{"id":593,"date":"2026-10-02T11:53:42","date_gmt":"2026-10-02T11:53:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/victorap.ca\/musings\/?p=593"},"modified":"2026-10-05T19:38:21","modified_gmt":"2026-10-05T19:38:21","slug":"building-a-house-from-scratch-without-scratching-the-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorap.ca\/musings\/building-a-house-from-scratch-without-scratching-the-plan\/","title":{"rendered":"Building a house from scratch without scratching the plan"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n \t<\/i> Read Time:<\/span>22 Minute, 22 Second <\/div>\n\n <\/div>

It all began . . .<\/h2>\n

Before we moved to Mexico, but after we knew we were moving to Mexico, Lucia read some blog post on facebook or twitter or some darn thing somewhere where someone wanted to sell some land out in the country but not too far out in the country. It was a beautiful piece of land where the trees grew, the birds sang and the dogs, which we didn’t have yet, could run free and poop without us having a care in the world. This land was being sold by three young people; two architects and a digital marketer\/florist (having since given up the florist part). They had bought a large tract of land and wanted to create a new community — a beautiful community where the trees grew, the birds sang and the dog poop got picked up as much as possible. The community was to be called “La Melipona<\/a>” – a genus, not to be confused with genius, of bees. Trust you are keeping up.<\/p>\n

\"Photo<\/a>
Victor on a swing – Photo: Robert J. Allison<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Lucia, Victor and I went to look at the land sometime after the pandemic had, just like that, had been declared over. The land was divvied up into 11 parcels, the borders of each one being defined with a piece of string. The community to be was surrounded by mountains (or very large hills) covered in lush greenery. What a sight to behold. Lucia was over the moon with enthusiasm. For me, it was the jungle, in the middle of nowhere, with lots of bugs. I don’t like bugs; sometimes they don’t like me. Victor was like, “get me out of here.”, until we found a crude swing hanging from a tree in one of the plots of land.<\/p>\n

In the summer of 2023, with freedom having been somewhat given back, Lucia and Victor headed to Mexico while I remained in Canada working. During this time, Lucia had been messaging me with pictures of the land and details of the project mixed with video calls. She was intent on instigating discussions around the project. Relying on the Canadian politeness that had been instilled in me from before I was born, and the distance over which the conversation was taking place, I would listen and nod; not the falling asleep kind, but rather the kind that indicated I might be listening until the discussion was interrupted with the connection being lost or some other event that left me off the hook.<\/p>\n

As life would have it, the end of the summer came and I headed to Mexico to pick up my family and return to Canada. Once in Mexico, there was no getting away from taking a trip to see the land that Lucia had found. I must confess that it was visually spectacular not to mention very empty.<\/p>\n

Shortly after we arrived in Mexico in 2024, it happened. We bought the land. You can read the finer details of how the land purchase came about in an earlier post “Buying a new home<\/a>“. To sum things up and save you the read (although I highly recommend you read my wonderful musings), we became the proud owners of 1,500 square meters of land where the trees grew, and the birds etc. . . . by the end of 2024.<\/p>\n

and once we had the land?<\/h3>\n
\"Photo<\/a>
Slope of the land – Photo: Robert J. Allison<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We needed to build a house, but not knowing anything about building a house, we needed to find someone to build the house. Fortunately for us, the branch of Lucia’s family that lives in the area, has no shortage of architects, engineers and opinions. We opted for someone outside the family. Less pressure but we could, and would, still get the opinions from the family, we imagined!<\/p>\n

The house we wanted, we called our dream home. It was something with three bedrooms, an office, a secret room over Victor’s room, a kitchen, dinning room, living room, shelter for Lucia’s car and a guest quarters. This all had to be built on a slopping piece of land, that while not steep, would require a unique design.<\/p>\n

In addition to the terrain, the architect would need to pay attention to a number of building parameters we, and the others who had purchased land, had agreed to. For example, there were height restrictions; the houses had to be built at least three meters from the property edge; the natural setting had to be preserved as much as possible; fencing had to be natural; and other guidelines that don’t remember off the top of my head, being greyed as it is.<\/p>\n

