The first critical step in a modern house is – – – plumbing!

Its been roughed in for the Post Office. Components include: the bathroom (shower, toilet, sink), the utility/laundry room (hot water heater, washer/dryer), the kitchen (sink, gas for stove, the refrigerator water line), the living room (gas for fireplace). Its a simple house but even a simple house has lots of need for plumbing if you really want to stay here.

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I found some old photos of the buildings we are renovating. Not as old as I’d like, but definitely older than we have taken. The quality is poor as they are scanned from photocopies. But if you look you can see just how much degradation a few years can be.

Some of the photocopies are from articles dated from 2019, others are dated from 1990. I don’t know when the photos were actually taken.

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Not long after the front porch was taken down, we had to start working on cleaning up inside. We began an initial demo in order to determine the condition of the walls and roof structure. As it turns out – not too bad. (Other than the rat and bat poop).

Some interesting things we found were:

1. Evidence of the building being used as a Post Office. The front room was divided from the back with a cased opening. On one side of this opening was a door. The other side had a pantry/storage space backed up against the opening. Looking further, we found marks on the opening indicating that there had once been a counter, although the structure of that counter is lost to time, it was good to have some evidence that it was, indeed, a Post Office as local lore says.
2. With in the walls, our demo team found an old, vintage or antique, child’s shoe and a greeting card also of vintage era. Unfortunately, no photograph was taken and the items were removed before we had the chance to document and preserve them. Truly a loss.
3. Also found within the walls, was a pile of old razor blades. They weren’t in the bathroom (likely of 1960/50 era) but were in a wall in the area used as a kitchen. People would insert their used blades into a slot in their built in medicine cabinets that opened into the wall. I’m not sure that that was exactly the case here, but the razor blades were clearly disposed of into the wall cavity.
4. The building had been electrified. Remains of vintage Knob and Tube wiring was left primarily in the attic space.

Two different widths of wood flooring had been used. The narrower width was found in the front room, kitchen and bath area. As there is also a subfloor and the because the floor in the front room is in pretty good condition (dirty but in good shape) we will work to preserve this section of the original flooring. Flooring in the kitchen had major water damage due to windows being broken out and no porch covering to prevent rain from coming in. The bathroom are had major damage. The bedroom area had a later era of wide flooring and it is not in a condition that is restorable.

The walls in the front room had been plastered from floor to ceiling, they had damage from human abuse and time. Walls in the kitchen and bedroom area had plaster on the top portion and bead board on the bottom, separated by a chair rail. Interesting is that there a two different styles of bead board and chair rail that change mid-wall in the bedroom. Looking closer, we could see that there had once been a wall dividing the bedroom space into two rooms. The bathroom walls had been plastered. There was no indication that there had been tile or any other water-resistant finish. None of the plaster in the house, bead boards, or chair rails were salvageable.

Behind the kitchen, there was originally a back patio with a ceiling. It had been poorly enclosed at some point with a screen and later with plywood. It clearly was an exterior space as the two walls adjacent to the rest of the house were clad in exterior shingles.

Between the Kitchen and the bedroom space there was a brick chimney. Interestingly, the chimney began about 3/4 of the way up the wall, suspended with wood cross braces and good workmanship. The chimney had an opening on the kitchen side, clearly designed to connect to a wood burning stove’s pipe. On the bedroom side was another round opening. Hmmm??? But, looking further there is another round opening leading to the bathroom, and still another that leads into the front room, and another from there to outside. It appears that the stove vented through the pipes in those 3 rooms in an effort to heat those spaces perhaps? There is no evidence of fire damage and the openings were in good shape. It would be nice to see just how these were interconnected.

Demo took over a year to complete mostly because we wanted to draw up plans for its restoration and needed to determine what to save and what needed to go.

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A front porch is a place of peace, a place to relax and enjoy life as your neighbors pass by, wave, and even stop in to say “Hello, how are you?”. Without a porch, a house seems bare and just a little less lived in. A porch adds “curb appeal” and a “Well loved” feeling. Without one, well, its just a house.

