Too late for Tuscany?

Another Suitcase, Another Hall

We have had the removal men in today, for 11 hours, on a good day that is a pain, but with a small baby (Truly Scrumptious is now 3 months!), that is a real pain, and still they did'nt finish, it will take another 3 hours tomorrow am.  Where are we going? well Italy of course, hurrah, we finally did it, but alas not for as long as we wanted, because, surprise, surprise, I got a new job! I wasn't looking for one, but it just happened, so more info in the New Year about that, for the next 5 or 6 weeks we are Tuscanites (is that correct?).

I didn't fill you in after my last trip, suffice to say, that is the first and last DIY kitchen I shall be buying/installing, not saying it was bad, but there are better things to do in life, and when you add up all the days it takes to build, do you actually save a lot? anyway, here is a picture of it all, with the new American Fridge etc installed too.

Mostly the 5 days I spent in Tuscany was notable for waiting around (for people to call), rain, rain and more rain (no wonder Tuscany looks like England), and chasing paperwork for my residency....

That was a hoot, I just thank God I didn't have to do it in some major city, like Roma or Firenze, just sleepy little Pieve, anyway, after 2 or 3 days going back and forth I eventually got a smile from the lady who does that business, and I was on my way back up north.

So, tomorrow, hopefully around noon we hand back the keys to this place (our home for the last 4 years), and set off on the next chapter in our life, and if we had internet in Italy, I'd tell you all about it.  Buona Fortuna

Hanging On The Telephone

I didn't want to tell you about it in advance, as I knew it would be too good to be true, but last week we finally got a date from Italia Telecom to come fit our new phone/internet connection, they even gave us a number in advance (get this straight, 8 months after we applied for connection we got a number).  Anyway, I lined up Alberto to supervise the installation, IT even gave us a specific time of 2pm, I was soooooo excited.  The allotted time passed, I imagined that Alberto had some other work to attend to, so was too busy to drop me a line, then a bit more time passed, this was now no joke, finally I couldn't help myself, so I sent an email to Alberto, c.c. to VP, asking what happened.  You are probably ahead of me, but yes, they didn't fit the line.  Why? our neighbour (the one who sold us the house) wouldn't let them clip the cable to her house, so they could connect us.  Strange that, you would think that if you sold someone a house, then those new people might want services also, well, 'there's nowt so queer as folk' as they say in Yorkshire.  So, we are absolutely back to square one, but there is one thing to be sure it, the final solution is bound to be more expensive.

Let me end on an upbeat note, although I keep meaning to sort out my photo's and do a before/after section, I haven't got round to it, let me show you our great new chandelier, it looks absolutely fantastic in its setting, pity we cant afford one for every room.  Grazie

Truly Scrumptious

Excuses, excuses.  There's always a good reason for not writing the blog, well, how's about the blog-host (Typepad) fee's not being paid, and my account suspended, not good enough? ok, how about the fact that last week I became a statistic of the global crisis, and in my compay's latest re-organisation, the music stopped and I didn't have a seat, still not enough? OK, try this, 3 weeks ago today Mrs J gave birth to a beautiful baby girl! that must count as the best excuse for not sitting down to write, yes?

Anyway, it was actually Suzi over at palazzo pizzo who shamed me into it, as all the blogs in her blogroll have all been updated in the last day or so, mine was exactly 4 weeks old! aaaaaaaaaaagh. the shame of it.  Anyway, I promise to be a good boy from now on, especially as I am unemployed, and blogging will at least take me away from day-time TV.

In reality, my new status will allow us to decamp to Toscana to do a spot of navel gazing, do the garden, and generally enjoy living in the house, as it was meant to be, even though it was supposed to be for holidays, and not my retirement home!

There is loads of stuff to update you on, for example we got internal doors last week, so no more whistling while you wee.

But this post is all about our new addition, we just call her 'truly scrumptious'.  Oh, and if anybody has any need of a slightly used Nuclear Engineer/Project Manager, with experience of Italian builders, then please contact me via this blog.  Ciao

 

 

Hot in the City

Although daily temperatures are still high (ie 28-30 deg), there is a definite smell of Autumn in the air, and its obvious that Italy is back to work, as I received the 4th and final invoice (contabilita) from Chiasserini a few days ago, as well as the bill for the landscaping!  I must say I'm a little surprised by some of the last minute additions, but we have probably our last tele-conference with Alberto on Wednesday, during which time I hope all will come clear.

