The countdown is on!

If there were a theme tune to my life at the moment, it would be that of Countdown. Time and money are both ticking away, and we have only two weeks left before we hope to be in.

Roscoe is being taught how to cement a wall by the builders (all in the wrist action, I’m told!), while I’m trying to get upstairs painted. I had hoped to have the kitchen finished by the time the fridge and oven arrived, but they were so efficient they’re here already! Paint here is either smalto, the equivalent of gloss, and waterproof, or else pittura semi-lavabile, which seems similar to emulsion, and is water based.

We’ve just got a basic white semi-lavabile from a local manufacturer, which gets watered down before use. Instead of undercoat we use something called fissativo which is transparent. According to Concenzo, it makes the paint go further and stick better. Even with this, however, the kitchen, with its patches of old pink and green paint (don’t ask me what the old owner was thinking!) is taking many coats to look even. Luckily they dry quickly, even in the autumnal weather. I’m not looking forward to putting umpteen coats on our high hallway ceilings!

Our small main bathroom is proving problematic once again, as it’s too small for more than one person to work in, and it needs lots of work. As Roscoe puts it, this is the crux point for our works. We can move in with a bedroom half-done, but the bathroom must be functional! The beige and chocolate tiles have arrived, and do look nice, but – to my despair – we don’t have enough of the old floor tiles left to put with them! We only have red and grey left, which just clash horribly with chocolate and beige. (Roscoe denies there is a problem; I’m compelled to overrule his lack of sanity.) So it’s off to the tile shops again for yet more tiles! Luckily the ones I have in mind are cheap (EUR 10 per square metre) and are kept in the magazzino (warehouse), so they’ll be here on Monday.

Managed to pick up a second hand roofrack, so we’re going to attempt to bring an entire 5 metre kitchen back along 2 hours of motorway from Rome Ikea in a 1 litre Corsa. Maybe in two trips. Foolhardy? Probably.

The carpenter gave me a nasty shock this morning: he brought me in to choose window handles and then said they weren’t included in his quote. I was upset by this – not only have I not budgeted for more, but he had led me to believe that I was buying the complete windows. Then he pointed to a style which cost over EUR 30 a piece. Given that we need 11 of them, the total would be substantial. I could, he pointed out, have ones at under EUR 20, but they would be plasticky. I went home close to tears.

The internet came to the rescue. A nice variety of solid brass handles are available at prices closer to EUR 10 a piece. It’s still a hundred euros I hadn’t budgeted for, but better than EUR 300! There are even some more artigianal style handles of wrought iron for around EUR 20 a piece – which would match the railings nicely. Plan for tomorrow is to convince the carpenter that he really ought to include handles in his price.

Wish me luck!

Cost of works to date:

Previous total: EUR 23,981

Labour EUR 1,300.00

Petrol for the truck EUR 20.00

Plaster EUR 30.00

Washed sand EUR 28.00

Cement and other wall stuff EUR 135.00

Sink unit of kitchen and underlay (Ikea) EUR 226.00

Wall tiles both bathrooms, and floor tiles basement EUR 876.00

Labour EUR 1,430.00

Petrol for the truck EUR 20.00

Cement and other wall stuff EUR 94.00

Fridge EUR 511.00

Second hand roofrack EUR 35.00

Oven EUR 278.00

Second hand electric heater EUR 13.00

Paint and fixative EUR 53.00

TOTAL EUR 29,030

Elettrodomestici – better known as fridges, cookers and the like!

We’ve come to the stage of ordering our kitchen – at least if we want to be able to cook when we move in! Although we still have a few weeks before move-in date, it takes quite a while to get these things sorted. We’ve already slipped up once – I forgot to visit the plumber to choose radiator colours until yesterday. They will take a month to arrive from ordering. So either we’ll move in late, or we’ll move in chilly!

