Ikea is Meccano for adults

We said an emotional goodbye to our wonderful builders this week. They spent the last few days clearing up and teaching us how to get by on our own.
Roscoe has been taught the rudiments of intonaco or throwing cement at a wall (much harder than it looks – takes months to learn properly) and “rustic” plastering. This is a kind of plaster which has sand in it and comes to a slightly grainy finish. As you apply with a sponge, it’s quick and easy to learn compared to super-smooth plaster. We feel it’s the right look for our converted cantina (basement) bedroom, with its sloping walls from the 1600s. As this bedroom will be for guests, we’ll probably take a break before finishing it.
Meanwhile the builders have improved my tiling skills, allowing me to do a good job of our main bathroom. It’s a small room, and still took me ages (lots of pipe holes to drill), so I’m dreading the next job, which is the entire basement floor – about 25 square metres of it!
The delays on me finishing the tiling mean that we couldn’t get the plumbers in to finish their work on schedule. We’re already a couple of days beyond our planned move-in date. We can’t stay in our rented room much longer, so we’re hoping they’ll come and give us at least a toilet soon! On a positive note, the windows have arrived perfectly in time and are just beautiful. I’m so pleased. It feels like a home now, rather than a shell.
While I tiled, Roscoe “built” the Ikea kitchen. (Amazingly, we managed to bring home almost the entire structure of the kitchen in one trip, with the help of a second-hand roofrack I picked up on Ebay. With room to spare.) Ikea flatpacks are Meccano for adults. It was great fun. Only one thing went wrong, and that involved the hasty moving of a half-built fridge unit – breaking part of it. We bought some brackets from the local ferramenta (iron-monger / hardware store) to strengthen the broken corners and it seems all good now.
We didn’t get the work surface from Ikea. Ikea only do work surfaces of 246cm long max. I didn’t want a join in my 4 metre long kitchen, so I looked to the local brico (DIY) shop, which did the job (if not quite as nice a finish as the solid wood from Ikea, at least it was cheaper). Now we’ve just got to work out how to attach it and cut the holes for the sink and stove.
In preparation, we’ve bought a bed frame and a matress from Mondo Convenienza, a cheap furniture store an hour’s drive away. What an adventure! Mental note for future: a double bed doesn’t fit on an Opel Corsa. Especially when your bungee cords decide to break. We had a hairy two-hour drive on the backroads, avoiding the carabinieri, and panicking that the bed had fallen every time someone flashed their lights or tooted at us. But we made it. It’s almost homely now.
As soon we have a toilet we’ll be in, camping style. The electrician is still to come, so all current comes from one plug point outside the house, and the main doors are still those of a building site. I’m excited.