A New Bridge

Our house is not the only place in the neighbourhood under construction. Work began earlier this year on a footbridge across the Lima, only a few dozen metres from our house. Although they started work in the spring, things appear to have come to a pause, as we did not see much progress between our last two visits.

You can see the base of the bridge under construction in the picture below on the far right. Our house is at the far left, still half white, half-yellow.

The other side of the bridge will connect here:

When finished, the bridge will span the river at this point.

You will notice that the not much water currently runs through the riverbed. I am told that they have reduced the flow by closing a dam further up river so that they can complete the construction. They have also filled in a lot with rocks and built a barrier across it (below). Before, this area was filled with rushing rapids.

Supposedly, once the water flow is restored, this will again become rapids and the barrier will form a waterfall. I hope this happens soon, as the sound of the gushing water in the river is a great feature of our house. We would like to enjoy it!

Retail Awareness

We found that furnishing and outfitting a house from nothing has brought the added benefit of giving us a thorough knowledge of where to buy stuff all over Lucca province and the surrounding area. We found some of the places by accident, but thankfully our project manager/translator/nanny steered us to most of them.

In the course of our quest for sofas, tables, garden furniture and book-ends, we've shopped at high-end furniture shops, DYI stores, low-end furniture shops, antique shops, garden centres, flea markets, junk stores, electronics super stores and everything in between.
From Mondo Convenienza and Che Meraviglia for indoor and outdoor furniture, Brico and OBI for DIY, and Mercatone Uno for a little bit of everything, it seems like we have visited every big-box Italian retailer. And, of course, Ikea. We've even wandered through the Altopascio Mercatone Uno so many times that the furniture lady recognises us!

We've also found things in unexpected places. After looking everywhere for mattress covers, we finally found them in Esselunga, the supermarket. And we found some really great framed Puccini opera posters in a market stall on the streets of Lucca.

For all the fun, shopping for household items did present us with challenges, especially with language. With only a few shop employees speaking English (naturally enough), and my Italian remaining problematic, communicating exactly what we wanted did not always happen smoothly. However, persistence usually paid off, and through a combination of fractured Italian phrases, English and lots of hand gestures we managed to complete quite a few transactions.

Most of all, the experience proved a big confidence builder, both in using the language and in gaining the ability to accomplish what would be routine tasks at home in a different and sometimes intimidating environment.

Landscaping

Although we have done far more work (and spent much more money) on the garden than we originally intended, we do not regret it. The stone patio makes all the difference in the world, and I cannot wait to see the lawn.

Of course, to properly complete the garden, we must now decide upon what plants and shrubbery to plant. During our last trip, the landscaper brought a number of samples for us to see and choose from.

Unfortunately, our indispensable project manager / interpreter was not there when we discussed the options with the landscaper, and my Italian remains pretty rudimentary despite all of the lessons, so we're not really sure exactly what we chose in the end.

I'm sure we did get across that we wanted red and white flowers, and we're pretty sure about the shrubbery and hedges, but we will wait with great anticipation to see what we actually get.

Outfitting the Kitchen

I have always wanted to outfit a kitchen from scratch. The thought of creating a fully equipped kitchen with complete new sets of matching plates, pots, pans, glasses, flatware and cooking utensils fills me with great joy.

I thought I might do this when we moved into our new flat in London a couple of years ago, but truth be told, most of our existing kitchen stuff was still very good, plus we liked it, so I settled for augmentation rather than complete replacement. So, I have been looking forward to setting up the villa's kitchen for months.

The big day finally arrived last Saturday. We had previously scouted out a couple of stores for this purpose, and ultimately decided that Ikea in Florence was the best place to make the purchases. Not being a regular shopper in Ikea (we had only been to the London store once, and even that was a reconnaissance mission in anticipation of a visit to the Florence store), the selection, utility, quality and overall attractiveness of the kitchenware at Ikea impressed me.

The shopping experience turned out to be everything I expected and more! In the end, we filled up two full giant shopping carts of stuff (I wish I had taken pictures) and spent far more than I thought we would. It was great fun.

Sunday morning we took a trip to another store to pick up a few odds and ends we didn't get at Ikea. Instead, we ended up filling another giant shopping cart with more stuff, and dropping another few hundred euros.

We spent Sunday afternoon unpacking, unwrapping and putting everything away in the new kitchen. Luckily, not only did we not completely fill it up, we have room left over for more stuff should we desire (I'm hoping not!).

One More Big Change

Before we left last Sunday, the painters started work on the outside of the house. What a difference it makes!

I am pleased to say that the colour came out as we expected. All of that wandering around matching paint chips to buildings seems to have paid off.

Here's a view of the work in progress from across the river.

An Amazing Transformation

The garden has undergone nothing short of an an amazing transformation in the last two weeks. Remember this pile of rocks?

We dug up these paving stones from various parts of the garden and driveway. We found some on the surface as part of a dis-used pathway running alongside the house, and we found others buried around the trees and in the driveway.

We decided to use these stones to make a patio, which not only saved a huge amount of money, but also creates a very characteristic feature to the property as finding stones of this age and character has become very difficult (it's also a fun story to tell that the stones have come from the grounds of the house). The result: a fantastic stone terrace on which to enjoy the Tuscan summer.

In the remaining part of the garden , we removed one of the two trees. They had been planted too close to each other and had become too entwined. Leaving one tree alone will allow it to grow properly and it also looks much better. The ground has been levelled and we will lay sod in the next week to make a beautiful grass lawn in this area. The stone path leads to the stairway that goes up to the driveway and garage.

