Life At Villa Boswell

It’s sort of hard to talk about rough electrical.  I mean, how exciting is that?  I suppose really exciting if you mess it up and then electrocute yourself later on.  So, the thing about electrical is that, even though you have mentally walked through the house and thought of all the places where you need a light, a switch and an outlet, there’s nothing like walking through the house again, pretending to turn lights on and off, looking at all the spots where you might want to have lighting.  That’s what Chris and I did, and good thing, too.  Anyhow, I figured I’d also throw in some photos about the work on the garage, since that’s where the main electrical panel for the house is located too.

This first shot shows the garage, no wiring and no finish work, on a rainy December day. In the center is the doorway through to the utility room, where we stored and locked up all the tools for the job.

Continue reading Garage and Electrical

Now that I’ve caught up to the work done on the exterior of the house, it’s time to give some attention to the work done inside.  What everyone says is true: when it looks done on the outside, there is still a long way to go.  But let’s not dwell on that. Here’s some shots of work that Chris did on the staircase leading from the main floor to the master bedroom.  Beginning with, of course, hardly anything.  This shot was taken in January before the house was sealed up.  You can only see the beginning of the curved wall, marked out by the studs in the center of the shot.  At this point, framing was the order of the day and ladders and scaffolds were used to go between floors.

Continue reading Staircases

Well, now that I’ve finally caught up with the exterior work, I thought I’d post a chronological photo sequence of the project, starting here with one of our key workers, Brian.  The first shot was taken in May of 2007,  just after the property was cleared and before ground breaking actually began.  I’ve embedded this in a web album, and have tried to choose all shots from a similar angle. (When you click the arrow, the slide show begins, but you can stop the auto play by mousing over the show and clicking the pause button.)

Once the stucco was finished, there was all the trim work to be done.  We hired Jesus Garcia Painting to do some of the painting, especially the fascia boards beneath the gutters.  It was nice to see the color all match.  Then, after a lot of debate, I decided that the windows, from Marvin Integrity, be painted as well to match the trim, rather than be left white.  The windows are made of fiberglass, so they are designed to be painted.  I felt it was in keeping with the general trim and design of the house that the windows be painted bronze.  Guess who did this all? Lora and Chris’ son, Brian.  This first photo shows what the windows looked like after the stucco was all finished, where the masking was still partially remaining and the stucco was slopped all over the place.  There was a lot of manual cleanup done by Brian just to make it possible to put on the window trim and to paint the windows.

Continue reading Exterior Trim

Stucco work begins toward the end of March, not with actual stucco but with black stucco paper placed over every exterior surface. Then, it’s all covered with chicken wire.

Continue reading Stucco