2021 roundup pt.5
most popular photo of the year on @agradolce
Well, we’re finally here…to this current month (barely!) and almost caught up for the year. Whew!
It’s been a marathon of posting since yesterday but it was a nice way to focus for me and really recount the year for myself and for this written record.
DECEMBER
All of this month we’ve more or less stayed put, and there were some big steps that started to happen - but to be honest it’s been one of the more frustrating months that I’ve had so far with this project. And one that brought me to tears more than once.
Luckily as the month started, I was able to go and see the window frames being assembled at the warehouse and it made me smile to see my name written on so many pieces everywhere I looked! The next week the workers arrived to start the instillation of most of the windows and glass doors around the house. I’ve been looking forward to this step for a long time and it does really make a difference in the feeling of the house. The corner bathroom window, main glass panels in the sunroom and glass courtyard in the living room won’t go in until mid-Jan, and by then the front door should be installed as well - at that time, the house will be officially closed which means we can concentrate on finishing the interiors - a major step.
I’m very satisfied with the windows so far - the way they look and the quality feel about the way they function. The 3 most exciting pieces are yet to come (and it looks like I’ll have to have a temporary road built around the back of the house for the delivery around the huge piece of glass for the sunroom. It’s one sold piece weighing over a ton!) and I’m sure I’ll have a lot to update on within the next month.
A few other things on the exterior moved forward as well this month. After the sub floor was poured on the private terrace outside the main bedroom we laid out all of the antique terra cotta tiles which we brought from J’s old house and arranged them to decide on a pattern and see what space we may be missing. I have a plan for filling that which I’ll show more of in the coming month - but overall I like the look and this small bit of traditional flooring which will be the only place like this in the entire house. Then the retaining wall is getting covered in stone as well and we’re just using the odds and ends and pieces that didn’t quite fit in the rectangular motif that are going around the house. I didn’t mind that this wall was a bit more like the traditional countryside stone pattern as the plan is to have cascading rosemary coming over the top and caper bushes growing between the cracks anyway - so in the future a lot of it will be covered in green (I hope!). Plus it was a good way to save money and not waste the extra bits of stone.
Then the blacksmiths came again to install a railing for the flat roof terrace on one side. The other sides will have planters instead of railing but this side was bare. Yet to fit into safety codes I had to agree on some sort of railing so to be as minimal as possible I chose a horizontal cable cord design with narrow corten boundary rails. I’m happy with its simplicity and look forward to connecting it to a corten steel planter to wrap around the other side in the new year.
2022…
This whole adventure has been just that - an adventure. One where I haven’t known what - or exactly when - the outcome would be, how we’d get there, or what windy roads we’d have to take along the way. Initially when I began looking for land back in 2017, finding this property in 2018, waiting out 2 years of paperwork to finally break ground Feb 2020, the projection was that it would be complete by Easter of this year. Then covid hit and everything changed. It was moved to Aug this year, then “maybe end of the year”. Now we’re hoping for spring next year.
Some days I get to the site and I feel like it’s come a long way and other days I’m overwhelmed with the amount of tasks still to go. I’ve become the sole project manager - a job I never expected to have, and one I’ve had to learn step by step. I’ve become educated on aspects of building I never thought I’d need to know, and received countless hours of indirect Italian language lessons over the years. I know know plenty of building terms in Italian that I don't particularly know in English, and I can finally carry on a pretty good argument - even on the phone! (this is a particularly useful skill to have, haha).
Our biggest set back at this moment is waiting for the cold and wet weather to be over. This is needed for finishing the exterior plaster, as well as the pavement and sidewalks. And sadly this is just something that I can’t control or find a more creative solution for. It just means mother nature will have to do her thing, and we’ll have to be patient. In the meantime I hope to dive right in to the interiors by the end of January and get most of this complete before the retreat season (which means travel season for me) begins again in the spring. It’s day by day. Which is a good lesson to continue to learn. I’m grateful for this project, the help and support of J, the encouragement of family and friends, for the people I’ve met along the way, the vision it holds for the future, and the lessons it continues to teach me.
Buon anno.