By admin@thesilverpetticoatreview.com 
If you want to see where this journey started from day one, I’ve put together a handy page with links to all my previous posts about the house and life in Guatemala, including the cost of living and travel tips. Check out my Guatemala page.
It’s been a hectic month. We signed contracts on the first few plots of land, and as new serious buyers showed interest, I spent a lot of time visiting the land, taking pictures, and recording videos to show them exactly what the plots looked like. Uploading a YouTube video with Guatemalan internet is a challenge—it’s incredibly slow, but the good weather here makes up for it. This is also why my blog won’t turn into a vlog, and why I sounded like I was being interviewed from outer space when I was on the Stacking Benjamins Podcast.
I’m proud that we now have a cool website with pricing, a map, and project descriptions—probably one of the most detailed sites out there. Contrast that with my experience in Guatemala City, where a real estate website offered no useful information, and emails requesting details went unanswered. We’re lucky that despite the inefficiencies, clients still seek out housing due to the crisis. Even with a great website, I still get numerous inquiries about prices and sizes, which takes up a good part of my day when I redirect them to the site.
We recently burned the land similar to last year. The fire was quite impressive due to the dry spell, but now the rains have returned, and it’s already looking green again. We had to rush because one of our buyers was coming to plan the first construction on their plot. So, we cleaned and weeded the land, and hired the Caterpillar back to re-flatten the roads and cover them with white earth (ballast) to stabilize them.
Our friend the mayor, after promising for over a year, finally widened the road that borders our land and sent a truck to pour some ballast too. We’re waiting for another machine to flatten it all out, but it’s great news. In just one year, we’ve seen an asphalt road reach the back of our land, electricity brought a block away from our eastern border, and now this road improvement, all adding significant value to our property.
At home, the guest house is coming along well. I took a few weeks off to explore Guatemala with two groups of friends visiting from France. It was nice to relax and travel around beautiful Guatemala, but it was a bit stressful leaving the builders in charge of the new room. Though I left detailed instructions, there’s always uncertainty. Sometimes missing materials are “borrowed” from nearby sites with the promise to replace them later, which makes me wonder if everything was genuinely replaced or if anything went missing while I was away. But I bought my peace of mind.
During my visit to the natural pools of Semuc Champey, the new room took shape:
– Day 1: Beginnings of the room
– Day 10: Bathroom foundation
– Day 12: Bathroom walls
– Day 14: Stone wall for the room
– Day 16: View from the future window
– Day 20: Completed walls from above
The room, partly buried, is in front of the old house, with my current sleeping area to the right, featuring a roof terrace where guests love to hang out. I’m considering moving to this new space, living separately from the main complex and guest house. The new room might have a roof terrace with a small kitchen, hammocks or bean bags, and its own little garden with a seating area.
Concrete furniture, warmed up with comfy mats, is easy to clean and doesn’t allow animals to sneak under it. As expected, I’ve been spending a lot of money since everyone from the materials company to the contractor prefers cash payments. It feels surreal handing out large sums of money multiple times a week. The new room will be 12 square meters with a 6-square meter bathroom and a walk-in closet, a concrete bed, desk, storage cabinets, and a closet—all completed with plumbing and electricity for $4,500 for the contractor’s work, and about the same amount again for materials.
Next, we need to negotiate a new deal for the roof terrace, front terrace, and trenches for water drainage. Working by contract has its perks, as I can take holidays without worrying about work pauses. Fingers crossed they keep progressing so I won’t have to deal with the noise and dust like I did with the first room.