A Wall-Raising Experience!

So far, my Tuscan villa-fattoria has consisted of disparate physical elements - two windows, a fireplace, a staircase, and a wall fresco. And, of course, a stack of various styrofoam walls and arches. 

In my mind, however, it reigns complete - golden stuccoed stone, aged terra cotta, arched openings, painted doors, with touches throughout of both elegance and simplicity - a home lived in, a home loved.  The finished form of the villa is so real to me that whenever I walk into my workroom and see the big bare board with nails poking through, the stacks of styrofoam walls dropping little styrofoam pellets everywhere, the general construction clutter, and no villa anywhere in sight, my mind slips sideways into a time warp. 

But finally, those few scattered elements have come together into the bare beginnings of my vision for the villa. At least I can walk into the room now and see villa walls instead of styrofoam! 

This is the big pile of walls and arches that I carried down to my basement workroom last fall when I finally came in from the cold garage.

I erected the walls loosely so that I could determine whether they all fit together properly.

And of course they didn't. The living room end wall was 1 1/2" too short. If I needed a clue to find my mistake in measuring, that was a dead giveaway, since my styrofoam is 1 1/2" thick. I had drawn my floor plan correctly on graph paper, but misinterpreted it when I copied the plan onto the plywood base and cut the styrofoam for the walls. Instead of the living room wall abutting onto the front wall, thus giving me the 1 1/2" that I needed, I had done just the opposite, so that the front wall would have joined the end wall almost at the window. Not good.

But - as I've said time and time and time and time again - Styrofoam Is So Forgiving!

(Yes, I have said it that many times!)

I secured a 1 1/2" section of styrofoam to the short living room wall, but I made a 3/4" adjustment to the back wall section, so that I wouldn't lose too much space from my limited front area. Of course, I had to move the anchor nails for the front arched openings and for the back living room wall. Later I had to add 3/4" extensions to the fronts of all the walls. It takes so much time to remedy just one teensy little mistake! Styrofoam may forgive, but I'm not sure it ever forgets.

There were other minor adjustments that needed to be made before the walls could go up. Because the styrofoam that I like to use is so thick, it's sometimes hard to cut evenly all through the thickness. But since Styrofoam Is So Forgiving, repairs are easily made. Add a bit here, subtract a bit there. 

Then cover the whole thing liberally with joint compound.

All the repairs have been accomplished; now I must wait for the joint compound to dry.

Which it did, eventually, and I took the pieces out to the garage for sanding. Thankfully it was warm enough that I could complete the sanding in comfort. Then the painting began, but I soon realized that my base coat mixture was running low. Time to replenish my supply.

I had mixed the base coat paint colors when I was working on the staircase. I want you to know that since I'm such a careful worker, conscientious in the extreme, I did not fail to record the formula for my original paint mixture. So imagine my complete surprise when I didn't have the faintest idea how to decipher my "formula!" It's so hard to determine how long those long squeezes are. And is a quick squeeze half as long as a long squeeze? And how many dollops equal a squeeze? (Or is it the other way around?)

I discovered that paint is not nearly as forgiving as styrofoam, but through much trial and many errors, not to mention a few curses (under my breath) I finally came close enough. 

It's a good thing that the base coat will be covered by four color washes.

The painting goes on...

...and on.

At last! The FIRST wall is permanently up! This is the wall between the living room and the entrance "hall." To secure the wall in place, I smeared glue generously on the protruding nails and carefully pushed the styrofoam wall down over the nails.

Next came the back wall of the entrance hall, where the stairs are located. Some spackling was necessary on all the joins of the walls and along the floor in places.

The wall between the entrance hall and the dining room, and the frescoed back wall of the dining room are secured in place. 

And FOUR - count them - FOUR walls are up!

I painted all the spackling repairs with the peach base coat. That was easy. The hard part was putting all the color washes on the paint touch-ups.

Two more walls are up - the back wall and the fireplace wall in the living room.

And the spackling goes on...

...and on.

Now wall #7 is up! This is the wall between the dining room and kitchen. The far door on the right leads into the kitchen, and the nearest one leads out to the loggia. I won't do further work on the kitchen until I've completed more work on the other lower-level rooms.

And back to rectifying my initial measuring mistake. I cut 3/4" strips of styrofoam to add to the fronts of the walls. I could have done that before the walls were put up, as I did for the living room wall. But my confidence was shaken. I wanted all the walls secured in place before I did any more measuring!

I secured the new styrofoam strips to the front walls with the usual toothpicks and glue.

