Category Archives: House renovation

Boxes scheduled; work progressing

We got the notification that our UPak boxes will be delivered on September 12. That works out pretty well for us. It is a Friday so not a busy day on the Piazza. And it is after the big Feste in Umbertide.

I have not told you about this. Every September Umbertide has a huge festival. It is centered around 18th century Umbertide. Everyone wears 18th century costumes. This varies from most other towns around here who almost all do medieval festivals dressing in medieval costumes. The citizenry set up all manner of recreations from that era to include a brothel, a hospital etc. Having never experienced this festival I don’t really know what will happen. All I know is that it starts on September 2 and goes until September 7 – Every night a live performance on the piazza. I am told it is loud. Susan and Gary have been known to leave town to avoid it. Since it is our first time we are eager to experience it. We may be sleep deprived but that will have to be OK. I will post alllll about it once it starts!

Work continues on our apartment. I went up Saturday and they had removed all the cabinets and appliances in the kitchen. The electrician had also removed all the switch plates and was working on the wiring. Here is the former kitchen which will become our pantry and store room.

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We also received our invoice from the lighting place. We have to go to the bank and send them half for a deposit.

Last evening and all night we had intermittent thunderstorms. I shut all the windows. This morning dawned gray and pretty chilly. I have no long sleeved shirts. The shipment can’t come too soon. They predict cool and wet weather for the next couple of weeks. So sorry for the wine makers. It is very bad timing after a too cool summer. Not a good year.

The work has started!!!

I was so excited to run into Emanuele in the Piazza last night while Luther was smoking his cigar. He told us work had started in the apartment today! I went over this morning and sure enough they have moved all the furniture into the living room and have removed the TV and refrigerator. Sorry to say they also removed the built in bookcases in the office. That took me by surprise but oh well, what’s done is done. I believe they started cleaning out the attic too. Here is a picture of the future kitchen with pull down attic stairs.

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Today we went to Sansepulcro in Tuscany only 30 kilometers from Umbertide. It is a pretty little town with lots of little streets. They also have a museum with many 15th century paintings which we visited.

Aldous Huxley called this painting the most beautiful painting in the world. It is called the Resurrection. When up close and personal it is extraordinary which this photo doesn’t really get across.

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There was an amazing collection of old locks and keys. They were extremely intricate and many were beautiful. This picture shows one of them with its key. Notice the triangle and below it the flower and then below that another shape in the key. The lock is just beside it and you can see where the triangle and the flower fit (you need to click to enlarge). They were pretty incredible.

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This is the madonna in a picture from the 1400s by Santi di Tito. She is looking at the Christ child. All of his paintings were wonderful.

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These were random items that I was drawn to.

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After the tour we went to Ristorante Al Coccio for lunch. It was a very “traditional” looking place with lots of knick knacks.

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We chose it because of the aroma wafting from it. It just drew us in! The food was quite a bit different than the Umbrian food we have gotten used to. We started with a traditional Tuscan bread salad as an amuse bouche. The thrifty Tuscans use up old bread this way. By moistening it in the salad dressing of oil and vinegar it softens it up. It was quite refreshing. I had a mushroom flan (never saw that in Umbria) with a cheese fondue and truffles as an antipasti. Then I had the ravioli with Chianini meat sauce from the famous Chianini white cattle. Luther had taglietelle with duck ragu. It was all very good. The people behind us tucked into two big Chianini steaks. We’ll have to go back and get that sometime instead of a primi. It sure smelled wonderful. Here is a picture of my ravioli.

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This evening we met up with Michelle and her partner Paul for a drink in the Piazza. She will be leaving in just 3 days. I will miss her a lot. Paul was interesting and he will be here for 10 days after she goes. He is Dutch. Perhaps we’ll see her again before she leaves. We swapped contact info so we can keep in touch. Maybe someday we will meet again…

Tomorrow I will go over to the apartment so see how Giovani did today. I met him while I was there this morning taking a look at the work.

Catching up

There hasn’t been too much happening. Just odds and ends that I’ll catch up on.

We spent a couple of quiet days. We caught up over lunch with Susan and Gary who had been in the Dolomite mountains in the Alto Adige part of Italy. It used to be Austria before the first world war. They still speak primarily German and it is Germanic in feel. We have been several times. It was not their cuppa tea! Also they had a lot of rain which was unfortunate.

