November 27, 2008
November 18, 2008
Forgetting The Pain
I have never had a baby, but I am told that you forget the pain of child birth once the baby is put it your arms. I think setting up a home in Mexico could be compared to this. You forget all the pain of setting it up once you are sitting with a cold cervesa, the sun is shining and everything looks beautiful....OK, maybe not eactly like child birth.....but along the same lines.
I honestly thought I was smarter this time I actually got a little cocky (who is kidding who....I AM Gringo Furniture) bragging to my husband and mother that we'd be finished in just 2 days and then we'd have the rest of the time to explore Merida......yyyyyeah, that came right around and bit me in the you know what!
The first problem happened 3 days before we left. As I had indicated in one of my previous BLOGs I was going to use myself as a Guinea Pig for an accessories line. I had taken over 4 months to plan this, talking frequently with the supplier and going over any possible problems.
3 days before we left I called the supplier to make sure all was fine and I found out it had not even left the USA. In fact, the supplier had somehow screwed up the date to deliver and seemed really unfazed by his mistake. He actually had the nerve to say that he'd been working on a 3 million dollar piece of business and had given mine to someone else. I was so put off by his lack of interest in servicing me that I told him to cancel the order. I too have made mistakes (more than I can count) but I have never minimized what I did and I always tried to make up my mistakes to the customer. Weather you spend $1500 dollars with us or $100,000 with us, we will always treat you the same. Everyone is important no matter what the dollar amount it.
So, the long and short of it is....we are back to the drawing board for accessories. But not to fret, we already have ideas that we think will be even better for our customers. We will unveil this idea over the next month.
With that behind us we boarded the plane to Merida. We arrived late on the Sunday night and went straight to the hotel and got some rest as the following day was going to be busy. We woke up the next morning, went out for breakfast and then shot over to Walmart to buy bedding for our beds. We figured if we had bedding we could get through till the following day and focus on receiving the furniture after we signed all the papers at the lawyers.
We arrive at the lawyers at 10:00 and signed all the necessary paper work. Our lawyer was amazing and so was the real estate company we purchased thru, Mexico International (I will write another BLOG about this next week). By 10:30 we owned the house and had the keys in hand -- Whoo Hooo!
I called Alex back in Canada to make sure the truck was on time.....surprisingly, it was....this never happens. The plan was to have the furniture arrive at 12:00 noon and we were on-time......I was looking like a STAR at this point.
We drove to the house, opened the door and fell madly in love with the house. If you remember, we had never seen it other than on the Internet....so seeing it for the first time was incredible. It was perfect....I was speechless (which many will say is impossible)..... I will never forget that feeling of joy, it was indescribable to know this house was ours. It is truly a work of art.
By 11:00am our plant manager from Puebla arrived at the house with the carpenter. I lined up 6 workers to assist with the unloading of the furniture....how much better could it be going I kept saying to myself....I started to feel a like a SUPER Star!
Yeah, right....try a falling star. Unbenounced to me, you can not bring a tractor trailer into the center of Merida during the day....WHO KNEW? Apparently, I should have done a little more homework on the delivery into Centro. I soon learned through our trusty and wonderful Real Estate agent Henry Ponce (who also was the architect of the house) that we could not even consider unloading the truck until at least 10:00pm or risk getting a fine.
TEN PM! Are you kidding me!?! I had calculated that by 10pm I was to be finished unpacking and sitting on the roof with a margarita... this new reality was putting a spanner into my plans....my star status burned out at this point with my 71 year old mother who was already looking wilted and my husband who's patience is lacking at the best of times.....and it was barely noon.
It is always best to have a plan B, so, plan B went into effect. We left my Mom at the house with a cold beer (beer always unwilts her), sent the plant manager and Carpenter off to have lunch, sent all the workers away with orders to return at 10pm and jumped in the car and did a Costco run with my grumpy husband.
