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FrontRangeLiving.com -> Architecture -> Adobe
 ADOBE—OLD AND NEW
By Niki Hayden
At the foot of a bluff in Trinidad, Colorado, Jennifer Green’s adobe house
is near completion, a new house in a region that has birthed adobe homes for
over 100 years. The canyon is residence to a peaceable kingdom of wildlife,
horses, dogs and tabby cat as well as a landscape of cacti, sagebrush and
yucca. Using her own hands, the petite third-grade teacher shaped, hoisted and
placed brick after brick and now knows the painful truth about adobe dwellings:
"They’re cheap, but labor intensive," she says, "you’re
better off with a crew."
Dirt cheap. Jennifer’s adobe came from soil under her house, a
four-foot crawlspace. Earth was dug and sifted for rocks and debris, then mixed
with water and straw. Wet mud was poured into 18 by 24-inch molds, allowed to
firm and then pulled free. Jennifer scraped any jagged edges and left the bricks
to dry—all 2,400 of them. "You pull the mold off and the bricks remain to
cure until it dries. You do have to cover them from the rain. You come to know
the power of water, which is both your friend and your enemy," she says
grimly.
Besides a sifter, made from wire screening, and a wooden mold, you need only a
trowel to apply a finishing coat of mud slurry.
 The
rest of this story is now contained in "Colorado
Home and Garden Lover's Guide" by
Front Range Living and Fulcrum Publishing. It can be purchased through www.fulcrum-books.com
or at bookstores, such as: www.tatteredcover.com,
www.barnesandnoble.com,
www.borders.com
or www.amazon.com.
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