Inside and Out

I’ve been pondering the “Northern New Mexico Territorial Style” for weeks now. It, or the more familiar (to folks outside of the southwest) Spanish Colonial pitched roof style, are requirements for building in Valverde Commons. Both mean stucco exterior walls, to imitate the appearance of plastered adobe. One means flat roofs surrounded by parapet walls, so that the roof is not visible from the ground - like the Southwest Pueblos. The other displays the pitched roof - more familiar in most of the United States.

I personally prefer a shed roof (low slope), and this could be hidden by parapet walls, making it acceptable to the style governors, because shed roofs are not acceptable. A shed roof means we only need to control rain water on one edge of the roof. Canales, the scuppers that drain roof water through the parapet walls, are notoriously hard to keep from leaking. Maybe we can have an interior, hidden roof drain.

But nothing in the Valverde covenants dictates the style of the interior of the house.

To remain faithful to adobe construction techniques, the roof would be supported by horizontal logs (locally called ‘vigas’, or beams in Spanish), which project through the wall to the outside. These exterior wood elements are subject to rapid deterioration from the weather. But vigas no longer support the roof, because the requirement for lots of insulation in the ceiling/roof structure means that the vigas only support the ceiling and above the vigas is a hidden structure to support the roof. This makes vigas doubly expensive.

Another visible feature are the wooden lintels over doors and windows. These support the adobe blocks above these openings. A wall without visible support for the adobes above the openings is a visual inconsistency for me. But wooden lintels also deteriorate in the weather.So several questions arise for me: What are the key style elements required by Valverde? How much of the external style need be reflected inside the house? And what are the key style elements that I want?

From looking at the ten existing structures (at this moment) the only consistent style element is a stucco exterior wall, clay brown (although one is gray). Some houses have wood lintels, two use COR-TEN (rusty) steel horizontal beams, most have no visible lintels. Some have pitched roofs, some flat. Landscaping is a mish-mash, most obviously unfinished and inconsistent with the native vegetation and topography. Window styles and shapes vary all over the place.

The existing interiors (as far as I have investigated) do not reflect the concept of adobe construction at all. Many have vigas, but others have cathedral ceilings and one has birch ceilings. Many have very wide windows with no visible means of support for the roof above the window - implying hidden beams within the wall. This inconsistency grates on my aesthetic.

So, what is it what I want?

I want the exterior to appear consistent. Where structure is needed, structure should be visible. (This is similar to the German fachwerk or English half-timber construction, where the presence of an interior wall is visible in the presence of a post on the outside of the house.) This means visible lintels over the doors and windows. This means that the stucco should project beyond the lintel only by the thickness of the stucco, not three inches because there is three inches of foam insulation board outside of the structural sheathing.

On the interior, I want to be able to hang stuff on the walls: rugs, pictures, photos, masks. Putting nails into adobe (although none of the houses have interior adobe walls) is basically impossible. So I want picture molding - not at all in the local style. I want conduit and pipes and ventilation ducts in the walls and ceilings - completely inconsistent with adobe construction. I want window sills that will support potted plants.

I seem be to divorcing the exterior and interior styles completely. While sitting indoors, forget that the roof and ceiling are supported by I-joists hidden within the roof system. Don’t force rounded corners (a feature of plastered adobe) inside the house. Don’t require foot-thick interior walls that imitate the size of adobe blocks. Don’t require visible lintels over interior doorways.

And the transitions? The exterior entries and windows live in both worlds - they are visible from and accessed from both the interior and exterior. How do we make them seem consistent from both sides? First, the exterior walls can be a foot thick, imitating adobe. The newer insulation requirement does not demand this (polyurethane insulation can be thin) but leans in this direction. The exterior stucco wall finish is not visible from the inside, nor is the interior wall finish visible from the outside. If the vigas do not project through the walls to the outside, then the absence of vigas altogether is not inconsistent.

The other, probably more visible inconsistency, is sliding glass doors. These are a feature of ranch style houses, not adobe houses. Most of the houses here have this feature, with no visible support for the structure above. I think I’ll try to avoid these doors. Besides, the either leak a lot of heat (on the north side) or admit a lot of radiant heat (on the south side). And, if they are triple glazed, are extremely heavy.

By rights, the lintels should be visible from inside, but a single wooden beam over a window will conduct heat to the outside. Two separate lintels would solve this problem by allowing a thermal break or gap. However, wood tends to warp, check (split), and twist. That makes it very hard to maintain a tight air seal between the inside and outside of the house, and a tight air seal is needed for thermal efficiency. Yet, from the inside, are the walls visibly made of heavy adobe? No. They could be made of white foam. So visible lintels need not be a feature of the interior.

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Where does this leave me? At this point, I am leaning toward an exterior that looks like it were made of plastered adobe: Clay-colored stucco that projects only a little beyond the wooden lintels with rounded corners and parapet walls. Few, if any, canales. No sliding glass door or even French doors. And an interior style that is more Craftsman than Santa Fe.

We’ll see after I pass all this by my architect and builder.

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