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.

Interior walls, Portals, Plumbing, and Electrical

The master bedroom portal is being framed. The unfinished wall above the bathroom window has been left open to blow soy foam into the ceiling and wall cavities.


The kitchen portal and west side guest bedroom portals add a wonderful stepped view of the house. It reminds me of the Hopi pueblos


The soy foam insulation blown into the framed wall cavities. This stuff is great because it is not a petroleum- based product. It cost a little more but we like the idea of using soy beans for insulation instead of oil.


This is the electrical panel in the kitchen pantry. It feeds all the circuits in the heated space (with exception to the laundry room). We have a main disconnect on the exterior of the house, a panel in the garage that feeds the mechanical room panel, the pantry panel, and all the garage electrical needs.


We have been framing out the interior walls and this image is of the great room wall that screens the master bedroom and also houses all the media equipment. The stone crew has set flagstone on the top of all the low walls.


The corner beehive fireplace is in place and we set earth blocks for the banco. The stone masons covered the banco with stone.


The flagstone on the banco wraps into the window sills. This will be a great place to sit and read a book on a sunny winter day.


Soy foam in the great room pony wall cavity above the dining room ceiling. The foam is 11" thick. The stone masons have covered the low wall between the great room and the dining room with flagstone.

Wiring and plumbing in the guest bathroom wall. The domestic water lines are PEX tubing. Blue tubing for the cold water and red for the hot. PEX is great stuff to work with and is also used in the radiant in-floor heat.

Jenny has been working on the landscaping. There is native grass seed sown on the cut slope and it is covered with a nylon netting with aspen fiber fill to retain moisture and reduce erosion. This fabric was recycled from our neighbor's, Mike & Michelle Chapman, re-seeding project.

A busy couple months

I have been remiss in adding entries to the blog but the weather has been very cooperative and we have made the best of it. On sunny days we moved the work outdoors to construct the Portals. Stormy days were good for framing interior walls. While Griffin and John tackled these tasks, I worked on electrical wiring, domestic water piping, and waste drains. This past week we have had the roofers from TL Roofing on-site completing the portals roofs.

Flagstone detailing by Jake and his crew at "Little Guy Masonry"

The stone masons have been on site the past two weeks applying capping stones on the parapet walls and completing all the interior flagstone detailing. The interior work includes stone on the window seats and capping low walls in the great room. I had a semi load of flagstone shipped in from Sedona Arizona ( http://www.azflagstonesupply.com/ ). Some was snapped to size for window sills and capping the parapet wall and the rest was random pieces for bancos and the portal floors. The stone is of excellent quality and the masons enjoy working with it.

The fireplaces are taking shape

The fireplace installers wrapped up the installation of two Adobelite beehive fireplace kits which will be finished with an exterior framework and stucco coat that will give them their final shape. This work has been the only struggle for me on this project. Very poor communication and differing perspectives on craftsmanship have resulted in compromised results. Maybe someday in the future, I may redo some of this work.

We passed Inspections!!!

This week we passed the Electrical Rough-Inspection, the Framing Rough-in Inspection, Domestic Water Plumbing Rough in Inspection, and the Drain system Rough in Inspection. We are now cleared to start drywalling.

The Mechanical Room takes shape

Dave Himes with Southwest Geothermal has done a great job piecing together the equipment for the Geothermal system. This has been no small task due to an undersized room and the large amount of equipment that must fit in the space. I fabricated two racks to allow stacking equipment. We are on a well that has hard water which requires equipment to treat the water. This, in addition to the radiant heat system and the geothermal water to water heat exchanger gives the following list of equipment:

Geothermal water to water heat pump

80 gallon storage tank

40 gallon buffer tank

80 gallon electric domestic hot water tank

Pressure tank

Aeration cistern

Carbon filter

Hague water filtration and softener system

The Interior and Entry doors arrive
We ordered our doors from Santa Fe Doors in Albuquerque NM (http://www.santafedoor.com/ ). They arrived a little over a week ago and we are very happy with them. The design is perfect for the house and the workmanship is excellent. The front entry door and the garage portal door were given a distressed look that really sets them off.

So you can see we have been hard at it and a beautiful house is emerging as the result.

The ceiling and roof go on

The 2x8 tongue and groove ceiling in the guest bedroom section of the house. Electrical wiring is ready to be routed in the frame walls once they are in place.


