Our House, Part 2

Sunrise over the Organ Mountains

I told you the story of how we found our New Mexican adobe house in Our House, Part 1, leaving off at the point where we bought a house without any working heating system right at the beginning of the winter. Were you worried about us? With a view like the one above from the big patio, who cared that there was no heat? This was the desert, so who needs heat anyway?

Well, anyone who has ever lived at 4000 feet in the high desert knows that heat is pretty important--keeping the outside heat out during the summer, and keeping the inside heat in during the winter. Since Beez had stayed behind in Clovis to finish up a job before retirement, my sister and I moved into the unheated house in early November. Although it was warmish during the day, the nights were pretty nippy and it wasn't long before we started burning packing paper in the fireplaces, then torn-up cardboard boxes, and then fallen tree twigs and branches from the yard. As soon as we found a good source, we got some real firewood delivered and learned a lot about making fires in the two kiva fireplaces. 

The big kiva in the living room, with a batch of bread dough rising on the hearth.
There is a smaller kiva in the next room. The front part of the house had an ancient gas-fired wall heater that the heating man disconnected as soon as he saw it, saying it was a fire hazard.

Kivas are wonderful. If you get a good steady fire going during the day, the adobe mass radiates stored heat into the room during the night. Of course, we eventually got a shiny new wall heater installed in the front part of the house and a heat exchanger in the back part of the house. However, my sister and I both have some fond memories of our times huddled around the adobe hearth. 

You will notice that even with our new heating systems installed, we still do not have central heating. Silly me, I grew up in a brand new [mid-century] suburban house and thought that all American houses had central heating. Apparently not in New Mexico, where the traditional adobe houses have no duct work. Because the adobe brick walls are thick and solid, even our electrical outlets are not set into them, and the electricity between the outlet boxes is sent along some kind of external wiring conduit that I'd rather not think about. 

The dining room, complete with cat on table. Say hello to Gracie!

But you can't beat our house for that cozy cottage feeling. Our wood floors (found under the carpeting that we couldn't wait to rip out) are properly creaky, the windows are set into thick adobe walls, the rooms just glow with lamplight, and the place smells deliciously of the fragrant juniper wood burning in the kiva.

My heart is very happy here.

Adobe sunrise

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.

Dust to Dust Under Clear Blue Skies, for Skywatch

Adobe houses are made of mud. They need a certain amount of upkeep and care or they will return to the earth from whence they came. 

My house (not shown, but you can see it here) is made of adobe. I take care of it, keeping this place in mind. This abandoned and crumbling mud house is in a beautiful setting with trees and fields all around and wonderful mountain views. Once a place for a family's dreams, it is now a ruin melting back into the ground. 

For skies and scenes from all over the world, be sure to visit Skywatch Friday. 

It's Time to Go!

The adobe house in New Mexico

Over the next several days our family will be packing up more boxes, loading them, attending a closing for this Clovis house, driving the boxes and furniture and cats and dogs down to Las Cruces, attending another closing for our "new" adobe home, then unloading the boxes and furniture and cats and dogs.

In between, we will be smiling and smiling and trying to rest our backs, because surely people at our age should not be behaving this way!

I'll take notes and lots of photos and will be back some time next week to share the experience with you all. In the meantime, just in case you haven't seen it, you might enjoy reading about another old house we lived in: The House on High Street.

The High Street house in New Hampshire

Adobe Homes: Where Can You Find Them?

Adobe construction in Peru (Wikimedia Commons)

According to EarthArchitecture.org:

One half of the world's population, approximately 3 billion people on six continents, lives or works in buildings constructed of earth. The techniques for this kind of construction may include rammed earth, mud brick or adobe, compressed earth, and cob (a building material that is similar to adobe, and which consists of clay, earth, sand, straw, and water).

Adobe hut; Kibbutz Lotan in Israel (Wikimedia Commons)

Remains of an old adobe wall and part of a reconstructed one at Pecos National Historical Park, New Mexico (my photo)

Inside the House Made of Mud

Banco, kiva, and vigas at the Pecan House

Thick, thick walls made of earth and water and straw
connected to the earth they were made from
the same color as the garden soil.
Deep windowsills
the firmness of bricks underfoot
rounded corners
kiva fireplace burning fragrant wood
bancos to sit on
vigas and latillas up above
nichos in the walls.
A peaceful quiet, held and contained.
Warm in winter
cool in summer
windows looking out at desert willows and cottonwoods
and maybe some hollyhocks.
A strong sense of shelter.

I wrote these words for a post back in 2007 that remembered the little Las Cruces adobe home we owned back in the late 1990s. Meant to describe the feeling of living within adobe walls, they will serve as an introduction to some of the terms used for the features of an adobe home.

bancos: low earthen benches, built into the walls for seating

kiva fireplace: a rounded adobe fireplace, built into the corner of a room

vigas: round wooden beams, used for ceiling support

latillas: small saplings placed across vigas (ceiling beams) to form a ceiling

nicho: a built-in niche for a statue

For more photographs of these and other terms pertaining to an adobe home, see the Su Casa Visual Dictionary of Southwestern Style.