We met with Emanuele and he “says” he is all set to start work on Sunday. I am excited but not holding my breath. He also brought us a letter from Fed Ex.

This was our next challenge. We had arranged for Luther to get his prescriptions sent to our Texas mailbox. They showed up last Friday. I arranged for them to be sent to Emanuele’s address as someone is always there. The letter he brought was from FedEx regarding customs who want to know exactly what is in this package. We had been expecting this. They emailed us a bunch of forms and we filled them out. We had to go to the bank to arrange to pay the €40.00 they charge. We could have gone to our bank website to do this but the site was down. We only had 3 days to get the funds there so opted to go in person to the bank.

SO we sent the money and filled out the forms and sent them all back. We hope this will allow the medicine to be delivered. This whole thing is costing a good bit of money. First the prescriptions cost around $30.00. Not bad. Then it cost $56.00 to sent them via FedEx. This was the least expensive method that was trackable. Add to that the €40.00 (about $52.00). At least we only have to do this every 3 months. Once we are registered here we can get the Italian health insurance. That will be a WHOLE other experience!

So we congratulated ourselves with a trip to the restaurant across the river today with a nice lunch all’aperto. As an added little factoid – in Italy never ask to dine al fresco as we do in the US. This means literally “in the cooler” or in jail!! HA HA!

We have two upcoming events. One is a tour of Umbertide Underground! It is through the wine club and is next Tuesday afternoon. Apparently Umbertide is honeycombed with tunnels, catacombs, old wells and cantine. We will get a guided tour and tour La Rocca which is the big castle built into the town walls.

The other is a concert in the Chiesa de San Francesco on Saturday evening at 7PM. The church was built between the 8th and 12th centuries. The concert will be a 50 piece orchestra playing Brahms. I am quite excited to see this.

Kitchen and sofa

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Wednesday. Not a lot to report. A beautiful day after thunderstorms last night. Today was market day and I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many people. I think many of the summer residents are here now and of course the market would be a big draw. I went out early to buy produce, which is beautiful and bountiful right now. Also two whole trout from the fish monger and some little tiny clams. We will have them tonight with linguini.

Monday we met with Emanuele and gave him the list of what we want and what we don’t want. Va bene. All is well. We cut about 1/4 from the costs.

Our sofa was delivered yesterday. I hid in the house while Luther went to deal with the delivery men. Why? Well because the sofa is BIG. And the stairway is narrow with an inconvenient U turn with a low ceiling. I wasn’t at all sure it would fit. And it was a very near thing Luther said. But in the end our sofa is there! And it looks great and is SO comfy.

Today we got confirmation that our wire of the deposit reached Pedini. Also Roberto from Pedini came and he and Emanuele proceeded to measure precisely for the kitchen.

All good. It means things have begun. Emanuele will begin work soon. I imagine he will start with the removal of all the stuff like the old kitchen, the attic debris, kitchen floor, etc.

Meeting with the Geometra

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So on Wednesday evening we met with our Geometra, Emanuele with Susan in tow to translate if necessary.

Emanuele had a line item list of costs for the things we want done. To be short, it was a lot more than we want to spend. So we took it home to decide what we want to do and what we do not “need” to do.

We went over to the house and looked at each item. All the kitchen, pantry and patio stuff are important to us so we will do those. Also having the floors cleaned and refinished and all the walls painted. Lighting is also important but we had already whittled that down from the “everything you could EVER possibly want” to what we “actually” wanted. The initial estimate was €10,000. We got it down to under €4,000.

The things we cut out of the budget were mostly in the attic areas – there are two of these. The areas are very large, great for storage. The estimate included painting the spaces and tiling the floor which we pretty much nixed. We are OK with them cleaning out all the old stuff left up there. I am thinking we can just take a couple of cheap carpets up there to cover the crumbled concrete floors and still use it for a lot of storage. We will still have them put vent windows in to release the heat up there and replace the small windows that are in each attic. We also discovered we could see down into the kitchen from up there so that needs to be fixed!!

Other stuff that we nixed were sealing and waxing the vaulted ceilings and the living/dining room beams. I am OK with them as they are. Also changing the steps in the hall. Emanuele said it would be good to make them more level. Hard to describe. I need to take some pictures. Anyway, in the end you would walk from the hallway onto level area with 2 steps down to the living room and 2 steps down to the foyer. Rather than one down now from the hall to the platform and then one down to the LR and foyer. Just not worth the expense.

Long story short, we eliminated about a quarter of the costs so that will work in the long run.

