Stucco gets a brown coat and the fireplaces get a coat of mud

This is a view of the house from the lower Gulch loop road. The brown coat of stucco is complete and will cure before applying the final color coat.



This is a view of the house from higher up on the lower gulch loop road.


This is the fireplace in the great room. The scratch coat of clay, sand, and chopped straw has been applied to the expanded metal lath. A second coat of this mixture will be applied once the first coat is completely dry.



This is the fireplace in the master bedroom. It reminds me of a Mexican bread oven. The scratch coat is still wet in some places.


Ben has joined the plaster team and is prepping the door openings by working a clay, sand, and chopped straw mix into the metal lath that has been attached to the wall and rolled into the door jamb.


The entry portal with it's copper flashing. The copper will oxidize to the color of an old penny in a few months.

Stucco brown coat goes on
After completing the scratch coat, the stucco crew started in on the brown coat. The scratch coat is put on fairly thin and then roughed up with a hand-held rake to give the brown coat something to cling to. The brown coat is not brown. It is a fibered cement product that is put on more thickly than the scratch coat and is worked to a flat sandy surface with a sponge trowel. The final coat will be the color coat and it is applied about 1/8 inch thick. We are going to hold off on the final color coat for awhile to let the first coats dry thoroughly.

Interior doors are installed
John and Griffin have been finishing up the installation of the interior doors. Once the jambs were anchored in place the doors were removed and taken to the garage which Jenny just finished painting. The doors will be stored there until the walls are plastered. The guys have been stapling expanded metal lath to the drywall around the door jambs and to give the plaster a strong surface to bond to.

We have heat!
Dave Himes has been working on the geothermal system and we now have heat. All the zones are wired together and a thermostat has been mounted in the office to regulate the temperature. Dave also got the domestic water plumbed and we can now use the hose bibs on the outside of the house to draw water. It will be great to pull the little sump pump from the cistern and secure the lid. I worried about critters falling into our drinking water.

The fireplaces get a first coat of earth plaster
I have been working on covering the expanded metal lath on the fireplaces with a mix of sand, clay, and finely chopped straw. The straw was placed in a large plastic drum and chopped fine with a weed eater. This mix was worked into the metal lath to assure that about 1/4 inch of it penetrated to the other side of the lath. When it dried, the surface was very firm and well anchored to the lath. I will add another layer of this mix to the first layer before we use a brown coat. The total thickness will be about one inch of material. I am very impressed with the strength of the earth plaster mix and like the idea that it is very low in embodied energy.

Electrical panels are powered up
I flipped the main breaker on the electrical panel that powers the heated space and also installed temporary receptacles in the bathroom dedicated circuits to have a good distribution of power throughout the house for the crew. It will be nice not to be dragging long extension cords all over. With the door jambs in place we need to avoid pulling extension cords around as it would damage their finish.

The entry and vigas are capped in copper
I had copper panels cut for the tops of the exposed vigas to prevent water damage to the wood. They are just wide enough to cover the top where snow would sit. The copper will heat up with the sun exposure and the snow will melt and slide off. The copper flashing wrapped around the entry portal turned out really well. The copper is very shiny right now but it will turn the color of a penny very soon.

We continue to make good progress and are getting closer to putting the brown coat on the interior walls. That will be another milestone for this project.

Cob and Stucco Scratch Coat

This is an interior window opening that has been wrapped with metal lath and then coated with Cob (clay sand and chopped straw).

This is a detail shot of the cob.

The master bedroom fireplace is ready for a cement-based base coat. The final coats will be earth plaster.


Ramon with Quintanos Stucco is applying the exterior scratch coat around the garage windows. The coat will be left to dry completly before applying the brown coat. The color coat is last.

With the stucco scratch coat, the house is now all one uniform surface material and we can get a better feel for what it will finally look like.

Raider has been working on some pretty demeaning stupid pet tricks and wanted to share one with you. For a guy who perpetually thinks he is starving, this trick takes a lot of discipline.

