Life At Villa Boswell

Once the majority of the framing was complete, Chris and crew were able to start the exterior sheathing, beginning with the roof over the great room and kitchen.  The kitchen roof is actually what is called a "roof deck" in that part of the roof over that area also serves as the deck off the master bedroom.

Continue reading Closing up the Exterior

The final floor–the floor that will pretty much be the "master suite"–begins to be built. But first, one more shot of the ThermaSteel Panels.  They arrived unassembled (naturally) and marked with the figures that you see here.  The figures corresponded to the detailed drawings that Chris worked on along with the ThermaSteel engineers.  This shot shows the view of one of the bedroom window openings, and illustrates how vertically adjoining panels are connected with wide metal binding brackets screwed in place.  The header for each window frame is pre-fabricated into the the construction of the panel and tied into vertical steel studs that go straight up to the top of the upper panel, where the steel top beam completes the frame for both compression and shear strength integrity.

Continue reading Master Floor

Once the stem walls and garage level was complete, it was time for the main floor, beginning with the sheathing for the main floor.  This entire area that you see in the photo below will eventually be covered with flexible radiant tubing and then over that, a layer of concrete.  In the photo below, the ThermaSteel SIPs wait, ready to be erected.

And this next photo shows the steel moment beams framed and the beginning of the SIPs put in place.

Continue reading Main Floor

The next phase of the project involved finishing up the stem walls using concrete block for the support for the main body of the house.  On the far corner, the framing construction for the garage and utility also began. This shot shows that effort well underway.  What is not shown in this section of the project was the amount of drainage work that took place, as well as the work needed to route the gas, electric, and water utility lines.  That’s boring.  But it took time.  In the bottom center of the photo is the landing area for the main entrance, which is slightly offset from the staircase.

Below is the view from the "driveway." Straight ahead is the future garage door. To the right is our beloved platform that still serves as the main storage area for materials that need to be held on site and cannot be accommodated inside.

Continue reading Garage Level

After the land was cleared and the piers drilled, it was time to finish up the piers, the steel moment frames, and the foundation.  This post is about that process, which began about one year ago. First, let’s start with the end, or the design view of how it was supposed to look when complete. This image shows a 3D visual of the piers and the foundation as it would look with a "glass" hillside.  Because this is California, and because we have such a sloping lot, our foundation was heavily engineered and therefore very expensive.  As I mentioned before, there are 31 piers, 18 feet deep and 18 inches wide.

This image shows a rendered 3D view of the foundation, when complete.  I sure like how neat the land looks with all that nice mulch. Ha!

Continue reading Foundation