The Good Life Lab

by Wendy Jehanara Tremayne

  Building in Truth or Consequences

  Build like you give a damn.

  — Mike Warren

  Back in T or C, we were nearly finished remodeling a 40-year-old mobile home, the only building on the ratty 1-acre RV park that we had purchased just after we arrived in New Mexico. We had never intended to run or manage an RV park. Our plan was to build an off-grid bed and breakfast entirely by hand and out of waste materials. We chose an RV park as the site for the project because of the value of its infrastructure: power, water, sewer, and electric spaced every 20 feet. Though meant to accommodate trailers that plug in for short stays, the same infrastructure was perfect for plugging in our new handmade papercrete buildings. That’s what we planned. We imagined that the preexisting infrastructure would save us a fortune in plumbing and electric, that one day a PV solar array would send clean solar power to each post, that a humanure setup would make sewer connections dispensable, and that cisterns would replace our need for city water. Our RV park also came with flexible zoning that allowed for a village of papercrete bungalows.

  The mobile home needed a lot of work before we could call it home. The decrepit, ancient land ship still bearing a yellow New Mexico license plate had been manufactured in 1967. Over the years, several cheap extensions had been added on, expanding it to about 1,200 square feet. Our insurance company valued the jalopy at $1,000. This made it easy for us to make the greenest choice. We remodeled it.

  The decision to remodel came easy. We were given a quote of $5,000 to haul the old mobile home to the landfill, and we compared that to the estimated cost of $10,000 to remodel it. With new construction costing no less than $200 per square foot, we ruled that out as an option. Since neither of us came to New Mexico with building experience, we figured we’d cut our teeth on the mobile. “If we destroy it, who cares?” we said to each other. We did not have much to lose.

  The renovation consisted of covering paneled walls with new drywall, installing bamboo floors where there had been shag carpet, and laying a new floor in the bathroom that we made from broken throwaway tile found in the trash. We trimmed the windows, doorways, and floorboards with wood plucked from the garbage and resurfaced with a planer obtained at a garage sale. In each east-facing window, we added shelves to hold seedlings getting a start on life before going out to the garden we were soon to build. We added inexpensive bullnoses from the hardware store to round out square corners and made the space feel soft, clean, and modern.

  Much of the wood came from projects so ancient that below a dirty surface we discovered handsome hardwoods with marbled patterns. Had we tried to purchase them new, they would have been not only too expensive, but also inappropriate considering their scarcity.

  Since the appliances, cabinets, and basins were all functional, we kept them, scrubbing them clean and rubbing those made of wood with linseed oil to enliven their appearance and extend their life. Inexpensive aluminum flashing made a tough waterproof kitchen back wall and concealed dirty, sagging fiberboard beneath. The flashing filled the space between the kitchen counters and the cabinets; shiny and silver in color, it made our kitchen look like a 1950s diner. An even row of self-tapping screws of the same silver finish made the choice of industrial materials seem intentional.

  The cost of the remodel did come in around $10,000 — approximately $10 a square foot. The first and best thing about it was that we gained a lovely home — and almost every bit of it was waste that had been saved from going to a landfill. The second best thing was that we acquired skills by doing it. Skills that might have cost thousands of dollars had we acquired them by attending a trade school.

  We did not go it alone. Mikey and I found Jesse the scrap builder remodeling an old house in our neighborhood. Each day, Jesse hauled garbage from one side of the street to the other. Where a neighbor was tearing down an old outbuilding and piling the wood from it by a dumpster, Jesse saw opportunity and repurposed every scrap. He reworked the wood into cabinets, trim, and counters for his client’s kitchen. One by one he ran the ratty old planks through an unbalanced planer on a makeshift table. When the planks came out the other side of the device, pretty patterns of contrasting light and dark colors appeared. Effortlessly he applied a coat of sealant while smiling in deserved self-appreciation. The wood seemed to smile back at him. We hired Jesse right away and became his apprentices. Together the three of us remodeled our mobile home in three months’ time.

  In some ways Jesse is a typical New Mexican. We learned that it was best not to expect him to come to work if the clouds covered the sun. The absence of light was something that made him feel too sentimental to cope. To employ Jesse, we first had to find him a place to live, a protocol common in the nomadic Southwest. A borrowed trailer sufficed for a temporary home for our roving builder. He parked it on our lot, next to the city bus that he’d converted into a workshop.

  Once Jesse finished any part of a job, he had to be removed from the place before he could destroy it. Though he was gifted with the ability to transform waste into beauty, he also bore the curse of clumsiness. He once gave me a tour of a finished room of freshly sheetrocked walls while digging a groove in the wall with the tip of a sharp metal T-square that jutted out from the tool belt hanging from his waist.