The roof framing above the T&G is sloped 1/4" per foot. An electrical box is visible in the T&G and plumbing for the roof drain is ready for roof decking.


A pony wall is in place to accept the vigas in the great room and the roof is being framed over the kitchen and dining room. The parapet wall is framed around the guest section and ready for siding.


The canales in the garage parapet wall. They are made of cedar and lined with copper.


A closer look at the canale. Contact me if you are interested in purchasing these for your house project.


The membrane roof is almost complete over the garage, kitchen, and dining room. The larger box in the foreground is for the island vent pipe and the box in the background is for the dryer vent. I was concerned about leaks around the duct pipes so we built these structure to move the point where the pipe penetrates the roof above any possible pooling water.


The membrane roof above the master bedroom is close to completion. The fireplace is ready to install the flue pipe. The parapet walls and chimneys will be capped with flagstone.


The great room looking southeast from the dining room. There will be a kiva fireplace in the far corner.


The great room looking south towards the front door.



The site is contoured, almost all the excess soil has been hauled away and we should be ready for seeding in the next couple weeks.

The Roof
We pushed on to get the roof completed before the winter weather hit for real. John and Griffin completed the 2x tongue & groove ceiling in the guest bedroom section of the house and followed the next day with the sloped framing above the T&G. Curt Nelson and I installed electrical boxes and wired the ceiling and the guys followed with the roof decking. The next section was the master bedroom which was done in the same way. I hired two additional natural building craftsman to help speed things along. They worked on the kitchen and dining section. The weather was sunny and warm while we completed these sections and built the parapet walls. Canales (scuppers) I had fabricated earlier were installed in the parapet walls. The roofing crew from T&L Roofing arrived Wednesday November 26th and started laying down 6" of rigid foam and the EDPM membrane roof. We ended the day by covering all the roof sections with 6 mil plastic film to protect our work from the rain and snow promised for Thanksgiving day.

Our friends Arne and Jan Vanderburg spent Thanksgiving with us and Arne helped me shovel and sweep snow off the roofs on Friday. He and Jan headed back to Cedar Crest around 1:00 while Jenny and I returned to the site to complete the snow removal.

Monday, December 1st started with the arrival of a crane to set the last of the vigas over the great room. These were leveled and the T&G was placed the following day. The framing for the sloped roof and electrical wiring was completed by mid day Friday and the roof decking was nailed in place. I completed the drain assemblies on Saturday. The roofing crew had completed all the other roof sections by late Friday. I covered the great room roof with plastic late Sunday in preparation for a snow storm promised for later that night. What a relief to only have one roof section to worry about.

The Site
While all this was going on, Mark Jenkins was installing the water cistern and doing final shaping of the site. He has been hauling off the excess soil to our architects property nearby. Jenny and I will scatter native grass and flower seed in the next couple weeks and cover it with straw.

Stopping to smell the roses
I finally slowed down enough on Sunday to spend time just enjoying the interior of the house. The great room has a ceiling height of 14'-3". It is an amazing space. With all the ceilings in place the structure is really starting to feel like home.

Post, Beams, and Vigas

Posts, Corbels, and one 22 foot 10x12 beam are in place ready for vigas.


John guides a viga into place while giving signals to the crane operator. Griffin positions the other end.


Griffin steadies a viga while it swings into position


Another viga swings into position over what will be the kitchen.


All vigas are in place and ready for leveling in the guest bedroom portion of the house. You can start to get a feel for the space with them in place.


This is a view through the dining and living areas toward the master bedroom, taken from the kitchen area. You can see the posts with corbels holding up the big beams. On Wednesday morning a light cover of snow reminded us that winter is fast approaching.


The Roof Structure Starts to Take Shape

On Tuesday, October 28th, we began working on posts for the interior of the house. I built a jig for cutting the ends of the post square to their axis and then fabricated metal plates for anchoring the post to the floor. They consist of a plate that is lag bolted to the bottom of the post having four sections of angle iron welded to it and another flat plate that is bolted to the floor or, in a couple locations, welded to a piece of rebar protruding from the concrete. John and Griffin cut the posts to length and then attached corbels to their tops. The posts were then positioned and the metal base plates were welded solid. The 10" x 12" beams were prepped and Mark Jenkins lifted them into place with the big excavator. His help made a back-breaking task almost effortless. We ran lag bolts through the beams and down into the corbels to anchor everything together. We were then ready to lift vigas into place.


