Life At Villa Boswell

It’s a wet and cold Martin Luther King Day, and I have spent the day making the El Granada Project books and files all neat and tidy.  Time for a little fun.  Back in 2004, after making Cell Block 49 have a little more curb appeal, we turned our compulsive fixer-upper energy to the kitchen.  Below are some nice before-and-after shots of this effort, and the story follows just beneath.

As you can see from the "before" pictures, the kitchen was pretty dysfunctional. Actually, though, the "before" state represented significant improvment from when we first moved in.  Initially, the kitchen lacked the bar area with the two stools, and there was a door blocking it off from the rest of the area.  Ugh!  We took off the door, added some paint on the inside of the cottage, put up the formica bar/counter, and added lots of storage with the shelves and hooks for the pots.  The real pain was the sink area.  The kitchen had the kind of sink that you–if you are my age–would spot in your grandma’s kitchen.  It was single, very shallow, and had a drain the size of a bar sink and no trap.  Between the sink and lack of counter space, cooking in the kitchen was really a pain, and since Chris and I like to cook, we thought remodeling worth the effort.

Of course, once we started, we didn’t know we’d have to eat out of the microwave and clean up all dishes in the bathroom for the duration of the project!

Continue reading Pine Cottage – Kitchen Re-Do

Part of making Pine Cottage a more appealing place to live involved the garden.  In the spring of 2004, I embarked on an extensive project to create a pond and surrounding garden for the cottage.  Since I was new to landscaping and landscaping design, I decided to break up the garden into "sections" that I would then design with a specific dominant color in mind.  I can say that, almost 4 years later, this was one of the better decisions I made. 

So, the front area to the left of the house entrance became the "blue" garden.  I remember imagining the barren plot as bursting with blues of hydrangeas and other plants, a glorious array of color and texture.  It’s a good thing I can work on delayed gratification, because it took 3 years to achieve just the look I had in mind, and countless plant adjustments and discoveries, some of which I want to capture here.  However, I consider this area of the garden one of my better achievements. You can see in the photo album below a chronology of this section of my garden, with some description of the changes I made and why.  Click the arrow to view the slide show, or click on the photo to go directly to the album to view in larger size. (If viewing the album, be sure to click the "slide show" link for the full effect.)

The rest of this post is about the lessons I’ve learned in the process of working on the "blue" garden.

Continue reading Blue Garden

Continue reading Curb Appeal

October in Northern CA means it’s time to prune your hydrangeas.  Right now, my hydrangeas have maxed out on their lovely fall tones.  Here’s a shot from my "blue" garden, one in the spring, the other in the fall.  You can see how they change over the seasons. (Note: all photos are from my web album.  You can click on them to see them in larger size and zoom in on details.)

I also use sulphur granules to keep these hydrangeas blue. I have found that using sulphur granules is safer than the often-recommended application of aluminum sulphate. (I use Whitney Farms granulated sulphur in case you want to find some yourself.) Here, you can see the Nikko Blue in the pot received a slightly erratic application of the sulphur, since some of the blooms tend toward pink.  Continue reading Hydrangea Pruning

Many people consider eco-friendly design and building to be decidedly un-friendly on the budget.  We have had numerous conversations with various builders who consistently say to us, "Oh, I would love to build green, but I just can’t afford it."  So, when we committed to building our El Granada House using green-friendly materials, we were suprised to learn that this wasn’t necessarily true.  For our house, the cost per square foot of "stick" building was actually more than building using SIPs, or Structural Insulated Panels. 

We are using ThermaSteel SIP panels for our framing and expect to come under budget, even though these panels will be shipped to us from the East Coast.  (Note: we realize that shipping is not green, but because of our lot requirements, we needed the lightest panels possible.)  If memory serves, the panels are equal in cost to lumber, but the real savings comes in labor costs.  The panels are pre-engineered and when delivered to the site, assembly is achieved without the need for skilled carpentry.  We’ll keep you posted on the final numbers.

In the meantime, check out this fabulous video by Michelle Kaufmann from Dwell. 

http://www.dwell.com/daily/video/9298406.html

This video shows the use of Sketchup within Google Earth at the end of the video, which is way cool.  What also excited me was the notion of building using highly efficient processes, and the water reclamation portion of the design as well.  I’d also like to see "softer" designs achieved with the same efficiency, as well as multi-family sites designed as a whole entity.  Imagine!