Bathrooms...
you see that sorry looking brick hut next to the stairs off the old Portico, which lead to what is now referred to as Mr. You-know-who's regno? By the way, I don't have a regno... yet. It ought to be the Upstairs Apartment, if we can solve some B & K Logistical Issues, etc. Anyway... that hut was the ONLY Bathroom for the entire Il Poggiolo complex!!!... animals excluded. And, it was only built AFTER the Second World War!!! No trace of any other facility. I have hypothesized that...
The Garden was the Bathroom!!! Very "bio", no, to fertilize carrots, zucchini & tomato plants?
Kitchens...
a fireplace was The Usual Cooking Source for a Kitchen back in the olden days. The folk had iron gratings set over the flames to put pots & things to cook. Or, the soup-pot swung from a hook above. Often, houses in the Lunigiana had a kind of a cook-top built-in to a window's interior ledge. They were made of terra-cotta tiles to set pots on top with the fire built underneath in what look like cubby-holes for storing stuff. It was also a convenient way of dealing with the heat-loss through the window's glass panes. As for any ovens, they were constructed outside, like ours is, out on the Cortile. Water was brought in a tub drawn from a well... again... outside the house. Refrigerators were the cold stone walls of a room down in the cantina. Very de-centralized affairs, Kitchens were.
Our task today is to try to bring it all inside Il Poggiolo with our modern conveniences which weren't envisioned... ever. No wonder Mr. You & I have discussions!!! Running-in new Bathrooms & Kitchens in really old houses is like shoving a square peg through a non-existent round hole. Gads.
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