It's almost a year since we started work (last October), and we achieved a lot in terms of the house renovation, and I hope that our ex-owner neighbour also feels that we have done justice to her old family home.  However, we now need to make tracks about becoming residents. At the time of purchase (back in June 08), we discussed a lot with Romolini's about the buying process, all the myriad taxes to be paid in Italy, and the endless paperwork (I mean, did I tell you, we only received the original purchase contract a few months ago, after nearly 1 year!).  I also recall discussing the method of how to register as a resident.  This is important, as it can mean the difference between paying 3% purchase tax and 10%....well, although it's an important subject, it seems that all the details just went clean out of my head, and as I had promised Alberto to find out, then I had to own up and ask Mrs R a second time, so here's the answer:-

'the new owner has 18 months from purchase, in which time to register the residency with the local Commune, for this you need to present:

a) Copy of the deed of purchase,

b) Copy of the Codice Fiscal and Passport

c) A bank statement, showing that more than €5000 is in an Italian bank

d) Private health insurance cover (or else registration in the Italian state health system)

When these documents have been lodged with the Commune, then you have to sit tight at home, and wait for a visit within the next 20 days, when someone may call round to see that you actually live there, and that the place is habitable (ie there is a kitchen, a bed and a bathroom).'

Something else that takes almost as long as the sale contract is the 'phone connection.  It was back in March that I got all excited that we would be accessing the world-wide-web from Chicken House, and still it hasn't happened, why not? well, apparently its because the house has never had a phone, so allocating a new number is taking the time, like 6 months and counting.  I knew it was too good to be true, let's see if it happens in September.  Ciao

Living In A Box

At 5.45pm Sunday, Mrs J and I sat down to watch il Palio (live from Siena), courtesy of Rai Uno, but by 8 o'clock, with 3 false starts and fading light even the producer had had enough and switched transmission to Rai Tre, and almost immediately they were off!  After all that waiting, in only 3 minutes its all over, whilst I couldn't swear to it, I think the winner was 'the Owl' (Civetta), with my favourite, 'the Giraffe' ending his ambitions in the dirt of corner one.  It's pretty hard to think of something that can surpass the Italian passion for football, but at least twice a year il Palio comes pretty close.

Where was I? ah yes, saviouring the delights of IKEAs designers in MDF.  After such a fun-packed day out in Rimini we couldn't face doing anything, so we filled the Soggiorno and Cucina with boxes and retired to the terrace for a snifter.  Next morning bright and early we surveyed our prized purchases, and decided that sofa's were a priority, but before that some on-the-job training was in order.  I previously neglected to mention that travelling with us was Mrs J's brother, who funnily enough is studying in the land of IKEA, but had never had the pleasure of erecting any of their flat-packs, so a quick apprenticeship on a Bekvam was initiated.  Now to most consumers IKEA's product names seem to border on the ridiculous, but BiL informed me (and he should know he's learning Swedish), that all the names actually mean something (in Sweden), not a lot of people know that.

With 8 out of 10 points for his Bekvam BiL was now qualified to help assemble the sofa's.  Is it me, but for once I thought I could buy something from IKEA, unwrap it and sit on it, no chance, it probably took the two of us best part of an hour, and the intervention of an electric drill (that wasn't mentioned in the instructions), to get the first sofa ship-shape.  The 2nd one, not needing the drill treatment, came along a bit quicker.  After a swift lunch break (some pizza's from Pieve), and a bit more floor cleaning (a constant throughout our week), it was time to tackle the main event, the kitchen units.

I won't bore you with the tedious details, but suffice to say the whole process was: Back-breaking [all that bending to assemble cabinets], repetitive [counting and fixing endless different kinds of screws] and boring [ditto the screws thing].  Whilst the end-result may be a budget option, a thought does cross your mind, how much is my time worth? and the end result? the jury is still out, as we couldn't finish it in the time alloted as we didn't have the Dishwasher [another one of those things ejected off the van], so I didn't want to finally fix all the boxes, drill holes for the sink etc, this also meant that we couldn't get the plumber back that week, as planned, to connect the gas to the cooker, good job we all like pizza. Buon Ferragosto

8 Days A Week

Is it me, or is it just too-hot-to-blog? I mean, would JK Rowling have written so much if she wasn't in Scotland?, if you just compare her latest tome (at 600+ pages), to your average Hemingway, penned in a less than cool-Cuba (barely breaking 110 pages), then it seems to be that cold climates produce more prolific writers, so it is then that a lull in our routine 36 degree days allows me to set down a few of our exploits on our recent Chicken House moving-in trip.