We went into Costco and attacked the task like a couple of dogs on T-bones, we must have looked like 2 crazed animals. Within 30 minutes we had 2 carts overflowing with bedding, coffee makers, towels, pillows, mops, glasses...you name it, we had it. When we could not fit another thing we went to the check-out. I still shiver when I think of the total we spent....but at that moment, who cared, it was one more thing that was done.
We drove back to the house, unloaded everything from the car and began to put the kitchen together. By about 5:00pm we were idle again with nothing to do. I decided to risk fate and ordered the truck to arrive at 7:00pm and called the workers to arrive then too. It was my hope that the police would not drive by and put a stop to us.
My star started to burn a little brighter as we never had any problems with the police and we were able to start unloading at 7:00pm. It took 3 hours and 12 people to get the furniture off the truck and into the house. It took an additional 4 hours and 5 people to take every scrap of wrapping off all the furniture.
By 2:00am we were all exhausted, red eyed and our fingers were raw from unwrapping the furniture. I went into my mothers room at one point to say good night and there was blood all over the floor from someone cutting their finger with a knife while unwrapping. We all fell into bed and had a very restless sleep as we were all still on an adrenaline high.
.....to be continued
I have never had a baby, but I am told that you forget the pain of child birth once the baby is put it your arms. I think setting up a home in Mexico could be compared to this. You forget all the pain of setting it up once you are sitting with a cold cervesa, the sun is shining and everything looks beautiful....OK, maybe not eactly like child birth.....but along the same lines.
I honestly thought I was smarter this time I actually got a little cocky (who is kidding who....I AM Gringo Furniture) bragging to my husband and mother that we'd be finished in just 2 days and then we'd have the rest of the time to explore Merida......yyyyyeah, that came right around and bit me in the you know what!
The first problem happened 3 days before we left. As I had indicated in one of my previous BLOGs I was going to use myself as a Guinea Pig for an accessories line. I had taken over 4 months to plan this, talking frequently with the supplier and going over any possible problems.
3 days before we left I called the supplier to make sure all was fine and I found out it had not even left the USA. In fact, the supplier had somehow screwed up the date to deliver and seemed really unfazed by his mistake. He actually had the nerve to say that he'd been working on a 3 million dollar piece of business and had given mine to someone else. I was so put off by his lack of interest in servicing me that I told him to cancel the order. I too have made mistakes (more than I can count) but I have never minimized what I did and I always tried to make up my mistakes to the customer. Weather you spend $1500 dollars with us or $100,000 with us, we will always treat you the same. Everyone is important no matter what the dollar amount it.
So, the long and short of it is....we are back to the drawing board for accessories. But not to fret, we already have ideas that we think will be even better for our customers. We will unveil this idea over the next month.
With that behind us we boarded the plane to Merida. We arrived late on the Sunday night and went straight to the hotel and got some rest as the following day was going to be busy. We woke up the next morning, went out for breakfast and then shot over to Walmart to buy bedding for our beds. We figured if we had bedding we could get through till the following day and focus on receiving the furniture after we signed all the papers at the lawyers.
We arrive at the lawyers at 10:00 and signed all the necessary paper work. Our lawyer was amazing and so was the real estate company we purchased thru, Mexico International (I will write another BLOG about this next week). By 10:30 we owned the house and had the keys in hand -- Whoo Hooo!
I called Alex back in Canada to make sure the truck was on time.....surprisingly, it was....this never happens. The plan was to have the furniture arrive at 12:00 noon and we were on-time......I was looking like a STAR at this point.
We drove to the house, opened the door and fell madly in love with the house. If you remember, we had never seen it other than on the Internet....so seeing it for the first time was incredible. It was perfect....I was speechless (which many will say is impossible)..... I will never forget that feeling of joy, it was indescribable to know this house was ours. It is truly a work of art.
By 11:00am our plant manager from Puebla arrived at the house with the carpenter. I lined up 6 workers to assist with the unloading of the furniture....how much better could it be going I kept saying to myself....I started to feel a like a SUPER Star!