We certainly had enough land, but did we have enough money?<\/p>\n

Architect one<\/h3>\n

Our first choice for architect was a wonderful woman who had designed the house of some friends of ours. Her approach was very different than most architects in the area. She designed the house and and oversaw the building while advising and guiding the client through the purchase of materials and payments to contractors. This reduced the work she needed to do and as result, her fees were a lot less. The client maintained a lot of control over costs. Our friends built their house for about 1\/2 the going rate. In addition to the savings, the interior design of the house was wonderful, (the exterior not so much). She utilised space really well. We liked the house she built and we wanted her to build ours. We met with her in November 2024 for an initial consultation.<\/p>\n

Architect two<\/h3>\n

While we were waiting to hear back from the first architect, Lucia overheard her cousin, a cousin she really liked, tell someone at a family gathering that she didn’t have any work and could really use some.<\/p>\n

Lucia, sometimes not being able to help herself, asked her cousin, “Would you be interested in building my house?”
\nHer cousin responded that she would be very interested.<\/p>\n

Lucia explained that we would be seeking three proposals and she was welcome to submit one.<\/p>\n

We proceeded to meet with her at our house, in a local restaurant and finally at her house. We shared ideas with her and she shared her thoughts with us. While we liked her and her ideas, we were never comfortable with the communication and our conversations faded until they were no longer taking place.<\/p>\n

How much will it cost?<\/h4>\n

The charge for providing a drawing as well as labour and material cost estimates was calculated at $350 pesos per a square meter based on 200 square meters. This came out to $70,000 pesos. She then discounted this by 50%. So our initial payment to Lucia’s cousin, should we engage her, would be $35,000 pesos. Interestingly, we never encountered this approach to an initial project design from anyone else. She provided samples of a budget from other projects but we were unable to relate them to our project. We also tried to get her to provide an idea of what she would charge to oversee the project. Where the preferred method of salary from other architects was a percentage of the cost of the project, she wanted a monthly salary but was unable to provide an amount. <\/p>\n

Architect one returns<\/h3>\n

Somewhere near the end of the discussions with Lucia cousin, we reengaged with with our first choice whom we hadn’t spoken to for a while. We got deeper into the details of what it was that we wanted. She was excellent at interviewing us and pulling out the information that she needed to come up with a design.<\/p>\n

Just when we thought we were making progress, and Lucia tried to continue the conversation, there was silence from her end. Eventually she let Lucia know that she had dengue.<\/a> The virus which the husband of one of Lucia’s cousins reported — after having recovered from both Covid and dengue<\/a>, but not a the same time, “it makes Covid feel like a walk in the park”. But I digress. With our first choice incommunicado, and the discussion with Lucia’s cousin having reached a natural end, we looked for other options<\/p>\n

Architect three<\/h3>\n
\"Photo<\/a>
Photo of the drawing of our dream house, Architect 3, April 2025<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The woman we had hired to navigate the Mexican bureaucracy (as much a mystery in Mexico as it is in most countries) to obtain permission for a foreigner\/me to buy land in Mexico, happened to be connected to an association of talented people. As our luck would have it, there was an architect and his assistant, perhaps lover, we could never figure it out. For clarity sake, the assistant is also an architect which does not preclude the “perhaps lover” part. They specialised in building colonial style houses. We love the colonial style houses in Mexico. As you may recall, we almost bought one<\/a>. Boy did we miss the boat on that one!<\/p>\n

By February 2025, we started to discuss our ideas with the colonial architect and his assistant, perhaps lover, who turned out by way of mention to be the mother of the child of one of the architects who sold us the land. We live in an intimate community where lots of hugging with varying results are not unheard of.<\/p>\n

At the start of the discussions, we were told that it was all a “process”, together, slowly, we would arrive at the colonial home of our dreams, but it was a “process”. We needed to be patient. The architectural plans would be $20,000 pesos, about $1,600 CAN. We wouldn’t need to pay this until we had the plans in our hands. The norm was to pay half up front and half at the end, so we were pleasantly surprised. No money pressure.<\/p>\n