(And after all that fuss, I was out-voted on having efficient dark radiators, and we’re getting basic white ones! Humph. On a complete tangent, if you’re thinking of getting radiators, you couldn’t be blamed for hoping that radiator design had improved in the past 20 years. But no. My plumber assures me that they won’t rust, they’re very efficient, don’t need painted, and are generally better than anything since sliced bread, but they look exactly the same as radiators from 20 years ago. Not even the nice retro ones from 30-50 years ago (?) but just same old, plain old. I did make noises about wanting something with a bit more style – or at the very least, subtlety – but the alternatives were few and ugly. Ah well.)

Having also come to the end of our budget before ordering the kitchen, the pressure is on to economise. At the same time, we don’t want to destroy the planet, nor have huge electricity bills, so a high energy efficiency class is key. Ah there’s the rub.

Both keen cooks, we do care that the cooker works well. But there’s nothing like Which? Magazine here in Italy. Magazines and online reviews aren’t comprehensive, and often seem biased. And then, a lot of the brands are different, so we can’t even go on past experience from the UK. The Italian equivalent of Curries or Dixons is Euronics, but their website is impressively rubbish. I did venture off the internet and into some shops too. But the assistants, for all the goodwill in the world, couldn’t do much beyond read me the descriptions from the catalogue. I need to speak to a baker who has tried each oven!

Said service unavailable, I’ve scoured the manufacturers’ websites, trawled reams of sales talk to get to the info (no mean feat in Italian!), and hunted here there and everywhere for bargains. The time has come to make a decision.

So here goes:

- Fridge-freezer: we’ve gone for a tall Ariston A+-rated one with the fridge above a largish freezer. We want clean lines in our modern kitchen, so we’ve chosen “incasso” or built-in to the units. Unfortunately, these models are about EUR 100 more expensive than “libera installazione” or free-standing ones. EUR 510 (delivered)

- Dishwasher: oops, this has had to go due to lack of funds. We’d have been doing well to find one under EUR 300. They’re not so kind to the environment anyway, I tell myself. Back to the Marigolds!

- Oven: after being sorely tempted by an Ikea oven that would have matched the lines of our kitchen (EUR 399), we’ve compromised on the cheapest stainless steel fronted oven we could find within the highest rating, which is A for ovens. This happens to be one of the basic models from Rex (who are the same people as Electrolux and Zanussi). It does the main things I want, i.e. with fan, ventilato, for cakes, and without fan, statico, for bread. No digital display though, to my disgust. EUR 280 (delivered)

- Stovetop: we actually got this a while ago, as I saw a good deal. We’ve got a Zanussi gas 5-ring stove. I was nearly out-voted on the 5 rings (which I know are going to come in handy!), until I managed to find one with security valve (can you believe it’s still legal to sell ones that let off noxious gases?!), in stainless steel, and for only EUR 30 more than the cheapest 4 ring ones. Very happy. EUR 213 (delivered)

Budget isn’t looking too healthy after that, but I think it’s about as cheap as we could’ve got ‘em without compromising too much on quality. I’m just praying the oven’s good when it finally arrives!

Thoughts on buying Italian goods on Ebay:

- There’s not as much stuff listed on Italian Ebay as UK Ebay, although some categories are well-populated.

- If you pay using a UK paypal account, it will take up to 2 weeks for your “E-cheque” to clear. Quite annoying for both seller and buyer!

- Other banks may differ, but my UK bank won’t let me transfer funds to an Italian bank account – it says the systems are too different.

- My Italian bank account meanwhile will let me pay other Italian accounts using online banking, but even if they are part of the same bank, they charge me EUR 1 for the privilege. Cheek.

- Paypal meanwhile, won’t let you set up an Italian paypal account without an Italian credit card (debit cards won’t do). Given that I already pay EUR 60ish a year to have a debit card, I’m not tempted.

Money worries and getting stuck in

Having done a bit of adding up and thinking about our outstanding bills for windows, wiring and plumbing, we’ve realised we can only pay the builders for another 3 weeks max. This won’t cover finishing the whole house; we’re prioritising the bits we’re going to need to live there. It’s a bit of a disappointment, but no so much. We’re nearly there, and there’s a lot we can continue with ourselves, like tiling and painting.

