Plastering at the Cabin, Part 2

Contrary to popular belief, it takes a long time for natural adobe homes to return to the earth from which they were made.  The roof (with 2' overhang) has protected these unplastered walls for over 30 years with no discernable 'melting.'  As time goes by and the interior is basically done, I realize I have to finish the exterior.  So the plastering has begun.

The process is pretty straightforward.  Obtain screened soil with the appropriate clay/sand ratio, add a binder  (I'm using horse manure - I have a ready source), add water and mix.  It's a good idea to wait a few hours to let the mud fully hydrate.  Remove dust from the wall, hose it down to help adherance, and then apply mud.  Adobe mud is great stuff . You can keep working it forever on the wall.  You can keep your mud till the next day.  If you have too much mud you can let it dry and put it back in the garden, or the yard, or maybe make some adobes with it.   

As for the technique, everyone develops their own.  I do not plaster with a trowel because I have a difficult time maneuvering the tool with mud on it.  I use my hands to apply the mud, and because I don't have calluses, I use thin leather gloves to maintain my feel for the wall and keep my skin from being ground off by abrasion.  Plastering is fun and the end result looks great (as you can see in the photo below).

Plastered on the left, unplastered on the right.

According to my father, a traditional mud plaster without stabilizer will last 40-50 years.  After that, the walls have to be replastered.  He seemed to think this was a negative, but compared to normal house maintenance, it's not bad. And I think mud just looks great, as you can see here, the result is warm and natural.

Stay tuned for more plastering in the spring..

Plastering At the Cabin, Part 1

As I mentioned in the previous post, I've been plastering at the cabin.  The building is made of basic adobe (dirt + water + sun); no additives.  These days, many people use stabilized adobes to increase waterprooficity, but when my dad was building the cabin, he went with the traditional recipe.  (Stabilizing adobe most commonly requires the addition of petroleum additives.  Another option is the addition of lime.)   The benefit to natural adobe is that anyone who has ever made a mudpie has the basic experience and feel of the material.

The back of the cabin - all adobes visible.

Looking at the still unplastered walls of the cabin is like a reverse stratigraphic investigation.  My father made many of the adobes himself, trucking in soils from various areas nearby.  As the bricks were made, he build the walls, so a close look reveals a variety of textures and colors.  Some bricks were made by now defunct adobe yards throughout NM.  When I was very little, he brought in some burnt adobes (fired in kilns until the clay has turned to ceramic) from the Tucson area, a type of brick not seen in NM.  Some bricks have larger pebbles, others have a lot of sticks and bits of wood in them (which makes me wonder because my dad hates that).  The mud used as mortar came from yet another soil source, so the walls are interesting to say the least. 

They walls are, of course, quite thick - at least 12", more in some places.  In the early days, my dad was sloppy about the mortaring, so there are many large crevices that serve as homes to a diversity of insects and small mammals (how I feel about this depends on how often the fauna pass through the veil into the interior of the home). The whole building is very NM, not at all like the nueva Santa Fe Style featuring smoothed edges, massive walls and weird pink and turquoise accents.   

The Tragic Cost of Mud Plaster In December

"Where oh where is my tail?"

Recently I plastered a portion of an adobe wall at the cabin.  I used a traditional recipe: dirt, water, horse manure.  A friend brought me a truckload of dirt from a particular locality that my father indicated was the appropriate mix of clay and sand for good earth plaster.  The dirt has been sitting in a squat pile in front of the cabin for two years, looking pretty much like a boring pile of dirt, just like so many others sitting in the front yards of NM homes.

Anyway, I was mixing mud a few weeks ago, at the beginning of December, an interesting time for most NM reptiles.  Nights are regularly freezing or below, but days are warm -into the 70's.  Most herps decide to find a cold, safe spot and hunker down for the next few months, but a few are still out.  They are taking advantage of those last good basking hours and hunting the diversity of insects following the same strategy.

I was also taking advantage of the bask worthy temperatures and so, there I was, digging into my pile of dirt, tossing it against a screen to get rid of rock and gravel.  Every so often, something would bounce off the screen rather than smack and slide down.   The bouncers were lizards - I have never seen so many in one place at one time.  After unearthing five and injuring two (so sorry!), I decided I would have to stop - no more plastering in December! 