In this case, the front porch lacked a floor, the posts that supported the roof and ceiling were hanging on by a thread. 2 of the three posts connected to nothing at their base. It was a disaster waiting to happen. So it needed to come down.

The plan is to replace it with the same style and up to today’s standards. Once the hazard was down it will take a while to get it replaced. First the main structure needs to be repaired – keep following our progress. It will happen.

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Its truly amazing how a roof transforms a building! The original roof was simply tin over lathe. No insulation, no additional structure. When time, weather and human wear and tear left holes and damage to the original tin, it began to rust, nails started to pop, and the weather lifted entire sheets causing them to flap in the wind and eventually fall off entirely.

The new roof has the appropriate sheathing, roof wrap and a higher grade of tin. Its designed to last another 100 years (hopefully).

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In addition to the patio, we had work being done on the interior. Our plan is to create a livable space as close to the original as we can make it given modern parameters (electricity, insulation, etc)

The original building appears to have been just the front portion of the house the the larger back piece was added to create a family living space. Interior walls were built of adobe, same as the exterior. It had a front room, a separated central kitchen, then a separated back room. To the side of this was a separated bedroom with a plumbed bathroom. We don’t know when the bathroom was added, we are guessing sometime after WWII.

The new floor plan is to have 2 bedrooms, the main has an attached bathroom in essentially the same place as the original. The second bedroom is much smaller. Between the 2nd bedroom and the kitchen is a 3/4 bath. The wall between the kitchen and the living room is being removed to create a great room. We also managed space for a laundry and utilities room.

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Sometime it seems that the more we do, the more that needs to be done. We are still getting background stuff done before we can move onto the stuff that will really make this house come alive.

The patio needs stabilizing to help hold back nature. LOL. The plan was to dig up the dirt, create footings for the patio wall, improve the house footing where it meets the patio. Then its on to building the wall and pouring the cement for the patio.

Well – – – it turns out there was a brick patio under the dirt. Really cool, but it wasn’t worth saving. So, rather than pull it all out, lay out sand and gravel etc then pour the concrete, our masons suggested (and we went for it) to clean up the bricks then use them for the base of the new concrete patio. The bricks were solid but not very pretty so here we go.

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There are two fireplaces in the Adobe. They are place back to back with one inside in the living room and the other outside on the patio. They share a chimney, divided into 2 air chambers, one for each fireplace.

I love both of these fireplaces. They are built of brick and have adobe from the mantle up. Both were in serious disrepair as you can see by my photos. I didn’t think we were going to be able to bring them back. Our masons were took it as a challenge and were able to restore the bricks of both. Take a look at what a fantastic job they did.

We will have the adobe covered with stucco. The interior fireplace will probably get a woodburning stove or insert. The exterior fireplace will get a fabricated insert that is open to the air. Both will have the chimney insert/lining brought to code so we don’t risk fire.

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When we first acquired the property, the Adobe, AKA, the Commercial Building, was full of detritus that had built up over time, a couch, rugs, mattress, trash, and other items too many to list. The exterior was overgrown with trees and brush that had grown unchecked for years. The adobe, itself, was wearing down from time and weather and had a lot of graffiti inscribed on it. The building had been used for target practice or more like as something to shoot. In short, is was in a bad state of decline.

We first started by cleaning out the debris from around and inside the building. Took many loads to the county landfill. We trimmed back the trees and brush and started to assess the damage. We also came up with a floor plan so we could move forward with our basic restoration plan.

We hired a local family of masons who worked a good week removing adobe blocks from interior walls where we no longer wanted them and use those blocks to repair the exterior walls. Lintels were replaced as needed, windows and doors were enlarged as desired, and the foundation was repaired as needed. Photos are on the Adobe page in the Restoration Begins section.

One of the masons brought his son along when he wasn’t in school. The young man worked alongside the others doing age and ability appropriate tasks. I really admired the respect he was given while working. He was treated as a valued member of the team and worked as if he knew he was valued. It was good to see. This young man has a good future in whatever he decides to pursue and will certainly be a capable mason when he graduates from highschool.

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