I’ve managed to put in a couple of days at the house myself. The men still look doubtful about letting a woman do a man’s job, but at this stage, they’ll just have to lump it. I’m in a hurry to move in!

I’ve had great fun repairing walls with plaster, sanding ready for painting, polishing old floor tiles with an electric sander, and burnishing the iron banister. The latter is a very slow job, but very satisfying. Once all the old paint and rust is removed, it becomes a metallic grey-black – gorgeous. The only thing is, it’ll take about a year to do it all! We’ve got the balcony railings to do, as well at the stairs between the four floors.

There’s so much going on at the house at the moment – it’s a really exciting time. But still, it seems to be going so slowly! We want to start finishing bits, but everything takes longer than we expect. Part of the problem is the sand for the cement – it seems to take two people a good 2-3 hours to bring up a load using the hoist and a wheelbarrow. The workmen are fixing up the walls ready for plaster (where there wasn’t any before, or where the old plaster was falling off), and it’s incredible how much sand they go through.

And then all the little jobs take time. In a day and a half, all I managed to do was touch up the plaster going down to floor level on the top floor, and then sand it. This will mean we don’t have to put a wooden or tile skirting board to hide the join, we can paint a gloss skirting board as the house had before. Roscoe isn’t having any more luck. He’s been repairing the gaps where tiles are missing. Yesterday in six hours he managed to get eight of the old cement tiles in! It’s a slow job preparing them and cutting them.

Best get back to it!

PS A useful tip given to us by the spark - take photos of the exposed pipes and cable tracks before the walls are repaired. When you need access in future, you can check where they are without knocking down half the house!

A transformation – the study

We’re onto the finishing stage! The walls are getting patched up, tiles are going down and Roscoe is frantically sanding and polyfilla-ing walls ready for painting.

One of our builders is an expert plasterer, and his work is a joy to behold. The first room to be finished is the little study which is open onto the hall as you come up the stairs onto the living floor. I’m finally sharing Roscoe’s vision for this area – it’s very open and bright. Originally, this space was a bathroom – you were faced with a wall and a door as you came up the stairs. It’s fantastic to see the transformation.

First, Roscoe and I knocked down the wall with a mallet (Roscoe) and a sledgehammer (me). Secondly, the boys had to drill away lots of cement and chip away at well-stuck-down 70s tiles! They pulled out old lead pipes and blocked off the old scarico waste pipe (we put in a new safer one). The walls were every shape but square, so it took the skill of the muratore (builder) to get them vertical and at right angles. Finally, we relaid nice old tiles from elsewhere in the house, and, after the electrician buried lots of cable tracks for our AV system, the walls were finished and plastered.

Very satisfying!

Cost of works to date:

Previous total: EUR 10,091

Shower mechanism, pop-up waste, siphon EUR 92

Labour EUR 1,300

Cement EUR 72

Shower tray (cantina loo) EUR 88

5 ring stove EUR 233

Bronze tap for terrazzo EUR 23

HDMI cables EUR 32

Labour EUR 1,300

Cement and bricks for basement bathroom wall EUR 37

Sand for cement EUR 28

Petrol for the truck EUR 20

Shower mixer tap EUR 26

Bottom toilet EUR 40

Labour EUR 585

Stone for window sills EUR 300

Rubble disposal EUR 40

Petrol for the truck EUR 20

First half payment plumbing EUR 5,500

Cream tiles for kitchen floor EUR 137

First half payment wiring EUR 1,870

Fixative and paint (1 can each) EUR 35

Outdoor lights for terrace EUR 20

Round sink for basement loo EUR 54

Bidet tap EUR 22

Shower head for basement loo EUR 23

HDMI wall plates EUR 55

Labour EUR 1,560

Rubble disposal EUR 20

Petrol for the truck EUR 20

Plaster, sand, bricks, cement EUR 95

Plaster, cement, fixative EUR 70

Kitchen wall tiles EUR 55

Sundries from builders' merchants EUR 48

Mosaic for centre of guest bedroom floor EUR 35

Wallpaper decoration EUR 35

TOTAL EUR 23,981