Where to start? with the van full of goodies, and the windswept road trip to Bella Italia?, no doubt you're getting bored with those tales, but suffice to say that I was
expecting our MB Vito van to be more Tardis-like, which resulted in half of our cargo (of course the heaviest half), to have to be returned from whence it came on the 9th floor, severely testing both my patience and my muscles.  Amazing that so much humping, resulting from literally weeks of judicious box packing, resulted in barely covering half of the living room (Soggiorno), upon our touch-down at CH!

One omission that was left behind in the heat of the moment, and regretted for the whole trip was the mattress to our bed (the bed did make it), it seemed like a small sacrifice after 3 or 4 hours toing and froing, but our only alternative in Italy was to use a handy blow-up bed I had bought for guests, which after a long days toil in the house didn't really give either me or Mrs J, 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep (8 minutes perhaps, until one or the other of us rolled over, with the resulting noise waking not just us but half of the neighbourhood also).

Now, call me stupid, or maybe just naive even after all this time, but I had expected to walk into our newly refurbished house, and expect it to be clean.  I mean, the major building work had finished months ago, the second fix of electrics and plumbing was in, and the painter had done his stuff.  Exactly, but he seems to have been caught short at the end of it, or perhaps there was an air-raid warning, as he had obviously left the place in a real rush, the rooms in a mess, and all the paint tins too.  This then set the pace for the whole week, laboriously sweeping, washing every room repeatedly, and more galling, cleaning up the million (I exaggerate not), paint drops on our precious cotto floor, I mean it would have been cheaper to have had our floor covered in gold-leaf, and this guy throws paint all over it, uff, don't get me started.  

If our first day as Italians was all about cleaning, then the second should have been altogether more exciting, as we went to Rimini.  No, not to the beach, but to IKEA's latest opening (did you know that IKEA have 14 stores in Italy?), and I'd like to go on record that the whole experience was probably the best I've ever had in one of Mr Kamprad's shops, whether it was the really helpful, and English speaking staff, or the emptiness of the store (probably attributable to the fact it was Tuesday, and the store had only been open a few weeks), or the fantastic food in the restaurant (no, I don't mean meat-balls covered in goo, but fantastic Cannelloni), and IKEA in Italy has a bar, where you can stand up and get your expresso, how civilised is that?  Regardless of all this efficiency, my idea of a quick trip to get our sofa's and kitchen, still resulted in a full 8 hours there and back, which of course is nothing compared to the 3 or 4 days required to assemble all of the boxes you have just spent your hard earned cash on, but more of that excitement later.  Ciao

On Days Like These

From reading my favourite bloggers, it seems that its officially a 'slow blog season', perhaps its due to the crazy weather we are having across Europe, or else I can blame the 'day job', and a hectic few days in Moscow last week, but I have finally succumbed to Mrs J's sustained pressure to write a new post.....

The movie buffs amongst you will recognise that today's blog takes it's title from the theme tune to the Italian Job (that's the classic 1960's version not the modern re-make), and I see the title sequence to be an allegory to our current situation, why? well you may recall that as the credits role, we see the driver of a fantastic car (a Lambo Miura), winding his way thro' some spectacular Italian scenery, and whilst his attention is distracted he is ambushed by a bunch of locals, driving a digger! If you can't quite remember, check it out out here watch clip.

And so it has been over that last few weeks at Chicken House, as what should have taken a few days, has now turned into a long-running saga, with seemingly no end in sight.  However, at last, Alberto's last set of photo's show some light at the end of the tunnel, with the terracing done, the LPG tank buried upto its neck, and the terrace walls all but completed, built from a pile of massive blocks of stone.  Since my last visit to Toscana, it has become apparent (at least for a stranieri-project), that the most important person in the project is not the architect, or the builder, but the translator, and our key expert on this job has just given birth to a beautiful bouncing baby girl!  So, for our not-so-regular interchanges with Alberto, we are reliant on Mrs J's Italian teacher.  Whilst this is less than perfect, I am trying to reconcile myself that Alberto (and Chiasserini) know exactly what they have to do, and whilst they seem unable to do any of the handful of jobs in parallel, completing the job will take just as long as it takes.  This is not a project management maxim, but whilst these last steps drag out, at least it allows the piggy-bank to fill back up again to pay for it all.

