Last night I phoned USAA, our bank in the US to have them wire €10,000 to the kitchen people. This is a 50% deposit. We signed the contract and emailed it back. Turns out the contract had been sent to Emanuele a whole week ago and we never got a copy! Too bad but I hope the delay is not going to affect things too much.

Kitchens in Italy, and all of Europe for that matter, are kind of like kits. You buy the whole thing, they assemble it and get all the appliances and then the whole thing comes and is installed in one day. Really! Of course the prep work has to be done beforehand. This explains why Europeans generally take their kitchens with them when they move. When you look at an Italian apartment most of the time there are just pipes sticking out of the tiled walls and outlets along where the cabinets were/will be.

Emanuele will be doing the electrical and plumbing work to include moving the gas, water and drainage. The old kitchen will be removed. Then he will prep and tile the floors in the kitchen and the pantry. They will then do the tiling on the patio and the built-in seating and the new gutters and repainting the railings. This should all get done before the kitchen comes.

On a more fun note, it is Saturday today and we planned a trip to Pietralunga which is a hill town up in the mountains past Montone which is the close hill town to us. They are having an exhibition of paintings from the artists in residence at Civitella Ranieri near us. After that we will have lunch either in town or out at an agriturismo I found. We invited Susan and Gary to join us.

I will report back after our adventure.