  By the end of the remodel, Mikey and I had acquired enough skills to work on our own. We learned the names of the tools and materials and how to use them: a chop saw for cutting lengths of trim and flooring, a table saw to thin woods to needed sizes, a finish gun to mount trim, a floor stapler to install wood flooring, trowels and hawks to cover sheetrock seams with plaster (after taping the joints with fiberglass tape), a diamond saw for tile cutting, a sander and a planer for bringing out new surfaces of woods, a variety of drills and an assortment of attachments, a jigsaw for cutting wood into free-form shapes, and a variety of solvents and oils for reviving and sealing wood and other materials.

  We planned and then built garden beds, irrigation systems, and distillers. We made shade structures and everything from skateboards for moving heavy things to fences, sheds, and fire pits. I hurdled over and over again past a preset “I can’t do that” by doing it anyway. We made mistakes and built things that could have been better but were good enough. I invested myself in the doing and avoided being caught up in expectations that might prevent me from taking a next step. Sometimes this was very difficult. At times Mikey and I argued over design and method because I could not reconcile with the idea of making something imperfect. Old habits are hard to break. Having a spirit of reckless experimentation was necessary.

  In the desert Mikey discovered that knowledge he had carried around for much of his life and only occasionally found uses for — things like melting points, measurements of distances, conversion tables, flammability of gases, friction and leverage, weight limits, boiling points, and elevation — was invaluable when applied to the new lives we were living as makers of things. I filled sketchbooks with colorful drawings of domes, hot tubs, and gardens. From the moment we touched down in New Mexico we were enlivened by the challenge to create a 1-acre wonder world. First we imagined, and then we built what we saw.

  In homage to waste, we called our 1-acre project and the blog we started to track its development Holy Scrap.

  When we were ready to build a new structure, we started with a list.

  Our new building must . . .

  be built by people no stronger or more skillful than we are

  last a long time

  be energy-efficient, requiring very little heating or cooling

  be made mostly out of waste

  cost less than $5,000

  The first thing we did was learn how to use SketchUp, a computer-aided design (CAD) program that we downloaded free from the Internet. SketchUp enabled us to create sophisticated technical drawings and communicate with structural engineers. Once a structural engineer approved our papercrete designs (after two revisions and at the cost of $50), we sent the approved blueprints to the state, where
they joined an archive of approved building techniques for New Mexico. Once the designs were state-approved, our local building inspector was relieved of all liability. We were free to build papercrete domes.

  Right away we published our dome design on the Internet and encouraged others to use it for free. The days of corporations patenting Mikey’s ideas were over. We celebrated.

  The first dome we built is 10 feet in diameter and has a 13-foot apex. We started it with a rebar and metal lath armature. Pumping papercrete slurry into the space between interior and exterior armatures made foot-thick walls when it dried. With a stucco sprayer made for papercrete, we applied another paper-based mix modified for outdoor conditions and mixed in an umber powder for color.

  Today the 10-foot-diameter dome holds the batteries and inverters for the PV solar array that produces all of our power. The second papercrete building is a more ambitious 20-foot-diameter dome with a 16-foot apex. It includes a washroom and a loft. When finished, it will house guests.

  We transformed our land by remodeling a mobile home that most people would have thrown away, planting gardens and trees, installing a PV solar array, and building papercrete domes.

  Life in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, in 2008, when we were building our domes, could be summed up by the slogan someone in town printed on T-shirts: Camp T or C. The young retirees and 30- to 40-something-year-olds that we’d met at the coffee shop before moving to town regularly visited our building project, and we visited theirs. Everyone borrowed tools, exchanged ideas, and occasionally got in inner tubes and floated down the Rio Grande. There were barbecues and parties, art openings, desert hikes, and gatherings around fire pits. Very few people had traditional professional jobs. Most were either self-employed or building something that might one day produce income. Never was there the feeling of needing to rush. Life was good in Camp T or C.

  Eventually we decided that we weren’t cut out for running a bed and breakfast or eco hotel, so we scrapped our business plan and Holy Scrap became our home and life lab. We kept building because it had become our pleasure to do so. We continued to build small earthy-looking domes that don’t need much heating or cooling and imagined that one would become a kitchen, another a bedroom, a living room, or even a guest room. The only problem inherent in the design is that it might be hard to find our two cats.

  And not a day passed without our feeling that we had achieved something, solved a problem, advanced an idea, dreamed a dream, or got something remodeled, built, and made. We approached problems with a willing-to-try attitude, knowing that failure could be remedied by calling in a professional. With the aid of YouTube and websites that feature tutorials, there is no reason not to give every new thing a try. This attitude makes it less scary to start even the most ambitious of projects.

  Free Fuel

  Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.

  — Albert Einstein

  Lots of people who live in T or C say the reason they do is that their vehicle broke down here. Jesse, the amazing jack-of-all-trades who helped us remodel our house and who apologizes each time he performs a feat of strength, drives a diesel-burning European city bus that he converted into a roaming carpenter’s shop. Scott teaches students at a community college in northern New Mexico to convert Fieros into rocket-fast electric cars. Our neighbor rocks out to the sound of the band Journey while he restores Fieros, none of which will become electric vehicles. Shayna gave birth to Levi in a Subaru in the Home Depot parking lot in Las Cruces. To save the life of a breatharian who was starving to death, Andy Potter drove Mikey and me across a river in his Land Rover. Larry the luthier drives a pickup with the wings of a Cadillac welded to it. He tells great stories about driving hundred-dollar Caddies on off-road trails in Montana and driving past hesitant people in 4x4s afraid to go any farther. Rob can be seen around town driving a red scooter; his other vehicle is his home and has two dogs and a seasonal girlfriend in it. Jason the scrapper is always driving a different junky vehicle and siphons gas out of scrap cars before he gathers them up and sells them by the pound.

