Work in Progress Update, Eatonton, Georgia, Residence, Update 1

My apologies to all who expected this update earlier today. Unavoidable responsibilities kept me from writing this until this afternoon.
In middle Georgia, southeast of Atlanta, there is a beautiful little town called Eatonton. My wife and I passed through there a few years ago on our way south from the mountains of North Carolina. We were taking the scenic route south for a while, avoiding Interstate 75, and looking for good photo ops. There are countless small towns off the beaten path everywhere that still provide great opportunities to relax, slow down and enjoy life the way it used to be – before everything became so hectic and rush – rush. Eatonton is one of those towns. Although we only stopped for a short while, we were able to see some beautiful old architecture and just stroll side streets.
On one of those side streets we came across a beautiful Georgian Colonial home that was so picturesque. Trees, both large and small, framed the home and trees behind it made a wonderful backdrop. Boxwood hedges flanked the brick walk up to the front portico and spread out on either side. I took a few photos for future reference.
After looking through many images of homes I decided this one would make a nice pen and ink and watercolor. So I set about doing what I need to do to get this one ready for ink and watercolor.
After doing a number of home portraits the old fashioned way – using a grid system to enlarge an image of the house onto tracing paper, then transferring the drawing to the final paper, or enlarging a photo of the house and carefully measuring all kinds of dimensions and transferring them first to tracing paper and then to the final paper – all of which took a great deal of time - I decided to make a light box to directly trace the image of the house onto my final paper. But, rather than have another piece of equipment laying around, I cut out the center of my drawing table and build a light box into it. It took me a day to do it and it worked great. If anyone is interested in how I did it, email me and I’ll be happy to describe the project.
After tracing the house onto Arches 140 lb watercolor paper I freehand drew the rest of the landscaping on the paper. Since I will be adding watercolor to this drawing I then stretched the paper by soaking it in water and stapled it to a piece of plywood. No distortion resulted from the stretching. Attached are photos of the Home and of the pencil drawing.
Update 2 will begin the inking of the drawing.