Jenny and I worked on staining the 2x6 tongue-and-groove fir for the ceiling. We used a product called "Lifetime" http://www.valhalco.com/when.htm which is not really a stain but a chemical/mineral compound that is added to water and causes rough cut wood to turn barn wood gray. We did not get this result with the T&G due to the finished surface. Our wood darkened a slight silver color from its original blond and turned a slight salmon red color. We are happy with the look and also like the idea that "Lifetime" is non-toxic.


Monday November 3rd, we finished up the beam installation and began measuring the ends of the vigas and planning their positions in the rooms. I hired a crane to help us place the vigas on Tuesday. John, Griffin and I placed 33 vigas in 3 hours.

November 4th, election day: a great day for America and the world!


Wednesday morning, November 5th, we awoke to snow. I called John to tell him it was snowing at our house and maybe we should wait out the weather. He replied "Yeah...it's snowing up here on the bond beam as well!" So much for taking a day off for bad weather. I quite my whining and headed to the site. The day was spent leveling the vigas and attaching the metal anchor straps in the guest bedroom section of the house.

The Bond Beam is Completed

The house looking out at the hills to the south. The area in the lower half of the image is open space. There are several earthen dams along the drainage that runs through the center of this space that provide water for wildlife. Deer and Elk migrate south through the openspace from the high mountains to the lowlands along the New Mexico border in the late fall and back again in the spring.




The concrete pumper truck driver getting into the Halloween spirit.





This shot was taken seconds before the front face of this vertical form blew out.

Sarah and John working the concrete. The vertical section to the left started to blow out while I was leveling the concrete. You can see bracing holding the lower portion of this form in place.

The end of block wall celebration and a farewell to Sarah and Thomas. From the left: John, Sarah, Thomas, Griffin, and Lyle.

Raider posing next to the septic tank. The septic system is in and inspected. The Jenkins get the lower portion of the property contoured and ready for native grass and wildflower seed which we will plant in late November.


The framing crew arrived on October 20th and had the garage framed in a couple days. It's no wonder frame structures are so popular.

By the 24th the garage was being sheathed with OSB.

Two truck loads of post, vigas, and beams arrived on October 27th. This marks the beginning of the roof structure phase of construction.

The Final Phase of the Bond Beam
Once the guest bedroom area and the great room block walls reached their full height, forms were assembled and the final section of the bond beam was poured. This part of the bond beam included some vertical sections that tied the lower walls to the taller walls. Some of these vertical sections were over 4 feet high. In addition, there were three lintels that were formed using rough sawn 2x lumber to match the wood lintels used throughout the rest of the house. The inside of these wood facias were lined with Bituthane and 2" foam. Five lengths of #5 rebar were hung in the form for strength. The pour started out rather badly as two of the vertical sections blew out with the force of the concrete being pumped into them. We scrambled and put the forms back together using 2x4 bracing and bar clamps. The rest of the pour went well. The concrete was leveled, straps were positioned to hold the vigas, and anchor bolts were inserted along the inner and outer perimeter of the bond beam for roof framing. The team gathered at the end of the day for a celebration marking the end of the block work and a farewell to Thomas and Sarah. Lyle will stay on until the fireplace butresses are completed. John and Griffin will stay on to help with the roof structure and interior details

The Septic System

Danette Jenkins and her son, Mark, arrived on October 24 to begin work on the septic system. The tank was dropped into place and pipe was routed down to the distribution box. The distribution box was connected to six 100' rows of infiltrators configured as two rows in each of three 6' wide trenches. The system was inspected and approved on the 26th. The system was buried and the ground contoured and ready to start landscape restoration. We will wait until the cold winter weather arrives to scatter seed. We will use a mix of native grass, wildflowers, and native shrubs and trees. We purchased most of the seed but some we have been collecting around the area.

Framing the Garage

Since the block walls took a month longer than planned, I decided to hire a framing crew to put up the garage and master bath tub room. That frees John, Griffin, and me to focus on getting the roof structure for the main portion of the house competed before winter. Frame structures go up amazingly fast and are a relatively cheap construction process. Unfortunately, it requires a lot of lumber which comes from clearcut forest in the pacific northwest and needs to be hauled a long distance to this area. In addition, the frame structure is not a good thermal barrier. Heat within a wood structure finds a path to the outside through the framing.We accepted this method of construction for the garage because we will only be tempering the space to keep things from freezing and because it is a relative small space.

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