  Local ranchers favor white diesel pickup trucks with dual suspension. There are five electric vehicles in town. Ladies who meet up at yard sales on Saturday drive four of them. Mikey and I drive the fifth. We got ours from Jason the scrapper in exchange for papercrete blocks and some cash. Alyce and Julian live on 10 acres in a 150-square-foot trailer designed to mount on the back of a pickup truck. They built 500 square feet of screened porch around it. Luke rode to our house on a bike he bought at a Walmart that he walked to from the El Paso airport. One hundred and twenty miles later, he taught a bike repair workshop at our house, then rode the bike back to Walmart and returned it in better condition than he bought it in. From Walmart, he walked back to the El Paso airport and flew home to Austin.

  Scott with a Fiero he modified into a fast electric car.

  Mikey and I also have an old electric golf cart we use for moving things around our homestead. We traded hundreds of papercrete blocks for it. Gavio remodeled the inside of an Airstream by adding mud adobe walls and a stove made of clay. Nick, a.k.a. Smoke, drives a 14-foot U-Haul box truck, because when he went to rent it he found that it was cheaper to buy it. A boy band burning WVO in a grease-converted rented van stopped at our place to buy some biofuel. They gave Mikey their new CD and told him, “It’s not very good.”

  Our two electric vehicles include a junky golf cart and little EV we got in a trade. They are handy for trips to the river to collect sand for the garden.

  A tiny, well-made, wood-shingled home complete with front door, mailbox, doorbell, and lantern was perched on the back of a pickup and parked around town for a while. A bus covered in quotes from the Bible was parked in front of what used to be the only bar downtown (now there are none) until a local called the cops and somehow related the vehicle to homeland security. It was removed. Many sawed-off or stretched-out vehicles made of parts of one vehicle welded to seemingly incompatible parts of another regularly pass through town.

  Our neighbor Brian uses his short bus to go to Vansteader gatherings, get-togethers for nomads who live in their vans and tour around the country. His motorcycle has a sidecar used exclusively by his dog Dina. A family of three that sells handmade goods at craft fairs lives in a full-size WVO-burning school bus. We couldn’t shake off an ornery hippie couple who wanted to park their bus on our property. They had once lived at the Beehive Collective in Maine and were hauling a sewing studio, a drum kit, a pottery kiln, a motorcycle, two bikes, a canoe, and a library. A nice bunch of kids planned to sell the workers building the spaceport’s runway ice cream and coffee from their bus. On their way out to the spaceport, they hit a cow, which broke the bus. After buying the cow from the rancher who owned it, they had no money for fuel and could not get to the spaceport to sell their ice cream and coffee. They were stuck in town for months.

  Media mogul Ted Turner owns much of the land north and south of T or C, where he raises buffalo, wolves, and Bolson tortoises and drives an old faded-yellow Suburban. Jay and Rhonda used to lend an antique wooden railway caboose for a night or two to folks passing through until they sold it to Chas and Cat, who do craniosacral therapy using real dolphins. Michael and Tess are building a hot-spring resort in town and have a van covered with images of a mythic deity called Green Tara.

  Many of these vehicles would fit right into the scene in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, when the auctioneer of Bartertown describes a stolen cart pulled by camels that he is trying to hock by boasting that it has “independent suspension, power steering, and no emissions!”

  The vehicle that changed our lives was a vegetable-oil-burning school bus turned mobile broadcast news center driven by nomad filmmaker and media activist Flux Rostrum.

  I opened the giant sheet-metal gates that make our compound feel like a place from whi
ch Willy Wonka might emerge to let in the school bus. Though Wonka himself may not be making an appearance, Mikey does well as a substitute when he emerges from the unusual rounded gate wearing a silk-screened zip-up jumpsuit, driving our truck with a papercrete mixer in tow.

  Flux’s giant bus gurgled and spurted like diesel engines do. It rolled hesitatingly onto the lot and landed in front of power post #11 with what seemed to be its very last bit of energy. Our property’s RV hookups were proving useful. Vehicles seem to have a natural homing mechanism that helps them find the posts. With no instruction, they pull up to the lifeless toadstools, cool their engines, and express their need.

  Flux fills his media-center-on-wheels with grease from a nearby restaurant after he and Mikey fixed the rig.

  Flux Rostrum spilled out of his bus to meet me.

  “Tryin’ to keep the good clothes clean?” I gestured to the apron that he wore on top of an outfit that was at least as filthy as the apron.