enormous welcome
Once home to the creator of Calvin and Hobbes, this Santa Fe adobe revives under a wall-to-wall makeover by the original builder.
Softly glowing walls provide a soothing backdrop for the homeowners’ extensive collection of art, antiques, memorabilia, and collectibles, including these dramatic charcoal drawings by Pennsylvania artist David Brumbach.
The dining table seats more than a baker’s dozen. Massive corbels and tightly spaced vigas at the ceiling and heavy lintels on doors and windows match the large scale of the room.
Long views through offset arched openings lead the eye across the length of the house from the kitchen area toward the sunlit front door.
A carnival wheel recessed into the wall hangs in its traveling case by the entry.
Ellen McCabe’s birdhouse collection backs the wall behind the bed in the master suite.
With pots, pans, appliances, and other paraphernalia in full view, the kitchen exudes a let’s-get-cooking sense of purpose.
Antiques and found objects, including a birdhouse and a serape-draped chair, cluster by a screened window within an antique door leading to one of the many portales around the house.
With its adobe fireplace, inviting furniture, and views of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, this patio encourages multiseason outdoor entertaining.
The Middleton-McCabe home's vibrant living room now occupies the former solarium.
Before its modern makeover and expansion, the original kitchen featured blue tilework, terra-cotta colored flooring, and cream cabinetry.
Outside, this front entry greeted visitors before the home received an extensive remodel by Bainbridge Construction Company, the original builder.
This article first appeared in Spring 2008 Su Casa.
This is a people house. The dining table that seats 14 gives the first clue. Then everywhere you look, you find little nooks for sitting with a good book or curling up near a window just to gaze and be quiet. Places abound for retiring with a cup of tea, whether it’s in the spacious living room, on a porch, or in one of the three large guest rooms.
“I love entertaining and wanted a house that would let me do it in the way that I enjoy. I want lots of people all at once to feel relaxed and comfortable,” says Ellen McCabe, who along with her husband, Rick Middleton, undertook an extensive remodel that let them have everything in a Santa Fe house they envisioned. But far beyond accommodating family and friends, the house is peopled with another layer of personalities not readily apparent but very much rooted in the background.
The original builder, who ended up doing the remodel as well, is a legend in Santa Fe, and a previous owner created a cartoon strip loved by nearly everyone in the country. This isn’t an ordinary house. The layers of various lives fold into its history and certainly add to the splendor.
Nearly four years ago, McCabe and Middleton, who live in Pennsylvania and also have a summer house in Connecticut, began searching for another home. “That we were even looking in Santa Fe was a surprise,” McCabe says. “We first came through 10 years ago, and I didn’t like it here. Then we returned for the wine and chile festival, and suddenly I needed to live here.” They eventually found an adobe house. Wanting to turn it into everything they envisioned, another search began—for a builder who could make it all that they wanted. They talked with several. They wanted to find someone they could trust, someone who could keep the horror stories down. “It’s so stressful while building,” McCabe says. “So many things have to be resolved.” Then they met Buzz Bainbridge.
“He’d originally built the house, and we immediately felt his integrity and decided to go with him,” says Middleton, who works in oil salvage. “The whole job got done on a handshake.” For a multimillion-dollar remodel, that says a lot. Then again, is there anyone in Santa Fe—or even the whole Southwest, for that matter—who won’t vouch for Alexander “Buzz” Bainbridge? Since 1955 his name has been synonymous with elegant adobe homes. “The first time I saw adobe, I fell in love with it, and I didn’t want to build with anything else,” says Bainbridge, sitting on one of the porches at the Middleton-McCabe house.
The Bainbridge story begins simply. He and his bride, Jean (now married 64 years), were living in Minnesota after he returned from active duty in World War II. A friend called asking his help in running a ski area in New Mexico. Without blinking an eye, the young couple headed west and never looked back. The year was 1946. Bainbridge went on to develop ski areas in Arizona and Colorado but soon drifted back to Santa Fe and started building houses. As the story goes, he would build the houses and Jean would sell them. She also did much of the interior work, choosing paint, flooring, even laying the tile herself.
Bainbridge Construction Company built the original Middleton-McCabe house in 1990. Bill Watterson, the creator of Calvin and Hobbes, immediately slurped it up. One of the early homes on the western side of Santa Fe, it allowed the cartoonist a private estate far from the madding crowd. In the early 1990s, Watterson took an extended break from Calvin and Hobbes. He’d started the strip in 1985, and soon after 2,700 newspapers nationwide carried it. When Watterson stopped the strip in 1995 to explore other creative pursuits, he’d made 3,160 of the widely read cartoons.
Two owners later, Middleton and McCabe bought the home. The Bainbridges suggested that Cindy Urban do the remodel plans. “I looked over the wish list that Ellen and Rick had and added a few of my own ideas,” says Urban, an independent architect in the area for 17 years. “We collaborated for about six months. They were a fun couple to work with. This wasn’t their first remodel, and Ellen knew what she wanted.” They ended up expanding the heated square footage and finished living space to accommodate porches, garages, a guest house, and workshop.
Years ago McCabe and Middleton bought and remodeled an old farmhouse and loved the process. Taking on a similar task wasn’t the least bit daunting. The Santa Fe project came with a few glitches along the way, which is only to be expected, but they weren’t insurmountable. “You just go into problem-solving mode,” McCabe recalls. “I only cried once.”
