Inside Adobe Walls: a rustic exuberance

Paul Weideman | The New Mexican

6/7/2009 - 6/7/09

The oldest section of this Territorial Revival-style house dates to about 1950. Owners Ginger and Angelo Cappuccio, who previously got a taste for remodeling on a double adobe at San Juan Pueblo, bought this home almost 10 years ago and set about expanding it from about 1,800 square feet to 3,279.

They enlarged the kitchen, enclosed a courtyard, and added a new master wing. Also part of the remodel was getting the garage away from the house, a preference of the Cappuccios. So they remodeled the old garage as a bedroom/office and built a new, detached garage with a storeroom and a tool room, all plumbed for possible future conversion as a guest house.

Some elements of the house and outdoor spaces were modeled after European and Mexican styles. The kitchen is a dazzler of a re-do, with lots of Talavera tile lending it an old, folk-art appearance.

"I love Artesanos," Ginger Cappuccio said of the Santa Fe import company that specializes in colorful, Mexican tile. "I love the fact that it looks like people have touched these walls."

This is a great little kitchen, its variety of cutting surfaces and deep mop sink giving it sort of a portable aspect. It's also well-equipped, with a small Wolf range and a refrigerator disguised not with the usual cabinet wood but with full-length blackboard panels.

A tall, free-standing cupboard with antique doors provides storage space for dishes. The walk-in pantry was made with a window for passing items, or to stage a puppet show for children. "This is a very dog- and kid-friendly house," Cappuccio said.

The kitchen ceiling has construction-grade, laminated beams. The living room boasts rather elegant and old-fashioned grooved ceiling beams, and one of the home's three fireplaces. Wooden doors on a built-in hutch open to reveal the location of the television and stereo equipment.

The master bathroom is another standout with its distinctive neo-angle bathtub and bold, checkerboard tiles on the wall. Throughout this house, the walls are painted in the gold or taupe realms — none are white. Floors are of wood, ceramic tile, or brick.

There is in-floor radiant heating in the common areas and the master bedroom; and forced-air heat in the guest wing at the west end of the house, which holds two bedrooms and two full bathrooms. The larger of the bedrooms there has access to the rear patio.

The house is at 152 E. San Mateo Road and is separated from the street by a sturdy fence of latillas and stuccoed pillars. The home entry is off a walled, brick-floored patio; there's a water-spitting gargoyle on a wall as you come into the courtyard.

Rainwater running off the roofs of the home is directed into buried cisterns, where it is pumped out for the drip-irrigation system. That is an important reason behind the beautiful landscaping, which includes columbines, boxwood, ornamental grasses, yuccas, herbs, three big piñons, and a huge, old apricot tree.

The house, on a parcel of one acre, is listed by Lisa Smith, Prudential Santa Fe Real Estate, for $999,000.