Many people we have met at Kookaburra, have asked if we had to do much to bring the building up to scratch and 'hell yeah', our stock response, always sounded like an understatement. Here are a few of our 'before and after' photos to demonstrate why that is so.
Let's get straight into the mood and start with a rare 'renovation' photo of me smiling.
Why am I smiling? I can't remember - a gesture for the photographer perhaps - a front for the nervous, silent question: "How and why did you actually climb all the way up onto that roof?"
We did have a vision. This is sort of what it looked like.
...clean lines, safe stairs - all in all a long way from this, our reality.
The dunny had been cannily fitted in under the stairs. It had to go although we lamented its loss. No we didn't, just kidding. In the following photo, you can see the same courtyard, the little one out back where the apartments open onto. After the toilet was removed, we opened up the window spaces and closed off that doorway that you see across the way.
We originally had six separate small rooms upstairs and downstairs, each with its own door opening out. Now, there are only two doors. We imagined the household's domestic help had always lived in these rear rooms for they were somewhat more ramshackle than the accommodation closer to the street. Closer to the street, there were more indoor bathrooms, there was hot and cold running water, there were light fittings, floor coverings, parlours, stair rails, door handles, lounge rooms, washing machines - and the list of plenty goes on...
Out back, the residents, both upstairs and downstairs, shared the one outside cold water faucet and the one outside toilet - they had no kitchen or bathroom facilities. It makes you wonder.
But back to the 'after' shot. This is taken from the kitchen of what is now the downstairs apartment.
This next photo shows the same little courtyard but from the larger courtyard, looking up the zaguan which is the Spanish word for hallway or porch. It was taken on a somewhat sunny day despite 2009's rainy month lasting more than 120 days. We came to regard this prematurely dug trench as our first water feature.
All bad things, just like all good things though, come to an end as this 'after' shot admirably demonstrates.
Next, we move onto the main courtyard where so many readers will have enjoyed a coffee.
What? Don't recognise this, this...shell?
Voila! Ain't digital photography grand? Here you can see how we brought those windows down lower so that people sitting at tables inside this room could see into the courtyard.
The next photo shows the rear wall of the courtyard after we had replaced two of the upright columns and partially removed the upstairs balcony. We reluctantly had to reinforce this beautifully revealed adobe block wall with concrete though.
It took a great deal of fine tuning to make this facade seamless and in the process, we learned the value of knowing a few key words in Spanish like 'desplomeado' or 'not plumb'. We learnt that the hard way when some walls got thicker and thicker in the pursuit of a perfectly upright plumb line. That reminds me... at the very beginning of this renovation project, the workers teamed up into pairs and, with hose line, water and chalk, set about finding the one metre line and marking it upon every wall just like a couple of ancient Egyptian workers might have.
And now to the Cafe itself. I've decided to show you the transformation in reverse order starting with a photo of how the space looked on roughly Day 300, a few weeks before opening. Note the doorways, the light streaming in from the courtyard, the walls and split levels and false ceilings...
This next photo, while still showing the light and levels, gives you an idea of the process: The messy, gritty detail of that process.
And this last photo, taken from the same angle, fast rewinds us to, more or less, Day 1. Look! No light, no doorways, no nice wooden floor and definitely no Espresso machine.
It was a big project! We hung around the site everyday and so the wow factor didn't really sink in until much later when we began poring over the photos we had taken religiously at every step. For anyone still interested in more, we've got over a thousand images documenting the changes to these 300 humble square metres of Cuenca. We had our ups and downs but that would appear to be pretty normal for any kind of project. The important thing though? We're still married!!!