Yeah, right....try a falling star. Unbenounced to me, you can not bring a tractor trailer into the center of Merida during the day....WHO KNEW? Apparently, I should have done a little more homework on the delivery into Centro. I soon learned through our trusty and wonderful Real Estate agent Henry Ponce (who also was the architect of the house) that we could not even consider unloading the truck until at least 10:00pm or risk getting a fine.
TEN PM! Are you kidding me!?! I had calculated that by 10pm I was to be finished unpacking and sitting on the roof with a margarita... this new reality was putting a spanner into my plans....my star status burned out at this point with my 71 year old mother who was already looking wilted and my husband who's patience is lacking at the best of times.....and it was barely noon.
It is always best to have a plan B, so, plan B went into effect. We left my Mom at the house with a cold beer (beer always unwilts her), sent the plant manager and Carpenter off to have lunch, sent all the workers away with orders to return at 10pm and jumped in the car and did a Costco run with my grumpy husband.
We went into Costco and attacked the task like a couple of dogs on T-bones, we must have looked like 2 crazed animals. Within 30 minutes we had 2 carts overflowing with bedding, coffee makers, towels, pillows, mops, glasses...you name it, we had it. When we could not fit another thing we went to the check-out. I still shiver when I think of the total we spent....but at that moment, who cared, it was one more thing that was done.
We drove back to the house, unloaded everything from the car and began to put the kitchen together. By about 5:00pm we were idle again with nothing to do. I decided to risk fate and ordered the truck to arrive at 7:00pm and called the workers to arrive then too. It was my hope that the police would not drive by and put a stop to us.
My star started to burn a little brighter as we never had any problems with the police and we were able to start unloading at 7:00pm. It took 3 hours and 12 people to get the furniture off the truck and into the house. It took an additional 4 hours and 5 people to take every scrap of wrapping off all the furniture.
By 2:00am we were all exhausted, red eyed and our fingers were raw from unwrapping the furniture. I went into my mothers room at one point to say good night and there was blood all over the floor from someone cutting their finger with a knife while unwrapping. We all fell into bed and had a very restless sleep as we were all still on an adrenaline high.
.....to be continued
November 13, 2008
VIDEO'S
Our newest feature
We are still uploading all our videos. We have several ready to view. Please go to http://www.gringofurniture.com/videos_000.asp to see our furniture in real life!
Our newest feature
We are still uploading all our videos. We have several ready to view. Please go to http://www.gringofurniture.com/videos_000.asp to see our furniture in real life!
November 11, 2008
All Set-Up In Merida
(Percy table, made in antique and recycled pine paired with Iron Chairs)
For the past three weeks I have been busy setting up our new home and showroom in Merida. Boy, is it ever a big job to do. Since I had not set up a home in Mexico for over 3 years, I had forgotten some of the pain involved. One thing that was a surprise to us was the assistance of the real estate firm we bought thru. I will go into much more detail later, but I don't know if i could have been more impressed with Mexico International, the agents from there were top notch.
I will write more next week on everything that happened as this week I am busy catching up. We are currently getting slammed with orders for people needing furniture for the Christmas season. So, in the mean time, I will tease you with some photos of the furniture. Everything you see is Gringo Furniture, even the mirrors on the walls. ENJOY!
(Percy table, made in antique and recycled pine paired with Iron Chairs)
For the past three weeks I have been busy setting up our new home and showroom in Merida. Boy, is it ever a big job to do. Since I had not set up a home in Mexico for over 3 years, I had forgotten some of the pain involved. One thing that was a surprise to us was the assistance of the real estate firm we bought thru. I will go into much more detail later, but I don't know if i could have been more impressed with Mexico International, the agents from there were top notch.
I will write more next week on everything that happened as this week I am busy catching up. We are currently getting slammed with orders for people needing furniture for the Christmas season. So, in the mean time, I will tease you with some photos of the furniture. Everything you see is Gringo Furniture, even the mirrors on the walls. ENJOY!
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