Even though the extensions won't be visible when the front arches are all installed, I felt compelled to apply a layer of joint compound to each one...

...and give them a light sanding and a coat of paint.  I can't explain why.

While I waited for various things to dry - joint compound, spackling paste, and paint - I installed the living room fireplace. Even though I'm not quite ready to start the electrical work, I did place the wiring and a lightbulb in the fireplace. That needed to be done before I could lay the fire, and I wanted to lay the fire before the front arch is added, since I must work sort of sideways to reach the fireplace. My "fire" consists of bits of orange tissue paper, a bronze metallic paper, and tiny logs, all layered on a grate over the lightbulb. Last of all, I added ashes and small pieces of charcoal.

Here is the villa-fattoria in its immediate entirety - all repaired, painted, and ready for the next step.

To celebrate the successful villa wall raising, Robert and our grandson, Leo, baked some pizzas in our pizza oven. That's a promising beginning to the Merry Month of May!  

Creating a Classic Italian Fresco Fiasco

As I mentioned in a previous Tuscan Villa post, it was necessary to give up many "elements" that I wanted to include in the villa construction. Among other things, I planned a fresco on the back wall of the dining room. Fortunately, the dining room had to have a back wall; I didn't need to sacrifice that! And since the wall was there anyway, I could go ahead with my fresco plan. Well, it wasn't actually a plan. I don't really draw, and I definitely don't paint (in the artistic sense.) All I had was a vague idea of gluing a "classic" Italian something-or-other on the wall so that it would appear to have been painted on fresh, moist plaster using water-based pigments. 

I started with that Exciting Unknown - a "blank canvas," which is actually the back wall of the villa dining room.

I applied the base color of a pale peach mixture...

...and added four washes in various color mixes, drying between each color application.

I found this image of a fruit basket fresco that I thought would be perfect for the villa wall.  

I cut out the basket, which took a long time, and began gluing it onto the wall. It looked ridiculous. Or maybe not ridiculous, but what it looked like was a cut-out fruit basket glued onto a wall.

So I scraped it off.

I printed another image and kept the background intact, tearing it carefully by hand so that the edges weren't well defined. I hoped that I could blend the background of the print into the wall by applying paint with a dry brush. I glued the print onto the wall. But somehow I misread my center guide mark and the print was glued on off-center.

So I scraped it off.

I glued it on again but decided that the whole image was too small for the wall.

I increased the size of the image, tore the edges carefully and glued the second print over the first. I dry-brushed some paint around the edges, but it didn't exactly blend into the wall. It still looked like a cut-out, glued-on fruit basket.

So I scraped it off.

I re-stuccoed and re-sanded the wall...

...and re-painted with all five color mixes.

I was going to have to do this thing the hard way. I was going to have to paint something myself. I chose a grapevine, since I already had a grapevine motif on the living room fireplace. But I wasn't quite sure how to draw the stems and leaves, so I found lots of descriptive sketches. I needed to practice making a sketch before I began the real thing.

And I hate to tell you that for some reason that I cannot remember, although I'm sure that I had a reason, I drew the practice sketch on the back side of the dining room wall. When I was ready to make the real drawing on the wall, my practice sketch was out of sight on the other side! I didn't HAVE to see the sketch, but I had planned the grapevine's placement on the wall carefully, and I really wanted to be able to refer back to it. Then Modern Technology came to the rescue!

I photographed the sketch with my iPad and had an instant sketch for reference. I used a light brown colored pencil to recreate the sketch. I somehow also poked a sort of hole in the wall. I repaired it with a dab of joint compound and covered it later with the grapevine paint.

I thought there weren't enough leaves in my first sketch, so I added more. Then I thought that there were too many. But I was NOT going to try to paint them out. The leaves stayed.

My color palette included various shades of purple for the grapes and what I thought was a mixture of grayish greens for the leaves.

But the leaves looked aqua instead! (Actually not quite as aqua as they look in these photos - but still aqua.) I added more gray to the color mixture, and the leaves turned even more aqua. There's obviously something mysterious about mixing colors that I don't understand.

When I added a Golden Tan color wash to the aqua leaves, they turned green! The mystery deepens.

I was feeling some satisfaction with my grapevine until I realized that the grape clusters seemed disproportionately smaller than the (many) leaves.

So I enlarged the clusters of grapes and sanded the grapevine lightly to "age" it. 

And the Fresco is Finished!

 After all that effort, I need a change of pace. I think I'll go outside and help Wilbur stare at the daffodils. April has arrived in all its budding beauty; I hope that it's a beautiful and productive month for you all.    HAPPY SPRING!