Before renovating our Coliving EcoIsleta, I was on my way to deliver fruit and vegetables from our organic shop to a neighbor, I was walking calmly thinking about my things and from afar I saw a sign that said For Sale.
It was an old house, in our neighborhood, I took a photo and we called to find out the price, a few days later we visited it and in a few weeks we had the key, we had bought a traditional house, it was something unimaginable for me…
Reform
Rita had the idea of renting the house, so we could pay the bank money. I told her yes, that I would renovate the house in about 7 months, no problem…
Everything was perfectly planned, we had an objective…
We started the renovation and during the first months the work went well, but after some problems with the traditional wooden ceilings that I wanted to maintain, everything began to get complicated.
The renovation lasted 3 years, and we ran out of money twice, worked for a year ourselves, doing everything from plumbing to welding… we worked 7 days a week, and we asked for more money, to buy materials…
That renovation and the countless problems and mistakes, the weekends working, the YouTube videos to learn how to do things I had no idea about, all of that, helped me discover myself, to know who I am when I was ruined…
Traditional Houses
How can we keep our identity? why should we keep it?, even more, What is our identity? I asked myself many times those questions, basically because we need to understand who we are and to be honest, our Coliving EcoIsleta is helping us to find many answers.
This traditional house talks about how our families overcame many difficulties in the XX century and turned La Isleta into a healthy community, full of people caring for each other…
The identity of La Isleta is strongly connected with our traditional architecture. We have been working in the protection of these old houses for more than 10 years.
It is one of the most important heritages we have, and if you want to understand our identity and our community, you have to protect these houses.
Traditional houses
This typology is simple, but very strong, useful, and self-constructed by the owners, mainly with only one floor, and one big patio to keep animals like goats and to grow some veggies…
They have this feeling of love, care, uniqueness, art, perseverance, hard work…
We love these houses. Our Coliving in La Isleta is an opportunity to understand and experience the way workers and their families lived in our neighborhood 100 years ago…
We kept the old structure, hydraulic floors, wood ceiling, doors, etc… The renovation process lasted 3 years, we ran out of money twice and because we wanted to keep many old parts of the house, problems showed up every second…
We did almost everything ourselves inside the house, we built a small workshop in one room, and with the help of Mamadou, a good friend of ours, we worked to renovate the house and build all the furniture. We did welding, plumbing, painting, electricity, etc…
But most importantly, this is an opportunity for our local community to understand the importance of these traditional houses, that’s why we always invite neighbors to visit the house.