So, what are these last steps? as already stated, the terracing is done, and the walls, and the gas tank.  This means that as the digger retreats off site, that the septic tank can be fitted (allegedly it was supposed to have been done last week), that will then allow the boys to re-point the front and side of the house.  Inside the plumber couldn't get on, as he was waiting for the painter to paint the walls, but then the painter had to stain the beams first!.  Again, photo evidence that the painter is on-site, so we could assume that the plumber has been able to hang the radiators, and further, if the septic tank is installed, then all the loo's can be fitted and connected up too.  Hurrah.

This all means that we are planning our moving in trip, sometime mid-July, and have been out this weekend on a last minute spending spree, buying all the duplicate items such as kitchen utensils, that you need when you run two households, this of course is on top of the boxes and boxes of stuff we have been hoarding for years on the expectation of our first house.  So, despite the changeable weather, all is rosy, and as Charlie Croker might say 'we are the self preservation society'.  Ciao 

Long train runnin'

In case I forget, the aim of the mad digging was not solely to 'do the garden', it was actually to 'plant' the LPG tank, and then finally the septic tank, the gardening was merely a sideshow, but a comment this week from my gardener seems to say that work hasn't advanced much since I left, perhaps they are all off enjoying the festa della Republica (Republic Day).

As I said it wasn't just the garden on my last trip, briefly I also squeezed in: a meeting with painter #2, again, very entertaining, as Alberto was my interpreter (and he doesn't speak any English), good job I always carry my notepad and pencil.  Anyway, we seemed to come to a conclusion, and given the size of the previous quote (preventivo), I changed the spec for this guy, no fancy paint effects, just cream walls throughout, I agreed with Mrs J if we want fancy we can do it in a few years at our leisure, when the coffers have filled up again. So I hope this guy didn't get too merry on the festa as he is supposed to be starting this week, and he needs to do a few things as he in turn is holding up the plumber (ie he needs to paint before the radiators are hung). 

I spent an awful lot of time sitting on the floor, and staring at the ceiling, thinking about what to do with the kitchen, and finally came to a conclusion that Ikea was our best bet!! Whilst it seems like sacrilege to spoil all of our tuscan features with MDF, it really is going to be the safest bet, as my original idea of the traditional built kitchen just would not be good enough, it boils down to the fact that modern kitchen units are made of 15mm thick panels, and our hand made kitchen would have 110mm brick uprights, thus loosing 95mm of storage space for every 'unit', and given that we haven't got a lot of space to start with, that's it, QED.  Its funny, for such a global company you would think prices should be the same, especially across the euro-zone, oh no. They vary greatly, with Italy actually being slightly better than say Austria or Slovakia, funnily enough the cheapest place to buy Ikea at the moment is UK, but I really draw the line in transporting 2 tonne of their boxes around Europe, I mean, its a long way to go back when you need that extra screw (that's always missing).

Couldn't bring myself to do any real work in the garden as I was hiring some labour, but I did try out my newly repaired chain saw and chop down a dead cherry tree that was dangerously close to our neighbours back wall. Silly me, I thought that the chainsaw was supposed to do all the work, or perhaps it was the fact the temp was well into the 30's, but by the time the monster had been felled, branches stripped, and the trunk cut into bite sized pieces, I was creased, and had to go and cool off in the shade of the house.  When I had enough strength to move the cut bits, even though I was wearing regulation steel boots I managed to drop the biggest bit, not on my toe (that would have been ok), but on my unprotected shin, enabling me to see stars even when the sun was shining, ouch! (I still have a very nice bruise some 10 days later).

Last word on the interior of the house, all the tiling is done, and looks great, especially the small en-suite on the top floor.  The electrician is almost done, with all of the main wiring and sockets installed (we do have a small issue that they are not all as per drawing, but a flea in Alberto's ear solved that), and as you can see we wanted the traditional, surface mounted, twisted-pair connections for the ceiling lamps (actually its the only way to have a good looking installation on beam/terracotta ceilings).  And finally even though the septic tank is not in, Chiasserini's boys are getting on with re-pointing the front & side of the house, and silly me, the price was high, as they will touch-up the front, but do the side 100%.  buona festa

Ain't no stoppin' us now

I've been back home almost a week now from the craziest gardening weekend ever, and now there is nothing blocking the completion of Chicken House.