Interior Detailing before plaster

Griffin, Chet, and Kris have been applying metal lath to interior wall corners and any locations where materials change or where there are surfaces that need leveling out. They then apply a clay, sand, and straw mixture called Cob to the lath making sure to work it into, and behind, the metal lath. This process will make the brown coat plaster easier and prevent cracks where dissimilar materials join together. The Cob is the first layer, followed by a brown coat, followed by a finish coat (with color) similar to the exterior process.

John has been setting interior doors in the guest bedrooms and bath and getting this area ready for the earth plaster brown coat. Once the door jambs are in place he will remove the doors from the jambs and put them in a safe place while we plaster the walls. The door jambs are narrower than the wall thickness to allow the plaster to roll into the face of the jamb.

I have spent most of my time watching over the Stucco crew as they prep the exterior. There are a lot of decisions to be made at this stage. They arrived about a week earlier than I would have liked. The stone masons are still working on the exterior flagstone details and I have copper flashing to attach to the top of the vigas and the entry portal.

The Water Treatment System is Installed

The mechanical room just got a little more cozy this week with the addition of 5 more pieces of equipment. Mark Quesenbery with Hague Quality Water installed our water treatment system. The water in rural Durango is very hard and will eat hot water tanks and copper plumbing in short order. The mechanical room could have easily been twice its current the size. With Dave Himes' (Southwest Geothermal) CAD layouts, we made the best of the small space. With the addition of this new equipment, it is apparent I will need to fabricate another metal rack to mount to the ceiling for a second pressure tank.

The master bedroom fireplace takes shape

In my spare time, I have been fabricating the small master bedroom fireplace. This one has gone much smoother than the great room fireplace and has inspired me to redo parts of that one. I hope to apply the base coat to the metal lath next week.

It has been another busy week with lots of folks on the site. Even though we are making great progress, it will be nice when we can get back to a small crew again.

Drywall and detailing for stucco

The fireplace was put to use warming the house while we work.


Jenny applys three coats of linseed oil mixed 50/50 with paint thinner. It really brings out the redish color of the lintels and beams.


This is a view of the house from across the Gulch.


This is a view of the house from Horse Gulch Road .


The entry portal is complete and ready for a copper flashing detail around the top edge. The front door is from Santa Fe Doors and is a 10 panel knotty alder with a distressed finish. They did a very nice job on all the doors. They are perfect for the house.


The drywall is installed and ready for earth plaster prep. This view is from the kitchen looking through the dining room and into the great room.


The great room fireplace exterior frame is in place and covered with expanded metal lath ready for a coat of fiber filled cement.

Drywall goes on the framed walls

Our drywall crew showed up after the plumbing and framing inspection. There aren't a lot of framed walls in the house so this work went fairly quickly. The garage recieved a traditional drywall process including a texture. The rest of the house received only a tape coat since these walls will be covered with an earth plaster. This is the first time we can see what the rooms are like and how much natural light they receive. I really did not like the drywall process. It generates a lot of scrap that is not recyclable. We took three loads of scrap drywall to the landfill with John's trailer.

The stone masons move to the outside work

The interior stone work is complete and the stone masons moved to the outside of the house to do the door threshholds, window sills, and portals.

Treating the exterior wood

Jenny has been painting all the exterior timbers, posts, and vigas with three coats of linseed oil mixed 50/50 with paint thinner. This treatment has really brought out the color of the rough sawn timbers.

The fireplace exterior takes shape

I have been working on creating the shape of the two fireplaces using 1/2 inch electrical conduit and expanded metal lath. I made CAD models of the fireplace shape and used these to generate a template for bending the conduit to shape. The vertical pieces were fastened to a welded top and bottom plate and the horizontal pieces were fastened to the walls. The verticals and horizontals were attached to each other with tie wire and then a layer of expanded metal lath was attached to this structure. I will cover the metal lath with a thick coat of cement with vermiculite and glass fiber filler. the whole structure will then be covered with earth plaster.

It has been a crazy couple weeks with so many crews on site. We will have the stucco crew on site starting next week.