Welcome to Calamuchita!

Over twenty years ago my in-laws retired after serving 43 years as missionaries in Argentina. As church planters they lived all over, usually renting, sometimes buying...

...and one time building a little country cottage about 100 yards from the Santa Rosa River in the Calamuchita Valley. 
They spent many vacations camping on the land, carrying rocks from the river and slowly -- over years -- building the little house. For a while they even lived there, but mostly it was their getaway place.

When they retired the economy was so bad in Argentina that they could not sell the cottage so they left it in the hands of dear friends who did their best to care from it. But it was several hours from the caretaker’s home and over time the little house began to look very shabby. Repeatedly robbers broke in and stole furniture and made a mess. Each time the caretakers would try to fix the problem by putting more bars on the windows, installing large wooden shutters, or adding reinforcements to the doors. 

A building left alone deteriorates. Occasional visits and “fixes” are only temporary and when we arrived in Argentina in 2008, the house was ready for some serious TLC. Unfortunately we weren’t able to give it the attention it needed until 2009 and the repairs, maintenance and improvements are coming along very slowly. Almost no budget and even less time means restoring this cottage to its former glory will be a several-year-long project. We live two hours from the cottage and can only get there once a month -- at most -- and then usually for just a few days.

Since I’m personally addicted to home decorating blogs, a number of which follow the progress of home owners restoring their own homes, I decided it would be fun to document our progress in a separate blog devoted to our County Cottage in Calamuchita.