In progress in this image the roof demo old adobe home in need of salvaging . The 400 sq. ft. adobe home was built around 1976 by inexperienced builders which helped add to the every growing issues with the house. Things such as flooding, wall cracks, rodent infestations and even snakes coming out of the walls. They chose to not put the adobe bricks upon a proper foundation but dug a deep hole the size of the home footprint and placed the adobe bricks upon the ground and built up from there.

We were given reports of a few of water rushing in through the back door flooding the small home on more than one occasion. We knew we needed to not only support the walls and create an external foundation seal, but also to change the grade by dropping it down and adding in a rubble trench french drain.

This image, however, highlights the roof demolition in which we peeled away layer upon layer of roofing, each one in more bad shape than the next. We could only conclude that rather than tear down the original roof to it’s core and do a proper repair that over the years as the home was passed from owner to owner, each seemed to slap on some inferior repairs. Those only served to add to the water issues, as they did not hold and at one point we encountered standing water in the flat adobe roof buried under a few layers.

Not to mention the snake eggs we found inside one of the roof layers! It was the most amazingly poorly created home we had ever encountered, but we were committed to carry on and make the best of things and create a home in the end which was livable and much beyond that.