Once upon a time in Mexico… renovating an old house in Mérida

La Rosa, a house in the historic center of Mérida, capital of the Mexican state of Yucatán, exudes a sense of the past and reflects its historic surroundings. It's something its owner, architect Lucía Rios Santos, was keen to see safeguarded when she and her husband came to renovate it. “Each room offered a space that had a story to tell. We felt that history should be saved and preserved," she says.

She tells the story of its construction in the 1940s: "A man called Cristobal Duran, Don Boxol to his neighbors, bought the land and built a family home there, which was also a grocery store. For more than 70 years, his store was the neighborhood grocery store, and some neighbors still fondly remember their childhoods spent swimming in the water tanks and renting bikes from him. »

But by the time Rios Santos' husband, Oswaldo Denis Dominguez, acquired the house a few years ago, it had fallen into disrepair. "The house was in very poor condition," he recalls, "with damp rot, exposed ceilings, and dirty, broken tiles. Most of the original handmade floor tiles were in good condition, although some were full of grease, some were broken, there were original doors, some in very poor condition, some completely destroyed and the house was full of trash and empty bottles , as it had been a warehouse for several years."

"We discovered wonderful details that needed to be respected, and in some cases enhanced," says Rios Santos.

The property is made up of two houses and a hiking garden. Next to the original family home is a second building, which was the grocery store and is now the kitchen, guest bathroom and living room terrace. The houses were unconnected and the gardens were separated by a wall which has since been largely demolished - the only remaining part now separates the garden from the hammock and the outer hallway to the bedroom, accessed through the gardens.