steel cable bond beam

This house was built without a bond beam and the foundation is river rock, yet it has stood over 200 years. Our north wall of the house was leaning about 4 to 6 inches away from the house. We built a buttress out of 500 adobe blocks, but also reinforced it with a steel cable "bond beam". We used old tractor graders and cut them in half and sandwhiched the wall between them. The corner piece was welded and made. Hope that'll hold it! No more wall falling over dreams, like the south facing wall did.

Old Roofing Fence

I made this fence out of cedar posts and old roofing tin.  I put some little flowers in it to help the wind to travel through.  Hopefully they won't blow away, but we've had some strong storms and it is still there.  I was afraid it was going to look like a prison or army barracks, arching them really helped.

kitchen and living room floors

Our of the first four rooms we tackled we decided to made three of them concrete.  This made it posible to have radiant heat.  Plus, the wood floors were pretty ruff.  Most of them were laying on 'muertos', flat boards layed on top of a once adobe floor.  We found lots of marbles and rats nests.  We returned the marbles to the man who as a child shot them down a hole in the floor, he was happy to get them back after all these years.  We did that demolition the winter of 2005 and it was cold.  We worked most all days all hours and ate lots of green chile pizza.  Before the concrete we layed insulation, tubing, and then the rebar.  Richard Gonzales and sons poured the floor for us and did a great job, they have been friends ever since.

The Music Room

This is the first room we stepped into, it took some effort getting past the boarded up door with a crow bar.  The first thing I said once we got in was, "this is the music room".  Mostly I was thinking that because it was big, 20 feet long and 14 feet wide.  After we learned more about the house we found out that the man who wrote the New Mexico state song, "Asi es Nuevo Mexico" Amadeo Lucero  lived here.  One day his son was visiting and told us that this room was indeed his fathers music room.  We busted out one small window and put up a big 12 X 12 lentel and put in a double window to get better morning light.  The ceiling was old tongue and grove, which still hasn't been washed five years later.  My Mother gave us an old french door that belonged to the old Baker Ranch house in Tuolumne, CA.  We put new glass and took off all the paint.   After the old plaster was chipped off we used the soil from the yard to plaster, the final coat I added some very fine sand and clay I purchased from the pottery store, plus a bit of mica.  I sanded about three layers of paint off the wood floors, my thumb was numb for about a week.  First we used a big rented sander for a day and then for another 4 days I sanded with a circular sander.  The floor boards were pretty warped and have 1/8 inch gaps between them, but the wood looks nice.  The music room was fixed up first, which is where we slept for the past five years and the past three years with my son too.  My sister gave us her piano and the drum kit went up in it's permanent spot this summer.  Also, this room is where the fold out futon is for guests.  This last winter we put in a new Jotul wood stove which was nice, the old one was so smokey and made me nervous to leave when a fire was going.

Dad's rock wall

This wall is not part of our big adobe but is too incredible not to mention.  My father Dave Marston built this wall on his property in Northern California.  Without the help of my folks much of the work on our house would not have happened.  They are true pioneer mountain people and can/will do just about anything.  This wall is a testimony to that and an inspiration to us.  The wall he built will be standing long after the house has decomposed.