I pitched up at 9am on day 1 to find Matteo already well in to removing half of Tuscany by way of his mini-digger, so much for Alberto insisting that they wouldn't lift a finger without me being there.  I stopped the work for a second to check the facts, I was amazed the guy spoke some English, and equally surprised that he had removed a size-able amount of dirt without any direction, so out came my file of 3D drawings which he took to heart, folded up in his shorts and returned to digging, obviously happy in his work.  As I was taking a few minutes to go round the house to see the latest progress, then the builder turned up, 10 minutes more and a flat-bed truck squeezed up our little lane, with a nice green LPG tank on the back (in Italy its called GPL!), and then last but not least Alberto showed up, so within half an hour we had 8 guys, 2 trucks, a gas tank and a digger, the only person we didn't have and I was missing the most was VP (our translator).

To get the GPL truck up the lane, the even bigger truck taking away the spoil had to be backed into the road blocking the traffic, so the boys then set to to unload the tank.  The truck was conveniently equipped with its own hoist for this job, but that would have been too easy.  They decided to use Matt's digger, and struggled with a variety of ways to rig the slings around the tank, and the digger bucket.  I was busy taking pictures for posterity, but as the tank was lifted less than safely it did cross my mind that the pictures would come in handy for the accident inquest later.  Against the odds the tank was offloaded without injury, and was on its way up the garden towards it final resting place, trucks were re-positioned and the days main job could continue.

Alberto, Chiasserini and me then had a good 15min ding-dong about how the landscaping should (and should not) be done, the only tool in our joint vocabulary being a pencil & paper, eventually we came to a compromise that didn't entail Matteo digging for the next month, and wouldn't cost me a fortune in transporting soil around Toscana.  So we agreed on: 2 terraces not 3, level 1 to have a 1.2m retaining wall, level 2 to have a 1.4m wall (the maximum you can have in Tuscany without seismic reinforcing).  Instead of extending the base level right across the back of the house, including the back of the neighbours house, that only the 1.2m level would be site wide, this simple idea probably saving about a dozen truckloads.  The final point was how are we going to make the walls? 'with all the stone from the old barn' I said, 'not enough' retorted Alberto, 'how about to use big-stones? only 80euro per cubic metre' I left him to work out a scheme and a cost (preventivo).

The fun didn't end there, we had a meeting with Painter Man #2, I employed a gardener, designed a kitchen and chopped down a tree, but more of that later.

P.S. There is one major thing to report, the new stufa is fully installed in the living room, and I think it looks great. Ciao  

Bottoms up!

Another week has flown by without any discernible progress on Chicken House, and it's all my fault as I struggle to clear a few days in my schedule to go down there and oversee the digger.  Its obviously even getting to Alberto who sent me a mail on Friday pm, reminding me that he still didn't know what to do with the painters quote, and could Chiasserini start work on the pointing.  Again, the former I take the blame for, as I'm still trying to get my head around why painting my little casa should cost the same as half a dozen Tata Nano cars, but the latter, hold on, I only got the estimate on Thursday so that's not fair. 

I actually woke up this morning turning this particular mathematical equation over in my head.  Here goes, lets see if writing it down makes any more sense:  I have a contract with the builder that clearly states that on top of the identified services all additional work costs a certain price per hour, so why do I get fixed price quotes (a corpo), which show neither the number of hours or the price of materials (this was my gripe about the roof insulation all those weeks ago).  I guess for re-pointing the materials are minimal (a few buckets of mortar), so that means he wants nearly 3-man weeks just to touch up (not to fully re-point), the front and the side of the house, I mean come on, this is getting beyond a joke. 

What else are we doing apart from checking the maths of Italian builders?, not a lot.  I didn't even order the new beds, ship the shower from UK or even pick up my sketch book for the kitchen layout.  All we did this week was have a few pictures for the bathroom framed.  They are by a French artist called Lorioz, and its very hard to find very much info about her. I actually found this print in York, UK last year and since then we have stumbled across a few others.  They are all on the same theme, and are an in-joke in our household, we thought they would add a touch of fun to our new bathroom, what do you think? Ciao