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

Wednesday, August 11, 2004 Permalink

Replastering and Removing Rocks
The living room in St Barts has a pebbly-texture stucco that we have decided to replace with a smooth finish and new aqua paint. This means replastering the living room, kitchen, kitchen ceiling, and entertainment corner.

Since the central wall is very high, replastering the eaves is not a simple task:

To complicate matters, the entertainment corner has a big rock built into the wall, as well as smaller rocks set into a large wall. We decided to remove these at the same time.

And cut out the big rock:

Here is our dynamic duo of plasterers, from Portugal and Spain:

And the giant rock is finally gone!

Sunday, August 08, 2004 Permalink

Inter-island Freight
There is a boat called the Karma what carries freight from St Thomas to Anguilla. We discovered that it also carries freight to St Barts, from St Thomas and Anguilla! We have used it to send over furniture and supplies for the project; smaller items come over on Winair as "air parcels".

The Karma usually leaves Anguilla on Thursday and arrives in St Barts for Friday morning. You go down to the dock (last right turn in "Public" before you get to Gustavia), come up with an invoice, and pay 4% of the value as a port fee.