The Interior is Almost Finished

We visited the house last weekend and to find that a building site has become a home. Almost everything inside is now complete except for some finishing work. We still need to hang the curtains in the bedrooms, install the shower doors and some hardware on the doors and shutters, and touch up the paint, but all of the big work is done.

The kitchen is everything we hoped for and more:

We have begun furnishing the living rooms. . .

. . .and the bedrooms:

We are almost ready for the finishing touches and we can now certainly stay in the house.

Outside, there's been an amazing transformation, which I will save for the next post.

Closer to the Finish

Progress continues at a pretty steady pace, and it's all hands to the pumps to get things done before the end of the first week of August. That's when we plan on staying in the house for two weeks, so we want to have completed everything by then.

So far we have completed most of the interior work and everything looks great (I'm even growing to like the interior paint colour!). I especially like the main bathroom.

Some of the furniture has even been delivered.

Now that thet inside has been completed except for the final coats of paint and floor cleaning, much of the focus has shifted outside. These stones will soon become a patio.

The patio will be built in this area:

We've taken down one of the two huge pine trees in the garden as they were too close together. We had a bit of a scare when after we removed the tree, the remaining one began to sag towards the house, as it had been relying on its pair for support. The removal of a few large branches (which needed to go anyway) has seemed to solve this problem for now, and it does not appear to be in danger of falling, but we need to keep our eye on it.

The next couple of weeks are sure to be frantic ones, as we complete the stonework and landscaping in the garden.

The Latest Photos

The kitchen is almost done:


Cabinet and bookshelves:


Things remain a little disorganised:

Someday this will be a stone patio:

Work on the roof and gutters is almost complete:

More Progress

We visited the house last weekend to find a pretty chaotic scene, but looking past the confusion and clutter, the various builders and tradesmen had made significant progress. They have completed the bathroom tiling, almost completed the kitchen installation, painted the walls in all of the rooms with at least the first coat, installed the light fixtures and cleaned and stripped the floors. About half of the windows, doors and shutters have been stripped and re-painted and the remainder are in progress, and the cabinet and bookshelves in the living room have been built.

Most of the furniture has arrived, but because work continues to progress inside the house, most of it remains boxed up and stacked up in various rooms or else stored away in the garage. This of course contributes to the overall state of disarray.

Quite a bit of work remains outside. They have completed most of the work on the roof, replacing a number of tiles and ensuring it does not leak, and about half of the new copper guttering has now been installed. Exterior painting should happen in a few weeks.

Landscaping the garden is the next big job. First we will need to clear all the rubbish that has accumulated during the renovation. We then plan to build a stone patio and plant flowers and shrubs around the walls. The pathway from the garage to the street also needs significant clearing and pruning.

We met with two different landscapers Monday to get estimates, which we should have within a couple of days. The good news is that they say that they can complete the work by the end of July. The bad news (which we have not received but I know is coming) is that it will undoubtedly be expensive!

Pictures to follow. . .

Furniture Frenzy

Before our last trip to Bagni di Lucca we set ourselves the task of purchasing the basic furniture for the house. Not knowing the delivery lead-times, we wanted to do this now to ensure that the house would at least contain a minimum amount of furniture by the end of July so that we can stay there during our August holiday.

So, armed with our shopping list and accompanied by our indispensible and fantistically efficient local project manager/interpreter, we set out to get as much accomplished as we could in one day. It really helped that we had made a couple of reconnaisance missions to the various shops during previous visits, so we had formed a pretty good idea of what we wanted and where to find it.

We hit about five or six different stores over the course of about ten hours and managed to get almost everything we set out to buy. Of course, we spent more than we wanted to spend, especially on one of the bedrooms, but overall I think we did pretty well.

The following day we struck out to choose mattresses and pick out a washing machine and dryer.

The final tally for the weekend: Main living room: one sofa, one comfy chair. Big fireplace room: two leather art deco style chairs with a footstool (to put by the big fireplace), one chaise lounge. Kitchen: dining table with six chairs. Bedroom one: wooden bed, two nightstands, a ginormous armoir. Bedroom two: iron bed, two nightstands, marble-topped chest. Bedroom three: two single iron beds, nightstand, normal-sized armoir, small desk and chair.

We still have several things we will need to buy, like tables, mirrors, lamps and assessories, but once August arrives, we should have enough of the basics in place to stay in the house.

Colour Madness Redux

My acute (actually, it's probably chronic) colour-choice anxiety continues. The preliminary verdicts on the choices so far. . .

Main bathroom tiles: excellent. Although it is hard to see in this picture, in real life, they look great.

Kitchen wall: so far OK, but I have only seen it on a small patch on the wall.

Walls for main rooms: Yikes! I'm not convinced that this works. I think it might be too yellow. However, I've agreed to live with it a while and see. Maybe it will grow on me.

Still to be seen: shutters and doors, outside walls and the ground floor bathroom tiles.

Overall, I'm relieved that the tiles turned out well. If a paint colour doesn't work, we can always re-paint. But if we get the tile wrong, that's another story altogether!

Progress, Progress, Progress

The builders and tradesmen have accomplished quite a bit since our last visit. They have finished the plumbing and electrical work, the trenches in the walls and floors made for the new pipes and wiring have been filled and plastered. . .

the bathroom tile work has begun. . .

the wall for the new ground floor bathroom is up. . .

and even the painting of the interior walls has started.

We expect them to complete the kitchen installation by mid-June and finish off the bathrooms and the interior paint work about the same time.

Although a huge amount of work remains, including all of the exterior painting, roof and gutter work, not to mention building the patio and a great deal of landscaping, things have progressed steadily so far. It looks like we may make it by the end of July after all. At least we are cautiously optimistic.