Another part of the process was to take us around to see houses that the architect had built or been involved in building. We saw about half a dozen of these houses. Only one did we see the inside of. It was interesting because the architect and his assistant would take us down some very rough winding roads before stopping. The car would be parked and we would walk up to a fence surrounding a house and be told that this was one of the houses they had built or participated in the building of. Sometimes we could look through the fence and where that wasn’t possible we could try to look over. Never did I truly understand what it was I was looking at with the exception of the house we went in. Which, to be honest, was very nice.<\/p>\n

After a couple of meetings and some messaging on Whatsapp, we met and received the plan. There were two options, one bigger and one smaller. Both of them were versions of what we had discussed but not what we had agreed on. We were a bit mystified. The architect didn’t design what it was we asked for but rather what it was he thought we could afford, even though we had never discussed a budget. Turns out out that Lucia may have told them but let’s not have that interfere with my narrative. The truth is that we didn’t know how much money we would have for the house. It could be a million pesos, or it could be 10 million pesos. Who knew what the future held? I ended up telling him, through Lucia of course, that while we appreciated the effort, we would rather they design our dream without consideration to the costs. We could alter the house in the future based on how much money didn’t show up in the dream.<\/p>\n

At the next meeting, we were presented with our dream home. The house had all the rooms we wanted. The visitors’ quarter had been moved from a separate building to an in-law suite at the front of the house under the kitchen, dinning room and living room. On one side of the in-law suite, there would be a garage and on the other side of the garage there would be a bodega. The office and bedrooms joined the kitchen on the left side of the structure. But alas, while you all hold your breath and dream of our dream home with us, the price tag far exceeded anything we could possibly afford — even in a good dream!<\/p>\n

\"Drawing<\/a>
Drawing of house from the front – Architect 3, July 2025<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

They left the drawings with us and we began to see where we could cut. The pricing was per square meter so we started scaling down the size of the house. Once the size was substantially reduced, we had a followup meeting to discuss the changes. This was followed by another meeting when received a couple of options where the downsizing had been put into place. After each meeting we would wait several weeks before they came back with an updated plan. The process dragged on for close to fivve months in total.<\/p>\n

Lucia, who was anxious to start building, was on top of the followups to the changes including the followup meetings. Arranging the followups went through the assistant who was very slow to respond. After several followups over a few months, the assistant, promoted by Lucia, informed us that we would need to pay for their services, in full, at our next meeting. This was when they planned on delivering the final plan. Finally paying them was in no way unreasonable though we were sad that the “process” that had never been fully defined was now being defined!<\/p>\n

They arrived with the latest drawings. We liked what we saw. We paid them and all agreed we would need a couple of days to look over the plans and get back to them with next steps. The next steps generally meant ordering and paying for installation plans (plumbing and electrical wiring). They left, and after a couple of days, Lucia wrote to the assistant asking for 3-D rendering which had been part of the initial deliverable. She got no response. Several more attempts, and continued silence. You may be sensing a pattern here. Lucia, not one to be deterred, continued to try an arrange the building of the house well into August.<\/p>\n

During all the time it was taking going back and forth with his architect and his assistant, perhaps lover, Lucia had been writing to our first choice who had eventually recovered from dengue<\/a>.<\/p>\n

How much will it cost?<\/h4>\n

It was a while before a more, or less, detailed estimate was provided. Up until then, we had been relying on a formula based on cost per square metre, which was calculated based on building an obra gris, or completely finished. The cost of a completely finished house was dependent on the type of materials used in the finishing. <\/p>\n

After we had downsized our dream home, we were presented with two options. Option A ($5,965,973.00 pesos completely finished or $2,847,890.00 pesos for an obra gris) and a smaller Option B ($5,695,450.42 pesos completely finished or $2,718,835.35 for an obra gris) . Note: the exchange rate is somewhere around 12.5 per dollar.<\/p>\n

When Lucia followed up on the quotes, she learned that they did not include a number of other items that were necessary but not included in the quote. Some of these things included:<\/p>\n