The last two days have been very, very busy! Monday we had an appointment with Cecilia at 11AM to transfer the water contract. The office is only open from 9:30AM to 12:30PM on Mondays. Closed the month of August. We had to read the water meter before we went. At least we didn’t get called banditos this time! We had to borrow a screw driver to pry up the metal plate in the street and then we wrote down all three numbers. We had been told it was best to go to the office in late morning as the line was shorter. We got number 49. They were serving number 27. It took half an hour to get to 29. Not very encouraging. The good news is that they will serve you even if it’s after 12:30. We finally got it at 12:45 and got it all taken care of. Still, it was a very long wait.

Next we went home to grab something for lunch and we had an appointment at 2:30 to meet Emanuele to go look at kitchens at Pedini Cucine. Click to see the beautiful kitchens! Pedini is in Fano which is over by the Adriatic sea. It is in the Marche region. We didn’t see the sea or the town, just the industrial area. We got there around 4PM after getting lost in the little suburban neighborhood. Emanuele is a good, fast Italian driver. Only made us nervous when he was texting (!)

They have an English speaking person named Sabrina at Pedini. She was super nice and very helpful. There was also a man named Roberto who had lots of opinions 🙂 Well I had already been on the website and had an idea what I wanted. I quickly picked out the finish, the counter top material and color. Then I had to pick out all the different sorts of cabinets and their inner workings. They are really quite amazing. I also had to pick out appliances. I am springing for a very good stove. The other appliances will be Siemens which is German. The bad news is that the kitchen won’t be ready until late October 🙁 Now I wait with bated breath for the estimates.

Here is the double drawer I picked. I couldn’t find a picture of the corner cabinet but it is amazing!

Today, Tuesday, we went with Emanuele to the lighting place up in Citta di Castello. It was a nice place with lots of very ugly lights. The Italians have some very strange taste. Lucky for me they also had some more clean lined, simple fixtures. Emanuele has some pretty strong opinions and it is just lucky that I happen to agree with him most of the time. Our taste is similar. If we didn’t I’d have to do a lot more push back. We are going to do cable track lighting in all rooms except the living room where I want to do floor lamps. I think Emanuele wants to do lights in there too so there may be a struggle over that. Cable track lighting is cool because Emanuele can come through the steel support of the vaulted stone ceilings and just make one hole then attach the cable which gives electricity to the individual little spot LED lights that hang from it and runs the length of the room so you can aim the spots for optimal coverage where you want it. It’s very sleek and modern. You can have up to 6 spots on each cable. They will also all have dimer switches. We left with an appointment at 10AM tomorrow for them to come see the house.

This afternoon we meet and Emanuele will have the tiles to look at and he will bring them to the apartment so we can look at them on the floor. He also wants to bring his plumber so they can look under the kitchen floor to see what is there.

So after tomorrow morning everything will be in motion to get final estimates for the Kitchen, lighting, tiles and the construction work. Not that there’s any hurry now since everyone goes on holiday in August and so we might as well relax. In September work will start and hopefully it really will be done by late October. I have a little doubt though. I hope it will be done by American Thanksgiving!