So you bought the new house and loved nearly everything, except you had to do just a teensy little bit of remodeling. Everything went just great until you had to match the existing tile. You didn’t know that there is a law in the universe that states that if you buy 10 boxes of extra tile, when you put the floor down you will never use it. The same law also states that if you don’t buy extra tile, when you put the floor down and you need to replace any of that tile (and you will), you will be unable to find a match. You won’t even be able to find something close. The gods have a good laugh over this one at least once a week.
You really should read the manual on how the universe works before you buy a house in Mexico. If you don’t happen to have a copy, let me give you a couple more gods’ guffaws. If your roof has a drain that comes down through a wall, that drain will leak. I don’t know why builders insist on putting drains through inside walls. I’ve never seen one that didn’t eventually have problems. Making the sign of the cross over such an installed drain doesn’t help either.
If you have a leaky drain that comes down through an inside wall, there is only one solution to the problem. Actually, there are several Band-Aids, but we won’t go into that here. The solution is to raze the old roof down to the jal and reset the levels on the roof so that water drains off the sides of the roof, not down through a wall. Don’t try to reset part of the roof because the gods will get you. If you reset just part of the roof, then where the old meets the new, you will soon have a crack, which is guaranteed to allow water to drip right over your bed.
As soon as you pick out a color to paint any part of a house, there will be a problem with matching that particular color. The paint company will change pigment suppliers; the guy who mixes paint at your local paint store will suddenly become color blind; or the brand of paint you want to use cannot possibly be mixed to that particular color. Some painters and others can perform miracles with mixing paints, but if you want that special color, they can never match it.
No matter how many wall plugs you have in your house, there will never be one where you want to put the computer. If one exists--by the grace of the gods--where you want to put the computer, it will not be grounded. The only way to ground that puppy is to go though the floor to an outside wall, which will necessitate finding matching tile and paint.
If you buy a new microwave, it will use more power than your existing circuitry can handle. The only way to solve the problem is to rewire the kitchen. When you start to rewire, you will find that the existing wire would not carry enough power to run a good set of woofers. When the electrician starts to pull the old wire out, the pigtails will separate and the tape wrapped around them will get stuck in what passes for conduit. The conduit will also fall to pieces, which means you have to run new conduit, which means you have to dig new ditches in the walls, which means matching paint or wall tile. Oh, the gods do have themselves a good time, don’t they?
You can’t actually escape from the humor of the gods. You can plan well and think things through. If you wait for someone else to do your thinking for you, then the gods are surely going to have a comedy hour. There are some things that are simply out of anyone’s control and there are things which can be controlled. The trick is to know that sometimes you win and sometimes you don’t. In the construction and remodeling process, it is best to bring a sense of humor and laugh along with the gods because they are surely going to get at least a giggle or two out of your efforts to remake Mexico.
