Sikes Adobe Farmhouse
Restoration
June 2003 Progress Report
The following photographs were taken during June 2003.
These first photographs show the archaeological investigations
that were taking place in the adobe portion of the house. The question
was, did the adobe room have an earth floor or a wood floor? Investigation
by Stephen Van Wormer and Susan Walters indicate that the original
floor was a tamped earth floor. They began the investigation by
digging up a portion of the existing wood floor. The existing wood
floor was built with round nails, like the ones in use today. Below
the floor were joists that used square nails, that would have been
in use during the Sikes' period (ca 1880 or before). The joists
were laid on top of carefully placed boulders. The boulders were
placed on top of a tamped earth floor. In between the joists was
loose soil. Based on this information, Van Wormer and Walters have
reconstructed the following history.
When they built the adobe, the Sikes' dug down to the clay level
(about a foot below the ground surface). The adobe brick walls
were placed on the perimeter of the clay level. Inside they spread
a mud plaster over the ground to smooth it out. This served as
the floor until at some point, probably when they added the east
porch enclosure sometime before 1881, when they decided to put
in a wood floor. They did this by putting in the boulders to raise
up the floor to make it even with the porch floor, and laying the
joists. Later, probably in 1912, during the Barnett period (the
Barnett's owned the Sikes Adobe Farmhouse after the Sikes' family)
a decision was made to put in a new floor. The Barnett's put in
a new roof at the same time. They pulled up the old floor, but
kept the same joists in place. Before they put the new floor down,
it appears they put in fill dirt between the joists that they gathered
up from around the grounds. The archaeologists found some small
artifacts in the loose dirt that could have been found around the
outside of the house. Shingles that fell from the roof during the
re-roofing were found on top of the hard-packed clay layer of the
floor, underneath the wood floor.
This photo shows the remaining layer of mud plaster over the clay
floor.
Loose dirt material that was under the wood floor, remaining to
be filtered and studied.
Back to Top of Page. |