***

Adobe Homes on The Zees Go West; An Index

Adobe Homes on The Zees Go West; An Index

Adobe Homes: Where Can You Find Them?

Don't Have a Plow Guy Any More

History of Adobe Construction

A House Made of Mud

Inside the House Made of Mud

Kibbutz Lotan

Living in a Little Adobe House

Our House, Part 1

Our House, Part 2

Using Natural Elements to House the Homeless

Adobe Homes: History of Adobe Construction

Adobe walls in Madrid, New Mexico (Wikimedia Commons)

It's time for me to learn everything that I can about adobe homes, since we are in the process of buying an historical home made of adobe. It's pretty exciting to think about living in a fairly "green" home, and to realize that it has much in common with simple homes all around the world.

Adobe home being built, Milyanfan village, Kyrgyzstan (Wikimedia Commons)

My first search about the history of adobe construction turned up this information, all quoted from The Natural House; A Complete Guide to Healthy, Energy-Efficient, Environmental Homes, by Daniel D. Chiras.

"Although no one knows where adobe construction actually began, the earliest adobe architecture may have appeared around 6000 B.C. in the region now known as Iraq. Adobe structures have also been uncovered in Egypt, dating back to about 5000 B.C. From here, adobe building traveled to Spain, carried by the Moors, Arab and Berber soldiers who conquered Spain... From Spain, adobe construction techniques traveled to the western hemisphere around 1600 A.D., starting in South America, then spreading north into what is now known as the desert Southwest of the United States....

Adobe is not the legacy of any one culture. It was the outgrowth of necessity and local availability. However, despite the fact that adobe building emerged independently in several locations, the techniques and appearance of buildings are remarkably similar. Adobe homes in China, for example, bear an uncanny resemblance to those in the U.S. desert Southwest."

***

Adobe Homes on The Zees Go West; An Index

A House Made of Mud

Walking into an adobe is like walking into welcoming arms

If you've been reading this blog for any time, you probably think our family is nuts. We're either moving from one place to another or talking about moving. It's true, we have always been gypsies, but we are coming to the end of all our moving about. It's time to buy a retirement home where we can shelve our collection of maps and atlases and which we can use as a permanent base from which to travel.

You've probably also noticed that over the past year or so we've explored a number of places to see if they would fit our needs: Pecos, Estancia, and Cochiti Lake, for example. We even found houses that were for sale that might have worked for us, but as we waited for our Clovis house to sell, we saw those places move off the market, one by one. Finally, our own house sold just last week, and we reviewed our possibilities. No one place pleased all the members of the family until we went back to an early choice: Las Cruces, where we have made an offer on an "historical" adobe home that has been accepted. We are hoping that the rest of the real estate doings go smoothly.

My next job, in addition to packing up here, is to find out all I can about adobe architecture, this very New Mexican style. Of course, I will share what I find out with you on this blog.

For starters, here is a quote from a book on adobe houses: "No one who does not live in an adobe house can imagine the bond that exists between house and resident. Walking into an adobe is like walking into welcoming arms. This is not just fantasy: adobe walls envelop you with a cool respite on a sweltering day and cozy warmth on a frigid one. The material itself provides these qualities, but the "look" of an adobe house... is also part of the welcome." (Reeve: The Small Adobe House).

Pretty good for una casa hecha de lodo (a house made of mud).

***

Adobe Homes on The Zees Go West; An Index

Living in a Little Adobe House*

Thick, thick walls made of earth and water and straw
connected to the earth they were made from
the same color as the garden soil.
Deep windowsills
the firmness of cool tiles underfoot
rounded corners
kiva fireplace burning fragrant wood
bancos to sit on
vigas and latillas up above
nichos in the walls.
A peaceful quiet, held and contained.
Warm in winter
cool in summer
windows looking out at desert willows and cottonwoods
and maybe some hollyhocks.
A strong sense of shelter.

**********
Kiva, bancos, vigas, latillas, nichos: See the glossary of New Mexico architectural and decorating terms at http://www.jkhomes.com/byjohn.html

Books About Adobe Houses:
Adobe Houses for Today, by Laura Sanchez.
Behind Adobe Walls, by Lisl Dennis.
The Small Adobe House, by Agnesa Reeve.


Children’s Books about Adobe Houses:
Grandmother’s Adobe Dollhouse, by MaryLou M. Smith.
This House is Made of Mud/Esta Casa está Hecha de Lodo, by Ken Buchanan.

Adobe Homes on The Zees Go West; An Index

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*Dedicated to our little adobe house in Las Cruces