Thursday 23 September 2010

House update

Baby may be coming to live with us at the end of January, but that does not mean we'll be moving into our future home. That, unfortunately is still a long way off. Our future house is a lovely, old, stone building. I am not sure how old it is as we need to do some investigation into this, but about 50 years ago it used to be a school, a small school mind you, but a school none-the-less. Us living there is a long way off for 2 reasons: 1 we have only enough money at the moment to replace the roof, and secondly we have the world's slowest builders working for us. They have spent the summer taking off the old roof and they still haven't finished putting it back on. When people say you need patience to live in Italy they are NOT joking. These builders are slow because they take on more work then they can manage during the summer months. One day you see them working on your house, the next day at someone else's and it is not unusual for a week to go by and they don't do anything to your house at all. Annoyingly they cost less then other builders and when they get around to finishing do a good job...so for the time being we have to be patient.

When the builders started taking off the roof they found some unstable walls, so had to knock the walls down until they reached something secure. They then had to rebuild these walls, and also raise them as we want to have a usable 3rd level. Before it was not high enough to be a floor, but now it is.



Our house is obviously the one without the roof. It looks small compared to the beast of a 5-bathroom-who-knows-how-many-bedrooms-house behind us.

The builders have fitted all the wooden panels onto the roof and now just need to relay the old tiles, and add the drain pipes (or what ever they are called.) The bricks you see are where they re-laid the new walls, and it will have to stay looking like that for now. We can cover that at a later stage, but there is more important work to be done.



These photos were taken from our balcony as we use the zoom on the camera to spy on the builders from afar. I will take some more photos once they get around to laying the tiles. We then need quotes on how much it'll cost to relay all of the floors, as being old, most probably some of them will have to be destroyed and replaced nice, safe and evenly.

7 comments:

LindyLouMac said...

Your house is going to be fabulous Leanne, it sounds like you are already learning patience though. I realise how lucky we were that my husband and a friend with a little help from me have been able to do all our renovations. Ok we did not have to re-roof but we have taken up old floors and relaid new concrete ones.

Jone said...

This was the same for us when we refurbished our house in Praiano, slow builders, and s**tloads of money. By the time we finished we could have built a new house from scratch!! We would have loved to
do that but it's illegal to build new houses in most parts of Italy. Goodluck, the house looks fantastic I love the surroundings, very picturesque and don't let those builders get too slack, you've got to always be on top of what they're up to.

Leanne was in Italy now in Australia said...

Hi LindyLou,
You are SO lucky that your hubby and friend are handy and did lots of the work themselves. I would love to be more handy - but we just have to have patience and learn some stuff.

Hi Jone,
Is it really illegal to build new houses in parts of Italy? I never knew - fancy that! You do have to watch the builders and next time bel fidanzato will have to be more firm with them, and give them a deadline etc... We are learning from this experience - believe me!

LindyLouMac said...

Leanne, they have done all the renovations with the exception of fitting the kitchen. I have done a renovation post on the kitchen but yet to write up the rest. We had no experience when we got married either but have had loads of fun learning.

http://lindyloumac.blogspot.com/2010/07/our-house-renovations-kitchen.html

Susan said...

This blog is "bugging me". After hearing about Malito the birthplace of my grandfather one of the comments comes from Praiano. This is the name of my great grandmother from Maida. Originally spelled Praiano when she came to the US, it has been simplified into Priano. I am curious about the name connection of the village and my ancestry from Calabria.

Carla said...

HI Leanne, so wonderful to have found your blog. HOw amazing living in Calabria. It must be so beautiful and so Italian!! Loved all your pics and your stories. Those tomatoes are fantastic. Carla

Leanne was in Italy now in Australia said...

Hi Susan,
SO you are a Malitana! WOW! Also not sure if you know where Praiano is, but it's just after Positano on the Amalfi Coast.

Hi Carla,
Glad you like the blog :)