An old adage says "necessity is the mother of invention" to which I'd like to add "and laziness (efficiency) is the father".

I've often written about some of the differences in our cultures. In America we pride ourselves in doing things faster, bigger, more efficiently and therefore more cost effectively - I'd have to say those are pretty much alien concepts in Mexico. Oh, it's not that they don't understand them, they just don't accept them as a necessity of every day life. They continue to do things the way their ancestors did them and proudly go on about their business as life has gone on for hundreds of years (often talking on their cell phones?).

So, today's question is: how many people does it take to attach two ceramic street numbers to the front of the casita?

This week has been final wall repair and painting of the new arch and front of the casita punctuated by my neighbors arrival from Canada. I waited on the color selection because she is an artist and I'm color stupid. Together we managed to pick a sort of gray, well, actually not "sort of" - it's basically gray, what can I say?

We started online by going to a site with at least a million colors and arguing about what was taupe (this is while she was still in Canada). Then on her arrival we visited the local Comex store and went through the fans of colors until they all blurred - too warm, too cold (sounds like Goldilocks huh?) and eventually picked a color. When the paint crew arrived with 10 gallons of the new paint it was too light - so, send it back to the store to darken it up and actually it's still too light, but this is more my fault than my artist neighbor, I didn't want it to be too dark - well, it definitely ain't. (but, you know the fear of painting a whole side of a house too dark and then standing back only to gasp in panicked surprise)

The prep work prior to painting consisted of two coats of sealer/primer and repair to the walls small cracks etc. with cementos which is a white powder you mix with water and it makes a hard cement used for almost everything but sticking your dentures in place. Then they start painting with a scrub brush, the kind you'd buy to scrub the floor, the barbie, anything needing vigorous action. They basically "scrub" the paint into the rather rough textured surface to make sure it's covered, very laborious and time consuming. There isn't a roller with nap long enough to paint this surface and spraying might work, but who has a spray gun? - efficiency remember?

The prep work also consisted of literally grinding up a brick to dust then mixing it with the cementos to form a brick colored paste which neatly repairs chipped bricks, holes in the bricks etc. and up at roof cornice level it filled in for a notched out area so perfectly you'd never know it wasn't an original brick. But, you must keep in mind all this is done totally by hand with the most basic of tools and good old elbow grease, they have an abundance of that and of course, time which they seem to have plenty of.

The paint work began on the wall and my neighbor and I scrambled for a liter of adobe colored oil paint for the front door and a couple of other trim areas. We again laboriously argued through the color fans until we agreed on a color, they mixed it and we proudly took it home. A bit later we opened it and shazaam, or should I say "SURPRISE" - because it was hardly in the same color family, it was bright orange, the color of tulip tree blossoms, beautiful that they are, IT was not what the front door should look like.

I actually skipped a crucial point in the story, back when "we" were building el arco, the ceramic number "2" of the address "20" fell off - so, we just glued that baby back up, unfortunately it had cracked and when we taped it on to dry, it sort of slumped and so our "20" wasn't the most attractive. Now, as I've also said, you don't want to look too prosperous, but we decided today to get new ceramic numbers for the casita anyway, flout our wealth and get new numbers, you only live once.

First we went to Comex and tried to convert the bright Tennessee orange to more of a UT burnt orange terracotta with little success. We compared the color to the color fan and it wasn't even close. At the same time I bought a liter of maroon for another wall and it also wasn't very close. I think they haven't calibrated their color machines very often, if ever. We packed up what we had and headed to another store and another and another - we never did find a terracotta color we liked - so, we're going to paint this as a first coat (I'm sure) and will come back at it from another direction another day.

So, upon returning to the front gate work area we were all standing around watching one guy paint and a very large yellow dog came up, well, our workers have two, sometimes three dogs that come along and the smallest little Heinz 57 wiener dog is totally fearless and started barking and I'm in between the two as old yellar approached calmly and I'm thinking "this could be good for a trip to the hospital" and I'm telling shorty to stop and a bit nervously standing my ground as old yellar continued to advance. He was looking at the little yapper like "I can eat you in one bite" but he never barked or showed aggression, just curiosity. We've been told that Mexicans won't tolerate an aggressive dog, they'll put it down and so I had some small modicum of hope that was actually true - and sure enough I gently pushed the big dog away and turned him around and sent him away with a bit of help from the Maestro.

As they painted I got the scraper and a small hammer and liberated the old ceramic numbers from their duty on the front of the casita and was going to wait until manana to put up the new ones with silicone and then chalk around them, but I no sooner popped the numbers than the paint guy slathered on a coat of paint. So, I picked up the new numbers and Ignacio immediately started mixing a small batch of cementos. By this time we were all out front and my neighbor asked if they didn't think silicone would be better - to which Juan (the head brick layer) agreed, so it was brought out and slathered on the backs of the new tiles. I got out my level to make sure they were straight and plumb and while 5 of us watched, Juan pressed them into position and the two dogs guarded the work site.

So, the answer to the original question is: 6, 4 Mexicans, 1 Gringo and 1 Canuck plus 2 dogs - really. So Juan was standing there pressing them into position and we all left, I guess he probably eventually left?

Actually it didn't take long before they were solid enough to leave to dry and the folks cleaned up and left. Now all that is needed is the front door paint and two smaller accent areas, then remount the entry timbre (bell) and I'm bringing back rust sealer from TX for the front gate with will get a coat of black (common for many gates) which will culminate the project starting with the July 29th storm and ending sometime after mid October - just another fun project in Mexico.