Stepping Up

As the main entrance to our future home the front door had no real entrance step … just a few old bricks on their side and a broken stone base to the door frame. This had to change!

We ordered two new steps from a local mason made from ‘Pietra Serena’, a beautiful smooth grey stone available locally. 

Two steps with matching risers were quickly prepared and are now installed. Each step is milled from a single piece of stone 10 cm thick, the main step weighing over 140 kg and the smaller top step well over 60 kg.

We are delighted with the result and our front door, once stripped and polished, will make a suitably grand entrance to our new home … welcome all!

Meet Basil

Of the many ‘quaint’ items that came with our house this one immediately caught our eye …

… an unusual china Dalmatian dog! 

Slightly boss eyed, it soulfully pleaded for adoption … almost crying out not to be discarded! 

But where to keep and what to do with such an unusual collectors piece? Any ideas?

As can now be seen … the answer is not as easy as might be thought!

Certainly not destined for pride of place in our future living or dining room … rest assured we will find a special corner somewhere for our new mascot that, for obvious reasons, we have already christened “Basil” … 

… welcome to our rather mad family!

Getting Plastered

The last couple of weeks the ground floor apartments have been totally transformed as all the walls have been plastered …

A thick base coat was sprayed and leveled over the prepared walls, with all trunking and services fixed … before two smoother top coats were applied and polished by hand.

Where possible original features have been left exposed such as wooden beams, the brick arch and some of the stones set in the main load-bearing walls.

As the top plaster coat dries all the rooms look and feel much bigger and brighter. Definitely looking more finished now … soon ready for decorations!

Ice Road Truckers

Taken just one month ago (15th February) it seems incredible we had so much snow when we are now enjoying record spring temperatures of 15 to 18 Centigrade!

Worth noting that despite common opinion and hearsay the Italian builders kept working most days throughout the worst snowfall in fifty years, even delivering concrete for the sub-floor slabs in below zero temperatures! The inside of the house was heated to the necessary temperature and the concrete came with antifreeze … keen or what? I was impressed …

As concrete lorry and pump tender pulled up having trundled many kilometers through a glacial landscape I wondered if the drivers might be auditioning for the next series of

'Ice Road Truckers -  The Umbria Trail'?

Plumbed and Wired

The arterial installation of first-fix wiring and plumbing creates amazing patterns across the sub-floor, all soon to be permanently covered by the aerated raised floor.

This invisible but vital network will carry water, power, light and heat to every corner of the house. To the layman it may seem complicated and chaotic but rest assured … it is all carefully planned … I hope!

Once installed and covered up there is no record of where each tube starts and finishes so how, I ask, do we know which to use for what? The answer is surprising, blow down one end and the other end whistles … simple really! Wish I’d thought of that!

Future kitchen corner with indication of wiring routes to required power sockets for appliances, extract hood, etc. and underfloor heating distribution panel on the left. All this work and investment is about to be hidden for ever and the only sizable hole left will be … in the rapidly shrinking bank balance!

A Corner Stone

Investigating the cause of an unusual damp spot mid-wall, near the corner of our first floor master bedroom, I found the culprit to be a broken roof-edge tile and the result of dripping rain onto the exterior rock face … soon fix that.

However, hacking off the old plaster revealed something far more interesting …

… a collection of beautiful old stones structurally interlocked where the central spine meets the end wall.

Careful re-plastering and pointing of this corner will allow us to leave several of these wonderful stones exposed, adding a uniquely genuine detail to the character of the room.

Pointing to the Future

We now have scaffolding round half the house so the builders can start the rather tedious and dusty task of hacking out old pointing, patching and infilling where necessary with new stone pieces and cement render … before re-pointing in an ‘Antique Cream’ colour approved by the local planners.

This picture shows all three stages … top left, just visible, part of the original stone facade, across the middle of the picture newer stone deep pointed with grey cement … and then to the right, just under the new window, a small section of the new pointing as a colour trial.

The individual stones will mostly disappear and hopefully blend into a richly textured antique cream colour … that is if it does exactly what is says on the tin!