Over my short lifetime, I've investigated many piles of rocks and found many lizards (and snakes).  I've never found lizards fully surrounded by dirt.  In the end, it's not unusual.  This was soft dirt, very diggable, and probably enticing as a quiet spot with stable temperatures.  Because of the fire this past spring and the giant cobble/boulder dike only 100 yards away, I would have guessed that a lot of the local reptiles would seek winter hibernacula there. 

Although I didn't do much plastering, and now have to do extra good deeds to make up for the lost tails, the big plus was finding three different kinds of lizards without much work: a juvenile Madrean alligator lizard (Elgaria kingii), Cnemidophorus flagellicaudus and C. uniparens.   I took photos of everyone and will post some info about these guys in a few weeks. 

Stay tuned for this year's herpetological version of meet the locals...

Creating the Bottlecap Mosaic, Part 2

In the last post, I described the process for creating the mural image.  In this post, I'll show how th individual tiles were made.  All 24,000 caps were sorted into milk jugs and various sizes of plastic bags.  The point here is that all the caps had to be separated so I could find the appropriate cap for each spot in the mural.  When I was ready to create the tiles, I was surrounded by all my jugs and bags arranged by color.  Although this photo of my workspace on the porch doesn't look too messy, it also doesn't show the piles of stuff under the three tables.

The mosaic had been output as images of smaller tiles, each numbered by row and section.  I followed the image printed on the output sheet, selecting and arranging caps row by row. Once a tile was complete, the caps were moved to my magnetic display board (covered with plastic wrap).  The magnets kept the caps aligned and in the correct orientation during the next steps.  In retrospect, and FYI if you want to try this yourself, making the board was an incredibly useful move.  The project could not have been done without it.

The caps were cleaned with window cleaner (to remove dust, storage grunge & rust), then polished with rubbing alcohol (to dry them and remove any oils).  After a few minutes, the tiles were sprayed with a UV protective acrylic sealer.  Even though the samples at the cabin show no signs of fading after one year (see previous post), I wanted to make sure the colors last as long as possible.  The cabin is in a very dry climate, but protection against rust seemed like a good idea.  Just in case.

After 24 hours of drying time, a piece of tulle (for ballerina tutus) was placed over the caps.  Four dots of glue (equal mix of Elmers and Eileens Tacky Glue) were dropped onto each cap through the tulle.  Because I sealed the caps, regular glue wasn't adhesive enough to hold the caps in place.  As I've mentioned in previous mosaic posts, the glue/tulle combo keeps everything in together during shipping and installation, but allows for easy removal of the tulle at the end of the project.

Once dry, each tile was labeled (tile#, top, bottom, right and left) completely.  The entire mosaic fit into one large box and it was shipped to NM.  Next step installation!  Stay tuned...

Location, location, location

To begin the story, you need to know about the setting.  Catron Couny is an interesting place. The Sonoran and Chihuahuan deserts merge somewhat in this area. In addition, the geological complextiy, elevational gradients and relatively high numbers (for a desert) of rivers and streams make for a biologically diverse area. In other words, views are amazing where-ever you go, the birding is fantastic and there are interesting animals and plants everywhere.

Back view of the house

To get to the house, you have to drive, and drive, and drive.  Thankfully, it is a beautiful drive from any direction. This part of the country is pretty isolated; it is a four hour drive from any large city (Albuquerque, Tuscon, or El Paso), and once you get there its nice and quiet. 

Passing the Very Large Array on the drive from Albuquerque 

The house was began in the 70's by my father.  He started the magazine Adobe News back then, which over the decades has transmuted into Adobe Builder and the Southwest Solar Adobe School.  He designed the cabin and built it with the help of friends and students through the early 90's.  At the point when I took over the project, the house was the shell that you see below.  It looks nice (and it is), but to stay there is still an exercise in fancy camping.  All the electricity is in, but the plumbing was not finished.  The adobe guarantees a level of climate control (along with a fireplace in winter), but the creature comforts weren't there.

The house in 2005

Forthcoming posts will describe the history of the site, construction progress, future projects and the growth of the orchard and garden.  See you soon..

Barbed wire ball in a juniper tree outside the house