Our House, Part 1

Such a cozy room
The windows are illuminated
By the sunshine through them
Fiery gems for you
Only for you

Our house is a very, very fine house
With two cats in the yard
Life used to be so hard
Now everything is easy...

                                                                             

                                                                              Our House - Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young

Living room (before): Vigas (big log beams), a kiva (sculptured beehive fireplace shaped by hand with adobe), and a short banco (built-in adobe seat near the ladder)

New Mexico dreams: During the long, snowy winters in New Hampshire, we thought about a perfect adobe house in the desert. We learned about the architectural features of adobes and often said the words out loud, just to hear them--Kiva, bancos, vigas, latillas, nichos. We were pretty sure we would never be able to find such a house that we could actually afford.

Oh, I could find adobe style houses online. Digging through the listings for frame and stucco fake adobe homes in subdivisions, I would occasionally unearth a home that was real adobe. They were usually very, very expensive custom homes, nice to look at. But they were way beyond our means and they didn't really fit our philosophy of small and simple being best.

Years passed: Once we were relocated to eastern New Mexico for Beez's job and had started looking for our retirement home in Las Cruces, I even found a listing for the very house we would eventually buy. It was charming, but overpriced and way more than we could spend. It kept showing up in the listings, month after month. I got to know it so well that I noticed when one of the original two Indian jar stained glass windows was replaced with a new set of French doors, and when the outside was repainted. I would show Beez, and say "this is what we're looking for, just at a different price."

And then, one sleepless night, I checked out the listing once more. My jaw dropped: The sellers had apparently gotten so fed up with getting no offers that they dropped the price by $40,000! I called the next morning and made an appointment for us to drive the four hours to Las Cruces the following Saturday to see the place. Never mind that our Clovis house hadn't sold yet.

And then, things got even better. On the Thursday of that week we got a firm offer on the Clovis house, accepted it, and dusted off the checkbook for our Saturday viewing.

I still remember my feelings, driving toward the outskirts of town, thinking this place can't be as good as it looks in the listing, and then, seeing it come into view. Nestled into a pecan orchard, with a big patio and a gorgeous view of the mountains that had never been mentioned in the real estate ad.

Oh, sure, central heating had never been mentioned in the real estate ad either (I had noticed the omission) because there wasn't any. That probably explained why the house had languished on the market for so long. Or, perhaps, people were looking for newer faux adobe houses in subdivisions. I'm just glad no one else grabbed our house before we did.

Living room (after):
You can see a nicho in the wall to the right of the kiva. New tile floor. Visiting English sheepdog Bentley.

The story is continued in Our House, Part 2.