The Art Work
of
Bill Hosko
|
|
July 1988
In the spring of 1988 Bill decided to look into buying his first house. He looked on the upper west side of Saint Paul where he had lived as a boy and the area down along West Seventh Street. He eventually purchased a very small house from a friend. It had been vacant for several years, weeds were everywhere, and the summer of ’88 had been very hot and dry. The house did not have much appeal, but he could see through its shortcomings.
He gave the yard and house a good cleaning by that fall. The next summer after he painted the house and garage, the single stall garage was then moved forward seven feet so as to allow parking on its alley side without one's vehicle actually sticking out into the alley. In the summer of 1990 Bill completed a set of illustrations depicting how he wanted to re-landscape the uninteresting yard and remodel the homes interior. Initial impressions are important, the yard was worked on first. The adjacent and much larger homes on either side of hin commanded most of the attention. Bill’s design would even things up a bit, by transforming his simple yard and abode into a picture out of a storybook, while still complimenting his surrounding neighbor’s properties.
Nearly every free hour over the next several months Bill worked on the project. Stone walls went up on the small side yards and in back of the house. The sidewalks and front steps were removed with a sledgehammer and shovel. Not one to waste materials, he used this material as the base for the planned berms. The level grade of the entire front yard was dug up until it became a gentle slope to the front sidewalk. The lowered yard and surrounding berms gave the property more privacy.
It was a chilly late October day when with everything else complete, Bill began laying sod. That evening with a stepladder mounted spotlight helping him finish the project, it began to snow as the last of the sod was laid. In the middle of that winter in 1990-91 he took the snapshot of his home and yard nestled under a heavy blanket of snow. His storybook plan had become reality.
|
|
|
