Roque Tudesqui House - Historic Santa Fe Foundation

Next comes the moving of a window on the same wall. At night
we have to hang a tarp over the opening of the door to keep out the cold.
It is like waking up in a cave. Maybe someday it will be straightened
around and pulled together-I hope. I say there is nothing like fixing up an
old house, especially when you're living in it. [Lumpkins had put one of
the old windows in the very back corner of the patio wall where my
bedroom is now; that is, on the west end of the back building. We
filled that in and used the old frame and window when we cut another
opening on the south wall of the front room facing the patio.
It s the one between the door and the existing window on the west
corner. There had been a window in the back room on the north wall,
where the smaller door is now. We left the old frame and put in the
door.)
July 22, 1960
Door in and mess cleaned up. What an improvement! Trying to
save the lovely vine, poor thing; hope some of it survives. [Later Ifound
out that woodbine is not really a lovely vine. I got rid of that in a
hurry and put in ivy.) The last day of men helping. Will be nice to be
alone. We'll have a lot of mud-throwing to do. And if the tractor boy ever
shows up to get the patio cleaned up, it will begin looking like something.
Thrill ofthe day: saw Igor Stravinsky and his wife on the street. He's here
to conduct his opera, Oedipus Rex.
July 25, 1960
It's 10 PM and we have lights strung in the patio for the tractor and
shovel to work. He's been here since six and how different it looks already.
It is going to look enormous. [The patio, that is.] We're almost
down to original level, fmding the old flagstone around the well and other
spots. [We took all that dirt out of the patio. It had risen way above
the base of the wall. You didn't see the stone footings anyplace. There
was a step up to the patio from the French door that was there. We
made the patio level with the bottom of the door. When we found
flagstones, we realized that that was probably the original level. It
wasn't a complete thing-just pieces here and there, and we didn't
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