Visit to the Questura

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Today was our appointment to go visit the Questura or State (of Italy) Police in Citta di Castello. We had gone for a ride out yesterday with Gary and Susan who knew where it was – kind of out in the industrial area outside of town. (then we had lunch :-))

So today we had a 9AM appointment and made it fine. We were the first called and we each went with a different person. We were fingerprinted and we had all the necessary forms. The two guys we dealt with were very nice. Luther had fun practicing his Italian and got lots of compliments on how well he spoke. They told is in 2 or 3 months we should have our Permesso. OK. At least that’s another hoop jumped through.

Yesterday we met with Emanuele and had Susan along as an interpreter as it was kind of technical stuff about the estimates, lights, kitchen, schedule etc. We got the number for the kitchen from Pedini which was about on track with our guess as to cost. The big surprise was that the rest of the work and lighting, tiles etc was much higher than we had anticipated. We are not sure why. Perhaps it is the logistics of the whole job. Emanuele told us they would have to take everything up and down the stairs. He had hoped for a hoist up to a window but that would be too disruptive to the stores below. Anyway. We took the lighting estimate home. It alone was 10,000 Euros but it was also everything and then some. We whittled it down and I think it will be more like 4,000 Euros now.

We took the lighting choices and the kitchen choice to Emanuele today and he called the Pedini people who will come to measure everything hopefully next week. He is also going to give us a line item estimate and we will eliminate anything we can to get the price down some. Right now I am thinking the attic area will not be tiled as we had discussed. We can use the space without it being tiled. We will still want the vent windows up there and probably have them clean it out. It will all depend on how much it will cost.

We also went to Formica, a big electronics chain who have a store here in Umbertide. Oddly the word formica means ant in Italian! We took Luther’s finally unlocked IPhone and got it activated with a plan for calling, text, and internet access. Pretty easy and pretty reasonable. He now has an Italian phone number. We will keep the little non-smart phone that I have which has a US number in case we need someone to call us from the US. I will use that for my phone.

I forgot to tell you that Susan told us about a free app for the IPad or IPhone called DuoLingua. It is a language app that I am finding extremely useful. I have learned a LOT of stuff from it in the last 4 days that I have been using it. I recommend it to anyone learning a language. It is really a lot like a game and that’s fun!

Garlic and short tents

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Yesterday was market day. We ventured out and found a few things were different. The biggest truck was missing leaving a large hole in the center. The beer guy was in that spot. Just outside our door was a new stand with piles and piles of garlic and onions. That’s all he was selling. As we strolled around looking at the wares we noticed a tent was set up with only half of it’s leg height extended. It had nothing under it.

We finally figured out that the big missing truck and this person were on their summer vacation. I guess the short tent guy must have had someone set it up to keep his spot from being stolen. Ha! So the summer vacations run from mid-July to the end of August. Nothing gets done in Italy during this time. Even the government offices close and the libraries.

The produce is really hitting it’s high summer stride now. The tomatoes are fabulous. They just have four kinds. Romas for sauce, normal red ones, cherry and striped ones for salads. No heirlooms. They sell them ripe and nearly green so they keep for a week and ripen. We bought some from the local producer stand – tomatoes, basil, arugula, zucchini, eggplant. A lot of the produce is from far away like Puglia and Sicily. With the makings of a salad we bought two balls of mozzarella di buffala. We bought a quarter watermelon. We bought pecorino cheese. We also decided to try the porchetta. There are about 4 stands that sell it. It is a whole pig that is boned and rolled and slow roasted. It melts in your mouth. We got some from each end and a little of the crackling crisp skin. We had it along with the tomato mozzarella salad for dinner last night and it was great.

Here is a shot from our window at the aftermath of the market. The screen in the window messes it up but you can see all the trash they leave behind. The town cleans it up.

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We also met up with Emanuele and the lighting lady. We walked over to the apartment and she and Emanuele discussed his ideas. He had been in the apartment yesterday and tore up some of the floor in the kitchen to see what was underneath. It was good news, tiles.

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That means the floor doesn’t have to be reinforced to lay new tile over the old tiles. He also had brought samples of 6 different tiles. We chose the one we liked best. He will use a slightly different one for the patio which is more textured so it won’t be slippery.

Here is a picture of the big floor tile, the quartz counter top sample and the sample of the cabinet finish.

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Aqua and house reno choices

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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!

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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!