The removal of the wall covering begins on the north wall.
After the old covering is removed they parge the wall.
This fellow is watering the wall on the verandah prior to parging it.
The front wall is all parged.
Next project . . they removed all the old style windows.
The finishing touches begin on the north wall.
The south wall is all cleaned off.
The south wall looking east.
The back wall (west) is all parged. Notice the two large aircondioning pipes.
Photos by Urso Branco
Vila Nicolina
May 25 2006
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Resurfacing outer walls
Saturday, March 28, 2009
More Renovations
One day I heard the workmen working on the roof. I went out to look at the Vila and they were installing solar water heating panels.
The next project was to brick in the front window.
From the inside you can see they have left a narrow L shaped window on the side.
They have now removed the ornate sections between rooms and replaced them with gentle curves.
The front steps have been removed and a drip pipe for the airconditioning system has been installed.
The front steps were rebuilt with more and longer steps.
The steps have a shorter rise making it easier to walk down them.
Now the front window has been completely closed in.
The workman are removing the wall covering on the south side.
Inside views of ongoing work.
Photos by Urso Branco
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Changing The Vila - Renovations
Renovations are being done both indoors and outdoors.
The Owners decided to replace the old style columns on the verandah.
Here the workmen are removing the old circular columns.
They hammered away at the old masonry and erected supports for the roof while replacing the columns.
They replaced the circular columns with rectangular ones. They also took the ornate curves out of the overhead. Here you can see the many temporary roof supports.
Here are the first columnrs they replaced by the front door.
As they started to replace the columns the new ones were encased in wood to hold the cement. See the middle column here.
They constantly hammered and chipped away at the old columns.
They removed the support for the columns down to the base.
Here is what the finished new columns look like at the front of the hoiuse.
Here are the columns at the side of the house. Noticed the gentle curve between columns instead of the ornate curves of the old system.
The work inside the house is very extensive. Every room is being remodeled.
The basic electrical wiring is being renewed also.
The work is ongoing for quite a while.
Here you can see the plastic under the roofing tiles.
All the walls are being resurfaced.
There is remodeling in every room.
As the work progresses there will be more photos in more posts.
Photos by Urso Branco
Making a new sidewalk
The first thing they did was to "Build the Sidewalk". They cleaned out the old sidewalk, leveled the ground and then, square by square, using moulds they cast the sidewalk. They chose not to use tiles but rather to use concrete. They also started working on the Wall at the same time. See the posts about the Wall.
This is the sidewalk along the north side.D
This is the "front" sidewalk along the east side.
Later they planted trees.
In the spring the trees began to bloom.
This was just the start of the gardening. See more trees and flowers in the posts about the Grounds.
Photos by Urso Branco
The Wall - Tearing down the old
Now they could tear down the old wall and clean out the gardens. There was a shed against the back wall. That was also removed.
It took a long time to clean up the old mess.
They had gardens here but they were also removed.
They started to rebuild the wall while still cleaning out the trash.
The first step on the wall, because they removed the shed, was to make the wall stronger.
Even the low walls around the vila were rebuilt.
This whole project was a long project started in Aug 2007 and still there is a long way to go.
Photos by Urso Branco
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