ready to begin again
view from the livingroom
It’s a new year and although it’s felt like we’ve just been in some strange time warp for months now, I am trying to stay hopeful that this year will bring some better things ahead. Here in Italy, we’ve been at a stand-still for almost a solid month - from one of the wettest winters on record, to the holiday lockdowns, nothing much has happened in general let alone at the site. But tomorrow the sun is slated to come back out, the work is planned to begin again on site, and I said that we should celebrate the start of the new year again tonight at midnight and forget last week ever happened.
But with all of that said, there are a few small updates to report. And one thing this last month has shown me is how thankful I am to have this project even happening during this time where everything else has seemed to have stopped. It has given me something positive on which to focus, something useful to occupy my mind, and something rewarding to look forward to.
Since my last update a few things had happened just before the rains and lockdown came. The structural contract has come to a close (besides a few last details that will be done soon) so the last bit of blockwork was tiddied up and I did a final walk-thru with the masons to be sure that each wall was complete to plan. They dug the large hole in the living room which will be where the tree will be planted that will be within the glass cube, as well as another large hole in the exterior courtyard pavement for a large shade tree. Both then had to have drainage installed to let the water continue draining down the slope of the lot.
They then gave the site an overall clean-up and straightened any further materials that were left on site. As I’d written about in past updates, the exterior wall that will hold up the banks of the sloped driveway, as well as the earth-moving up to the front of the house was all slated to be completed early December as the final step before work stopped over the holidays. This would have allowed for the soil terraces to be made and the olive grove planted - which I’ve been looking forward to doing so that it would clean up the front of the worksite, and give the land time to settle before spring.
However the rains came on the exact day that everyone was set to begin this work, and then the rains didn’t end. Now after almost 4 weeks of solid moisture, the land is so saturated that we won’t be able to do this until at least the spring unfortunately. So after this was delayed, the rest of the work stopped as well, then Italy introduced new stricter lockdown measures to combat the holiday gatherings, so basically it’s been quiet on-site.
In the meantime I’ve tried to keep moving forward in other ways and have spent many hours still researching and purchasing the light fixtures, finding a few other pieces of furniture, and now I’ve started to clean up the big stack of 100+ year-old terra cotta tiles that we decided to use in the outdoor private terrace off the master bedroom. It will be the only “traditional” flooring used at the house, but since the terrace is a bit set apart from the general areas of the house I thought it would work well there and would be a nice way to bring a part of J’s farmhouse with us.
These had been removed in a restoration project and set aside so now it’s on to the process of chipping away all of the old concrete and grout, scraping them clean and waxing them with a few coats. I’m working on several ideas for the final pattern that will be laid and also hope to include some newly made terra cotta pieces in the darker grey color that I’m having commissioned for the bathroom.
Tomorrow we finally get to start il prossimo passo (the next step) which is the intonaco (plaster) on the interior walls. It was a bit of a process to start this as I’m having to use a special eco-friendly lime-based plaster that took some time in finding an option that was certified. However the first truck-load arrived this past week and dropped off several pallets to the site. This will consume the next month and a half it’s predicted, and if the weather continues to improve perhaps some more work to the stone facing on the exterior can begin as well.
After the interior plaster is finished, the next steps will be window & door installation and the underfloor heating before the final concrete floor is poured. Then when the spring warms up the exterior plaster work can be done, and the insides will be starting to be filled with the fixtures.
piano piano. (slowly slowly)