62% Complete

Well, according to both The Construction Coach (TCC) and our latest invoice we are now 62% complete. Unfortunately the last two months have only seen 3% of progress. TCC are now predicting a completion date of early April 2008. If we hit April that will be just shy of two years from signing the purchase agreement at the buyers weekend in May 2006 and about 18 months after construction officially began in October 2006.

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The Kitchen

Based on the pictures and news coming from Loreto Bay, I think they are currently focusing their construction resources on getting the Posadas, Spa and custom homes completed ASAP. Although this delays the completion of our home quite dramatically, I actually think this is a good idea. Having spent about a week living in a neighbor's completed casa in September, it became pretty obvious that until there are more stores and restaurants open within the community, you pretty much need to have a car while you're there so you can go grocery shopping and get to the restaurants in Loreto.

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The Viewing Tower

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Hopefully by the time our casa is ready there will at least be a grocery store within Founders Neighborhood.

Furniture Ordered

We went ahead and ordered our furniture. Unfortunately it worked out about $7,000 more than we had budgeted, but we think we've got some good stuff. We ordered the San Ignacio package from Casa Mesquite and then added some extra pieces and swapped a few things. For example, we swapped the two love seats for a sofa and a chair and upgraded both from fabric upholstery to milk chocolate brown leather. We also removed the side towers and one of the king beds, added a second chair and side table for the living room, a desk and custom book case for the bedroom upstairs, two Queen beds and an extra nightstand for the room downstairs and some additional patio furniture for the viewing tower. We also upgraded the patio furniture for the roof terrace to the patio furniture and loungers that normally come with the Loreto package .

Casa Mesquite were very accommodating to all the changes we wanted to make and also made sure we weren't doing anything stupid layout wise. Hopefully everything will show up at about the same time as the house is completed and will fit :)

Now we need to work out our AV equipment (phones and TV's etc.), housewares (sheets, plates, pots and pans etc.), art and window coverings. All in all, we'll probably end up spending about $10,000 more than we were expecting on the interior of the house. Hopefully it will be worth it.

Furniture Plans - All Change!

After spending some time in Loreto back in September and walking around our casa we realized that we should change our furniture layout. The biggest changes are that we swapped the living and dining areas and are going for a sofa and two chairs combination rather than two love seats or a sofa and love seat. Our new furniture layouts, overlayed over the house plans are shown below.