Life At Villa Boswell

I spoke with Chris tonight.  Both of us are feeling tired and overwhelmed by our work loads (he on the house and me on house/job stuff).  It’s been such a long haul, and it never seems quite done.  We broke ground in May of 2007 and spent 2 years prior to that in intense design/planning/structural.  I tried to cheer him up, and as I did so, I couldn’t help but do this little exercise, because by training I document stuff.

So, when someone sees the completed house, practically everything that you lay your eyes on will have been created, installed, modified or highly directed by Chris, Lora, Brian, me, or Clay. 

Let’s Start with Lora

Continue reading How Do You Build Your Own House?

While a lot of the exterior work was going on, we had a crew inside doing the drywall.  Boy, these guys are FAST!!! And really messy.  You’ve never seen anything so messy as drywall, and it’s not just the dust. But, as usual, let’s start with just before, where the remaining walls that were not ThermaSteel SIPs were covered with reflective foil.  Heat reflection and insulation, with 5/8" drywall everywhere–efficient and sound absorbent.

Living room.

Master Bedroom.

Ok, now let’s begin drywalling. 

Continue reading Drywall

This post will be sort of a long pictorial showing how we started the finish work on the lower walkway. The final touches are not done yet, but you’ll get the sense of the scope of what it means to create a raised walkway with fill and concrete, and how important it is to have knowledgeable concrete workers doing the job.

The Before

So, here we are in the before. In the very foreground is the rough cut soil that is thankfully decomposed granite.  Still, that all had to be finished.  There is a good 7′ of clearance between the bottom of the walkway and the underside of the plank going from the lane to the main deck.

Continue reading Lower Walkway

It’s been a long time since my last post, and a lot has happened.  I had this silly idea that I would be able to blog about each main section after it was all complete.  But this house doesn’t go up like that.  It goes up in layers… long, never-ending, maddening layers.  But, we’re getting close.  We’ll be in by Christmas for sure.  In the meantime, this post is about some fixes that we’ve made to the walkway with the help of the Palomino brothers, who are really wonderful.

The Landing

First, the landing to our main doorway was really a problem.  I cannot find any photos of the before, and that’s probably because I was repressing the image.  In any case, the gist of it is that the steps to the main walkway landed in a section that was about 4" below the actual level of the door landing area, so you would have to cross a slight "depression" and then go up again to get to the front door.  This was a result of the height requirement of the stairs.  It looked awful, but Chris said, "We can’t do anything about it; County requirements."  I said:

"You’ll fix it.  You always think of something and then fix it."

The picture below shows the first step in fixing that.  Notice how the landing area beneath the step and the entry pad to the right are on the same level? 

Continue reading Walkway Fixes

I just finished editing this YouTube video from footage taken by Brian (he’s done the best shots), Chris and Lora.  It shows the stem-to-stern process of putting in the radiant tubing and pouring concrete to finish the floors.  Below the video, you can see some of the shots that I took of the completed floors.  They are broom-finished and ready for tiling.  But, the next step is insulation and … FINALLY .. drywall.

Continue reading Radiant Floors Complete