Furniture!

Ok, this was going to be a post on our new furniture, but the sofa didn't arrive. Nor the second time we agreed with the shop. Great. Our next hope is Wednesday... but I'm not holding my breath.
On a positive note, the '70s table and chairs we picked up on a classifieds site are working out well.
PS It arrived! We now have a sofa! It's rather big and dark and masculine, so I might need to get some brightly coloured cushions and throws!

Thermal undies are out again!

The outside of our future front door with handmade handle

The inside of our future front door

Roscoe’s dedication to painting has paid off – the bedroom is finished off just in time for our sofa delivery, so we can vacate the lounge and actually use more rooms of our house. The bedroom looks wonderful. Originally the soggiorno (lounge), it was a feature that sold us on the house, being spacious and airy, and it’s so great to see it tidied up.

However, a few hurdles remain… The bedroom - still without a door to the hall - is on the same floor as the front door – which is unfinished. The result being gaps as big as your thumb on all sides. Fine for the summer, but it’s COLD out there!

And then there’s the heating. Doing a thorough job of the painting meant taking off the new radiators and therefore draining the whole system. This was carefully planned for the last possible moment, so we could do two coats in the course of a long day, and then get the heating on again. But then a little rubber ring that seals the join broke. We’ve scoured the plumbing shops of town, no luck. We’ve just got to wait for the plumber to come back and sort it. Meanwhile lounge temperatures have sunk to what feels like sub-zero (but is actually a balmy 12 degrees). Brrr.

I checked progress on our front door this week. It seems other clients have managed to get in front of the queue. Given that the carpenters got us our windows when we needed them, I don’t want to complain. But it’s been three months since then. We agreed on mid-Feb for installation. I also got to check out my new, specially-made door handle. It’s a style common in the area, but not for sale anywhere! A fabbro (blacksmith) made me this one for €35. Bargain, I reckon! It came out much bigger than I thought, so I hope we can fit it on!

I also had an exciting shopping trip to PuntoBrico to get my very own saw and workbench. Been happily sawing away (not very well) since. Haven’t dared to attack a door yet, but they’re looking scared!

Making money from our house

My attempt at power-sanding the nasty green and yellow paint off

Scraping the paint off after painting on the stripper

The door after a couple of evenings' work
With the job market in the area as weak as it is, we have been forced to think about jobs elsewhere. We would be sad to leave, when we’re only just getting to enjoy our new home.
One option would be to look for short term contracts, perhaps in the UK, while letting the house for the summer. Or, we could let out the large guest room to help pay bills and stay in the house ourselves.
Thinking about sharing the house changes the choices we make. For a holiday rental house, we probably need to think traditional rather than our more eccentric ideas. We’d need to spend more upfront on things like wardrobes and seats. The house would easily sleep seven so it needs a good deal more furniture, kitchenware and linen to be able to be let to its full potential.
This would be a lovely holiday spot:
• In the middle of great mountain views
• Fabulous local food
• Ten minutes from a pretty mediaeval city
• Central to a friendly village with three bars
• Two hours to Rome and 50 minutes to the beaches by car or public transport
• Trekking trails start outside the house
• Perfect for artists and history-lovers
• Lots of castles, churches, palazzi and Roman remains to visit
And the house is spacious, pretty, cool in summer and warm in winter. With its panoramic terrace, it would make a good rental for a group or family wanting to sample the Italian countryside.
But we want to enjoy all the above ourselves!
Meanwhile, work on the house goes on. We have two of the original doors from the house, filthy and without architraves. I decided to see what kind of door was underneath layers of nasty green and yellow paint.
Powersanding was fun, but slow, and luckily someone recommended paint stripper. Yuk! That stuff is nasty, but it seems to be doing the business. It stripped the two layers of paint okay, except where the paint had sunk into nicks in the wood. But then I found a layer of what I presume is woodstain. The stripper reduced this to a molasses-like substance – very tough to get off. You can see in the pictures that the door is far from perfect. But I haven’t given up yet!
I’m psyching myself up for the huge tiling job in the basement. We created an extra step down there, having lowered the floor, so I went back to the tile shop to ask for stair-edging tiles. These have an L-shaped profile, so protect the edge of a tiled stair. With a look of concern, the assistant found the stair-edging tile that matches my cotto floor tiles. When she told me the price, I realised why she looked concerned. For 2.2m of edging, it would be €300. “Ma come?” (but how?) I asked, shocked. To no avail. The understanding assistant suggested I try the marmista (stone mason) to see if he could do me one cheaper. I sure hope so!

Getting plastered

Kitchen when we bought the house

The too-high floor is destroyed

The new floor goes down

The walls are roughed up for tiling, and the gas/electric/water fixtures are marked

The pipes are installed, the windowsill brought out to a right angle, and the tiling is done

We start to build the Ikea kitchen

And the kitchen is (mostly!) finished

We’re in the house three months and it’s starting to feel like the house we dreamed of. After those first hard weeks with no gas or lights, we’ve enjoyed a normal-ish life here, even surviving half a metre of snow. The kitchen is a real pleasure to work in. The photos show it from July to December.

Very little progress with the works has been made since moving in – partly because we need a pause, and partly because we’re short on cash and doing things ourselves takes ages!

Just about everything is unfinished, but on the way.

• Electrics are done, but we still need to find light fittings we like – we’re in the bare bulb stage! Our home cinema is far from finished. Roscoe is determined to work out how to “crimp” the LAN cable to bring a signal from the computer in the study to the projector in the lounge. Lots of internet help guides have been consulted! Given that we can’t afford the projector for the next ten years, he’s got time to learn.

• Plumbing is a shambles – since we took a radiator off to paint behind it, we haven’t been able to fully bleed the system, so heating isn’t perfect. The main bathroom is a mess which annoys me daily – our under-sink unit is a couple of planks on cement, our fitted mirrors are awaiting funds, our tap drips (apparently unfixable, because I didn’t drill a big enough hole in the tile to get the bloomin’ thing out again), and worst of all, the shower leaks profusely. The plumber has tried to fix it with silicon to no avail, so we’re waiting for another visit. And the second bathroom still needs a division wall built before we can plaster and tile, etc. But that’s for when I have time and money to get the builders back.
• White paint is spreading through the house – on days when I feel keen I pick up a roller. It’s slow because the old walls need polyfilling and sanding, and then the coloured walls need lots of coats of white. But it’s getting there, and has a big effect. We may even get ambitious and paint an accent wall red in the bedroom next.
• Woodwork is no more complete than two months ago. Our front doors should be done soon, and we’ve seen the pieces in the falegnameria (carpenter’s workshop). Our internal doors are such a stressful subject that they were put to one side for Christmas, but now we’re on the hunt again. I’m still determined to have solid wood doors, but even hollow ones cost an occhio (eye) here. I’ve ordered one basic pine door in Italy for €160 as a test run. It’s much cheaper than alternatives, so I’m wary. But if it’s ok, perhaps we’ve found a solution. And then we’ve still to think about skirting boards…
• Plastering of the basement level is further on. Roscoe has done a great job of the hall down there, and is now an expert at stucco rustico (nicer than it sounds!). He’s still to do the bathroom ceiling and the large guest bedroom – at a few square metres a day, it’s slow going. When he’s done, I’ll follow with a huge area of floor tiling – a job I’m dreading!

Beside all these tough jobs, there are the fun bits. We’ve just ordered a brown leather sofa for the lounge, and we’re thinking about planters and benches to get the most out of our gorgeous terrace.

It feels daunting, but we’re aiming to finish for Easter. We’ve set €5k aside to do the job, but it will probably take €6-7k.