Too late for Tuscany?

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

Painter man

The countdown ticker on the right side of the page is now showing 'days since completion', unfortunately this isn't true, as first the wet weather in Tuscany, and then a cold-bug (no it wasn't swine flu), I caught on a flight from Sweden, conspired to make us miss finishing the last chapter on Chicken-House in the right timescale.  So this week, we had 2 calls with Alberto, one on Monday to confirm the booking for the digger, and the second on Friday to apologise for not making it (I did get off my death bed long enough to send him an email mid-week), and to look at re-scheduling things.

So, what's happened this week? not a lot, as apparently the famous-floor is taking its time to dry out, it seems they apply science and actually measure it with a humidity meter.  As the weather has now taken a serious turn for the better, Alberto predicts that this Wednesday they can start to do some of the finishing off, starting with the final treatment of the floor, which is so dirty etc neither the plumber or the painter can get in to do stuff, as this treatment threatens to muck up their good efforts.

This wet floor thing hasn't stopped the electrician, and he is completely finished, although he bottled out fitting our suspended light systems in the kitchen & bathroom, as he didn't know how we wanted them to look! They have also finished the installation of the new corner stufa in the living room, and its associated new hearth stones, I would have loved to see a picture of that this weekend, that would have cheered me up a lot.

We were waiting two new quotes, one from Chiasserini for pointing the front and side of the house, we did have a fixed price on this ages ago but I threw it out of the contract as it was so so expensive, but now I realise that without tarting up the stonework it won't look finished, so I'm hoping that the final price will come back cheaper than before. We did get one more price, from the painter, which when Alberto read it out, I was really taken aback, I don't think the Sistine Chapel cost so much to decorate! unfortunately it needs doing, so it will have to go on the cash-flow forecast and we'll see how it can get paid, as the money pot is looking decidedly empty, and the continuing GB Pound vs Euro crash just makes things even worse.

What else are we doing? looking at beds, I think we are almost decided to buy new from a UK company using traditional methods  (see www.obc-uk.net) as they will also cut as a deal on shipping, and that kickstarted another idea, to ship over the last remaining item in UK (the big shower cubicle), for such a big/heavy item the transport cost isn't so bad, so I think I'll set these 2 things in motion next week sometime.  The last thing outstanding is the kitchen design, and with everything that's been happening I haven't gone back to my drawings, but I fear its looking increasingly difficult to make the traditional kitchen do everything that I (and particularly Mrs J) want out of the most important room in the house. Ciao