Our Hidden Door

At one time, the houses in Progreso were made of wood. Over the years, this style of construction has transcended into concrete houses. Wooden houses still exist, but are now the minority rather than the majority. Our home is no exception. Where we may differ from other houses, is that our wooden house was never destroyed or removed from the property. You may ask, how do we know this? The previous owner is an architect, in selling the house, he shared some of the house history with us. He told us that he converted the house from a wooden structure to concrete by reinforcing the walls with cemented boulders and then applying a smooth concrete finish over the new stone walls. You can huff and you can puff, but you cannot blow our house down!

One Of The Few Remaining Wooden Houses Left In Progreso

Our House

The house history has proven itself true! We recently updated our matching guest bathrooms with new tile. Prior to the work commencing, before pictures were taken. As you can see, everything appears normal.

First, the old tiles were removed, followed by the cement adhesive and then the walls were chipped (roughed up) for the installation of the new tiles. With the walls stripped down, this was our opportunity to to have a shampoo niche placed in each shower. Once placement was decided, so began the chipping/carving of the niches. I like to refer to the sound of chipping concrete as the music of Mexico. It is a sound that you hear around town everyday. So, when the music is out of key, you know there is a problem, and our music was out of key! "Senora, we have a problem"! The wall that would house the shampoo niche for one of the bathrooms is an interior wall. In the conversion of the house from wood to concrete, because this was an interior wall, it was not reinforced, it was only covered with concrete. The depth of the niche was more than the depth of the concrete cover. Hiding behind the concrete cover was a wooden door. A completely intact solid wooden door!

Our Hidden Door

In the end, the shampoo niche locations were changed, the wooden door was once again covered in concrete and we have a job well done.

To The Right Of This Shampoo Niche Is Our Hidden Door

In Mexico, you never want to pass judgement on a house by it's outward appearance. You never know what you will find behind a door or concrete wall. I love the symbolism of our house discovery, the entryway of our journey to living abroad........

La Senora