Beachshack: Tropical Building Page

St Barts Renovation:
Azu Villa

Anguilla Construction:
Guest cottage.
Tech center.
Residence.

Mary Ann's Tropical Building Page

This is the web site for the three villas that I built on Anguilla and the villa that I am renovating in St Barts (see Azu Villa Renovation Page), plus tropical construction tips and resources as well. These construction projects started in 1997, although land acquisition and architectural planning started in 1995. Every stage of the construction is recorded here.

We rent the villa in St Barts and the guest cottage in Anguilla (La Vanda) and the villa at the top of the Anguilla property (Mimosa), but we keep the beachfront house and pool for our own use. And we have created a name and web page for the overall completed property: Bellamare

For details on the main Anguilla beachfront house, visit the Residence Construction Page.

For the technology center, visit the "Clubhouse" Construction Page.

And finally, for the guest cottage, our first attempt at construction on Anguilla, visit the La Vanda Construction Page.

-- Mary Ann Green

Construction Tips

Saturday, September 08, 2001 Permalink

September Update.
Although we were gone from Anguilla much of the summer, some progress was still made on our construction. The driveway leads to the front door with the garage on the right. The empty planter to the left will be filled with some palm trees and a mango tree.

Close up view of the entry, taken from the garage. Behind the wall to the left is a walled garden and dining area with arbor.

Closer view of the front door.

The Living Room is Done!
The last step for the living room was the coral stone floor tile around the terra cotta pattern.

The front door, as seen from the inside. The windows on each side are awning windows that swing out from the top.

Here you can see the tile floor and the sliding glass doors. Each of the two openings is 12' wide with the panels sliding to the side, giving full 12' openings to the dining garden (left) and the pool (where the picture is taken from):

An Overall View.
Here is shot of the property taken from the upstairs porch of the office. The rightmost roofline is the Master Suite of the main house.The next large roof is the kitchen and two studies. In front of that is the laundry (peak roof, front) and garage (flat roof). Continuing left the next peak roof is the living room/entry and the last is the guest bedroom. (The large roof to the far left in the distance is Serenity Restaurant). The hip roofed building in the left foreground is our Guest Villa.

Solar Power, a Dining Arbor and a Special Vanity
For the main building, we have purchased a new solar power system from Solartec in St. Martin. In this picture you can see the solar panels on the roof of the garage. They provide enough power to run the main house, less the air conditioners.

The west side of the living room opens onto a courtyard and garden, with an arbor. We will use the space under the arbor for dining. . The arbor will eventually be shaded by bouganvillea. The wall on the right is the garage, straight ahead is the master garden and to the left is the kitchen and Bob's study.

The master bath is finished off with a translucent all-glass vanity.

Palms, Pool and Preparation.
As construction of the main house nears completion, we turned to landscaping. He bought 7 more coconut palms and planted them across the waterfront of the house (once again we had to bring in a rock pounder to dig holes in the rock for 5 of them):

The pool coping is in and expert tile man Emo was back to add tumbled travertine marble (4" x 4" from Home Depot) as pool edging and the overflow pool for the vanishing edge:

And as hurricane season approached, we added lexan panels to the outside of our louvered wooden windows: