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!