The Walls - Day 3

More adobes in the mud today.  We had to hold progress to the 5th coarse so the electrician could run the wires through the walls to the outlets for the exterior walls.  Never-the-less, one gets the definite impression that a home is rising up.

Among all the hubbub, Lorraine is still working her magic on the floors.  Looking east, the utility room, 2nd bathroom, and hall floors are all bricked in.  Here she is working on the two back bedrooms.

The Walls - Day 2

The beautiful adobe walls are starting to show their character. The first coarse is made up of cement stabilized adobes, according to the Santa Fe County Adobe building code, but each coarse thereafter is made of natural adobes, i.e., dirt. Each block is melted to the next with a slather of mud. When dry all of the adobe walls are like one solid slab of earth. If the owner, that's me, had delivered the window and door bucks (4"x10" rough cut timbers) in time we would see them installed as the walls grow. However, the timber is coming in three days so, until then, we will build around their absence.

Poor Lorraine, the floor lady, after enjoying the piece and quiet of our home site all to herself for a week, now must work around the adobe crew of 9. Now only the very early morning hours and late evenings are hers alone.  But she is very thankful the adobe crew put down plastic sheets to protect her beautiful brick floor.  The light colored brick shown is the brick she has crafted this morning, not exposed to the overnight rain.

Things are going UP!

We're getting some elevation on our home site.  Guides for the crew laying up adobes, called both "speed leads" or "story poles" are being put up in preparation for the construction of our adobe walls.  The first coarse of adobes are "fully stabilized" or waterproof required by the adobe construction codes.  All the rest of our adobe are simply mud blocks.  The story poles are placed at the corners of two exterior walls or the intersection of an interior wall and an exterior wall.  They make it easier for the adoblero to make straight level walls.  Of course simultaneously the brick floors are being completed and the electrician is laying in the wiring and installing outlet boxes between adobe courses.  It's like a well oiled machine. . . most of the time.  The walls will start to go up next week.

Brick Floors Started

Our brick floors are now emerging. There was some delay caused by the radiant tubing expanding in the heat and pushing up in the sand above the level that the bricks for the floor are to lay. I should have planned for more sand than the 1.5" specified. With more fill sand, say 3", the leveling of the dirt under the sand and the flatness of the wire grid (which holds the radiant heating tubing in place) would have been less critical. Never-the-less, as you can see, now the bricks are going down.  And they look beautiful! Our brick lady, Lorraine Duran is doing a beautiful job. You can tell she "loves her art," as she puts it.  Mind you, she has been doing this for almost 30 years so she has had some practice. Indeed, after these photos were taken she completed the entire living room the same day.