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  

Comments

[Yvonne]

Sounds like you have the same digger driver as we had ... What are you going to put on the terraces?

[Jonty]

The same guy? it's a small world, or perhaps they are called Matteo! At the moment the plan for the terraces is grass, as this will be the only flat bit of our mini-mountain, but not until the heat of summer is over, and for the rest of the hillside a few mixed fruit trees, and olives, as an experiment.

[Yvonne]

You might like to try the Bermuda grass - a friend from Arizona tells me that's what they have there and it is much more resistant to drought than normal grass. Best to get the variety 'Yukon' for colder winter conditions.

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