We first slept in this room the night we closed on the house, on my birthday, the day before the world stopped when the COVID-19 lockdown went into effect. We had the mattress bought and shipped in to our realtor friend’s house and built the bed in the garage with a case of beer. It was one of the first rooms we started working on when we immediately tore out the old built-in closet to discover a lot of hidden water damage. I closed up the original doorway and framed in the new entrance from the hallway during the bathroom renovation in the fall of 2021 and we used this is as our main sleeping space and guest quarters in it’s deplorable state for the past few years until we finished the backroom at the end of last year. Dang, it feels so good to have this one finally wrapped up (just missing the area rug on order)! No major plumbing, electrical, or structural work here, but a good bit of TLC to bring this Southwest-style chamber up to snuff for our next round of visitors… Read on to see the process!
We spotted some major failures on the cracking walls under the window sill next to the closet right away and knew we had to tear off the old cement-based plaster. (Another classic case of mismatched materials and neglect – Adobe walls MUST have earthen plaster to allow for natural moisture regulation or “breathability” with the capillary action of air-water exchange inside the mud material. Cement-based plasters trap the water and prevent the walls from breathing which results in cracking and breakaways. Refer to the book, Adobe Conservation: A Preservation Handbook, for more information.) It wasn’t until the closet was gone that we saw the extent of the water damage from a previously leaking roof that completely saturated and rotted away the floors under the nine layers of carpet and linoleum. I still think about about the elderly lady living alone in this place with it being this way for so long…
Having the doorway (no actual swinging door) open up into the living room was not very comfortable, especially since the door to the outside was just beyond.
I took care to close that up at my first opportunity using old planks from the wall I took down between the living room and kitchen. Then, I mixed up a batch of stucco to cover the wood and chicken wire, and finally coated everything on the living room side with drywall mud.
The new doorway went in where the old wall furnace used to stand in the hallway after the plumbers moved the gas line. Remember, I am NOT a carpenter, or a skilled builder of any sort. I didn’t really know what I was doing, but took care to look for any obstacles inside the wall as best I could. The live wires for the furnace were temporarily capped off (and later handled by a licensed electrician with the bathroom rewiring). The old ductwork was removed and the hole patched by a roofing pro later on. Structurally, I just envisioned everything being a quite simple timber build like the sun porch I renovated during the summer, and just went forward with the demo. The gap between the studs in this location just so happened to be perfect for the rough in of a standard 30″ door width – WINNER!
I had to fit a board into the floor to close the gap left behind and found the perfect old timber to settle right in at the threshold like it had always been there. Re-configuring the house to have a more conventional and appealing central hallway layout, I think, adds value for the long-term, not to mention the traffic flow between the bedroom and bathroom was a game-changer (instead of running the maze out to the living room, through the kitchen, and around the corner into the hallway). There was still plenty of finishing work to do on the new doorway (taking a couple of years to get there), but the main task at hand was repairing the water damage and finishing all the interior walls. First, I tore out the old flimsy paperboard paneling on the living room wall and hung new drywall.
So, did I mention how frustrating it’s been to live in the house that’s being renovated? All these repairs taking place in the room where you expect to find comfort and calm was definitely unnerving at times. Finding construction debris in your underwear and sheets is not the best kind of treasure hunt. I wrote last year about how we left our Super Ger at Sahalee to work on Casablanca and the personal struggle that came with the lifestyle change. I was constantly trying to remind myself that all this labor and inconvenience would be worth it in the end. The best thing I found in this process is that I get to learn a new craft and uphold an ancient tradition of building a home with mud. Taking the next step in the bedroom to finally tear off the old plaster walls and give some love to the dusty adobe bricks hiding beneath really lightened my mood. I love turning my native earth into a beautiful and cozy natural finish! But, before the mud slinging could commence, there was a little more work to do on the rustic pine plank floors.
One challenge that I am still trying to master is the corners where we have large gaps and dissimilar materials meet. In one corner of this room, the mud marries up to plastered walls. The other adobe corner meets drywall with a significant space. I chose to stuff the gaps with styrofoam and then place aluminum screen on top to serve as a lattice for catching the mud like I did in the back room. I think burlap would’ve worked pretty well in this case, too, and there is a preference for natural materials like bones. However, I know old adobe buildings often used aluminum cans to fill in large spaces (which I also used in the garage here), so I think the most important part is to pack in the mud without air pockets.
I believe that adobe work is a labor of love. Mud and I have a relationship that evolves over time, a roller coaster emotional romance. Sometimes, I am so sick and tired of seeing it -please don’t make me do another layer- and then I stand back and look at the result and feel good about what we’ve accomplished together. And then it breaks my heart!! I see how it dries with imperfections because I was light on sand or gave up mixing too soon. I have no choice but to go back and give it even more attention to bring out our best.
And, so we reach the point where it’s time to move on from our mud affair to finish out the ceiling and other walls… With Ben’s help overhead, I am grateful to see the ratty old drop ceiling tiles replaced with new plywood paneling and the new doorway is patched and finally finished to near perfection (with a REAL swinging door thanks to a hired handyman).
The hitch in our giddyap here was that the room is just shy of 12×12 so our standard 4×4 ceiling panels needed to be cut down an inch to give us the clearance for aligning with the trim. Now, I’m sure some smart person could’ve calculated a more efficient workaround, but we pressed on in our simple way to get the job done.
The last push here is to apply the last and final finish coat to the adobe walls before we put up the high-contrast ceiling trim to match the other made over spaces. Before I can put on the alize, or clay paint made from tierra blanca (locally-sourced native white earth), I need to scrape and paint the window trim. I’m again using the alize recipe by Carol Crews in Clay Culture: Plasters, Paints, and Preservation which calls for added wheat paste.
And the final reveal!! This room took four years to happen and we couldn’t be more pleased with how it turned out. We’ve already had a hard-to-please VIP guest (Mom) give rave reviews and look forward to adding more to the books. Always, still, a detail to work out here and there (like a new gas heater), yet we hope that this version of Northern New Mexico country living reflects the practicality and natural elements of what a simple adobe home is intended to be. We hope you will keep following along as the hard work continues at Casablanca to finally transform the living room and kitchen. As always, we appreciate your interest and comments! <3
