  Who’s the moron architect who puts a single point of failure on an upscale apartment building roof?  Well, it’s not in the building code. 

Hey Mike..  you’re not alone buddy with the showers that slope away from the drain.  I have asked this question over and over again…  And to add insult to injury, I have paid my hard earned money for 3 bathroom renovations and none of them slope properly.  In my most recent master renovation, I figured I had it made by putting in a bathtub instead of a shower… guess what they did… they sloped the tiles around the bathtub away from the bathtub… now I have a 2nd story squeegee job.    Gotta hand it to the albanils here, they are consistant.. all of them. 

Most Uruguayans use electric heating in houses.. Gasoil (diesel) in apartment buildings in Montevideo.  Electric in Punta del Este… they dont have natural gas out there in the boonies.  We installed a modern gas boiler to heat the house and provide hot water to the taps.  I was worried about gas too.  Never worried about it back home but here, yes.  Because ours is a central unit, tucked away in a room in the basement, we vented the room to the outside just in case something happens to the pilot light.  

Mike’s complaining about his master circuit breaker popping.  It’s a new service and I’ll bet it’s picking up a leak to ground.  I had that in my apartment.  Changed out the master breaker for one with a much great tolerance.  The downside is if you stick your hand in a socket, you’ll get a nasty buzz before it trips out.  Better that than coming home to a warm refrigerator.  Maybe the owner will fix it for the new renter.  Too late for Mike.  He’s going north for the winter.  Wow..  Never heard that one before.  We’re upside down now. 

The following images are courtesy of Santiago Tezanos, a local architect who wanted to share this information with us.. 

    

Dear Irv,

Attached please find three self explanatory situations of membrane and surfaces.

option 1: an open air terrace, with a drain, over another terrace. Membrane going “up the wall” on the left, and a “french door” window opening on the right.
option 2: is a rooftop edge (azotea).
option 3: is a typical wall/window situation. Exterior is to the right, interior to the left.
These are not “generic” details but specific details from a project by my office, so some issues might be very particular to the project, therefore solved in specific ways (such as a drain in that position). However, any of this details should be easy to build by any local albañil.

Domestic help additional costs

 

This is a very ‘taxing’ week.  Every time we turn around, I learn of another fee we’re supposed to be paying.   We better be careful or people will stop coming to the blog for fear of more bad news.  We’ll search for more optimistic material next week

For 25 years, (more or less) we had a cleaning lady for the 3 months of the summers.  2 years ago, the last time we got to use the summer house on a regular basis, we were paying her UYP300 per day.  Since we started living here, we have the same cleaning lady.  She takes the bus from Piriapolis 3 days a week.  /Recently we increased her daily pay to UYP400 plus bus fare.  

2 days ago, she told us she wanted us to pay her holiday pay, but she didn’t want to take holidays.  She just wanted the money.  She didn’t demand it.  She told us to check with our lawyer to make sure we were doing it the right way, paying her only what she is entitled to under the law.   We had no idea such a thing exists because she’s a casual employee, working freelance a few days a week.  Tonight we met with our lawyer and she explained our responsibilities.  

There are 2 issues.  The first, supposedly exists only in a few left leaning (or perhaps social conscience) countries like Mexico, Argentina and Uruguay.  It’s called the Aguinaldo (Christmas gift).  Find out all about it here:  http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aguinaldo.   In North America, this roughtly translates into Christmas bonus, but here it is compulsory for wage earning employees and equal to one months wages.  You pay it twice a year, end of June and end of December.  At the end of June you pay the person a half month of earnings and you do this again at the end of December.  In total, it’s the equivalent of a month’s pay.   In our case, she averaged UYP4000 per month, so she is entitled to a bonus payment of UYP2000 on June 30th and again on December 30th.

The 2nd is  the equivalent of a northerner’s vacation pay with an interesting twist.  If you work 5 days a year, all year long, it would total 20 days, roughly 3 weeks holidays.  In our case, she works 60% of the workweek, so she would be entitled to 12 days paid vacation pay per year, but she doesn’t want the time off, she wants the money instead.  So for the month we pay her the holiday pay, she will make double for 12 days. 

Our lawyer created forms to use for this past year (see attached).  We’ll modify this for next year, etc. 

 

Since our lady started working full time in January 2006, I’d say we’re just over a year behind, so we need to pay her for the full year’s back pay up to Dec 31/06 and for her first Aguinaldo payment the end of this month.  In total, we should owe her UYP7,200 at the end of June.  

But she told my wife that she feels bad about this and she only wants it for 2007.  So we will pay her the UYP2000 on July 1st and again on December 31st, (increased by 33% because of the increase in base pay).  At some point in 2008, she will ask for her vacation pay and we will pay it at that time. 

Something you should keep in mind when budgeting for domestic help. 

The weather

 

Today, for the first time in what, at least a month??? we had a stormy day here in Montevideo.  Not a lightshow day–just dark.  Eerily dark.  It’s half past 3 in the afternoon and I thought it was nighttime already.  All our lights are on.  Those clouds are so dark and so thick, I’ll bet those of you using DirecTV today are pixelating like crazy.  It feels like someone took the Atlantic and stuck it above Montevideo. 

Maybe this is a personal opinion, but it sure seems like no one is doing much of anything today.  When it gets like this and rains (which it’s doing right now), everyone I know stays inside.  If you dont have to go to work today, you stay home.  Even if you stay home, you aren’t particularly ambitious.  I think it’s because the weather here is usually blue sky or at least some blue sky.  When you get the odd day like this, you just write it off.  I think depressing would be too strong a word to use.  More like boring.  

On the positive side, my front yard is getting a much needed watering.  In Toronto, come the fall, no one cares about whether the grass is wet or not.  It’s going to die now and be reborn in the spring anyway.  But here, it stays green all year long.  If it doesn’t rain in the fall, you have to water it or it will die and probably not come back (without financial assistance). 

I think teenagers are a good gauge of the general feeling.  Mine went to sleep at 1pm, when this started and is still sleeping now.  She’s one of the ones who doesn’t have to work today.  As for me, I’m doing filing, hahahah.