Is the house everything they had in mind? “It’s pretty darn close,” says McCabe. “There’s not a room we didn’t rush with. There were lots of emails and phone calls, and during construction we came out once a month. During the last three months, we rented in town so we could be here. There are always so many last-minute decisions.” Helping with many of those details was yet another member of the Bainbridge family.
“Dad built the very first house in Las Campanas,” says Andrea Bainbridge, daughter of Buzz and Jean and a long-time interior designer in Portland, Oregon. Three years ago she took over her parents’ business. She worked closely with McCabe and Middleton during the remodel, helping them choose the interior features, and says planning living spaces is something she grew up doing. “Most of the houses my father built were on spec, and when he finished, we’d move in. But every time he’d begin a house, he’d ask us kids how we wanted our rooms. I learned early on how to judge space.”
Besides the overall frame of the structure, the interior is what makes a house a home—and as Urban said, McCabe knew what she wanted. “I wanted yellow walls and had full faith that it would work,” she says. Others tried dissuading her, but she held to the vision and now the subtle mustard color throughout the main rooms does indeed work. Step through the wooden front door into the wide entryway, and the 14-foot ceilings give an enormous welcome that continues throughout the house.
For five years McCabe ran an antiques store in Midland, Texas, and her eye for historical items is evident. But it’s nothing studied. “All the stuff I have is so loopy,” she says. “It has no rhyme or reason. I just pick up things that I like, and somehow it all works. Everything that Rick and I have collected has a story.”
One time she found an old roulette wheel and kept it in a barn for five years. She had no idea where it would end up. Now it fits perfectly on the wall in the entryway. A pig trough on the dining table certainly makes for conversation. Books line a vintage Amish sled. And not too many people collect birdhouses, but McCabe does, and she wanted a place to display them. “Buzz’s foreman Mario is just wonderful. I told him to somehow figure it out, and he did,” she says. The houses now nestle into a wall in the master bedroom, each occupying its own separately lit nicho.
McCabe owned a restaurant in Saratoga, New York, for seven years, so for her new Santa Fe house, she wanted a splendid kitchen. “I love to cook and entertain. I’m always planning the next meal. The original kitchen was way too small,” says McCabe, who is now in heaven with a place for every pot and pan imaginable, every convenience, and plenty of counter space. When it comes to feeding troupes of guests at that 14-foot table, efficiency while cooking makes it almost play.
After knowing each other in high school, McCabe and Middleton reconnected 20 years later. Today, their second marriage for both has produced what McCabe calls “offshoots” of lots of people. Together they have five grown children who have children, and they’re all starting to show up in Santa Fe along with more extended family and friends and their kids. “One of the guest rooms has a tub with a heating element so the bath never gets cold. I could barely get my sister-in-law out of the water,” McCabe laughs. It’s this kind of entertaining—to let people feel wanted and pampered along with lots of elegant privacy—that this house was made for. It’s certainly a house for people.
A journalist for 30 years, Cindy Bellinger is also handy with tools. For many years she remodeled her own house and wrote a book about the experience called Someone Stole My Outhouse. She lives in the mountains of northern New Mexico.
Resources
Unless otherwise noted, businesses below are in Santa Fe, the area code is 505, and the prefix for websites is www.
Builder: Buzz and Andrea Bainbridge, Bainbridge Construction Company, 988-2777 or 503/490-3817, bainbridgeconstruction.com. Architect: Cindy Urban, AIA, 983-5503. Interior design: Heather Van Luchene, ASID, HVL Interiors, 983-3601, hvlinteriors.com; and Ralph Myers, Lancaster, PA. Adobe: Adobe Factory, Alcalde, NM, 852-4131, adobefactory.com. Appliances: Page’s Appliances, 995-8172, pagesappliances.com; and Showcase Appliance Center, 982-5563, showcase-appliance.com. Artwork: (page 72) two pieces to the left of “Patties,” by Jeremy Weisburg, Philadelphia, PA. (Page 73) framed charcoal pieces, by David Brumbach, Lancaster, PA; masks from a tribe in Cameroon. BEDROOM square piece, by Jim Galleger, Lancaster, PA;
Cactus, oil painting by Ellen McCabe. Brick: Hope Lumber Building & Supply Co., 471-7474. Cabinetry: Santa Fe Custom Works, Albuquerque, 344-2551, sfcustomworks.com. Concrete: LaFarge, lafargecorp.com. Countertops & granite: Sherpa Stone, 473-2273. Doors: Spanish Pueblo Doors, 473-0464, spdoors.com. Electrical: Don Holland. Fireplaces: Benito Terrazas, Bainbridge Construction Company; Ramon Olivas Builders, 929-1886. Flooring & tile: limestone and slate tile, Statements in Tile Lighting Kitchens Flooring, 988-4440. Hardware & plumbing fixtures: Santa Fe by Design, 988-4111, santafebydesign. com. Heating & cooling: Steve Campbell.
Insulation & roofing: Rick Wilson’s PFI, 424-0314. Ironwork: Jody Norskog. Landscaping: Tim Urban, Tierra Bonita Landscape Company, 983-5503. Low-voltage wiring: Western Systems Design, 983-9300, westernsystemsdesign.com. Lumber: Empire Builders Supply, 982-2646; and Hope Lumber Building & Supply Co., 471-7474. Paint: Tesuque Valley Painting, 490-2214. Plaster & stucco: Bainbridge Construction Company, 988-2777 or 503/490-3817, bainbridgeconstruction. com. Plumbing: Steve Campbell. Vigas: Hansen Lumber Co., 471-8280. Wall system: Rastra, RA West, Lamy, NM, 466-3806. Windows: Tortuga Windows.