Stuff stuffed

I cannot wait!!! The stuff stuffed by Mr. Stuff... Sorry. An aside.. 

I am prohibited by AKA, Mr. Stuff, in ever using his real name in this blog or, on any other site on the Internet. So be it. If he wants to be remembered by Posterity as Mr. Stuff, then, he may be My Guest!!!

...will now be stuffed in Codiponte. Not so much a Victory but, it certainly will reduce the clutter in our Genoa home... thank you very much. We can now look forward to the photos of The Stuff stuffed nel Poggiolo. Gads.

Works in progress...

The first of three roofs of La Casa Grande is built. Done two days after the Easter Weekend. This roof covers the Upstairs Apartment. It will be outfitted with stucco-ed & painted walls... we are thinking of a BLUE-PETROL... a wood-plank flooring, a full bath... that means squeezing in a bidet... a kitchen of sorts... we found a stone sink tucked in a niche next to the large window overlooking the Garden. All we will add is a cabinet built within the traces of an old fireplace to the sink's immediate right to house a small cook-top & a frig... and a terrace with a wrought iron railing. This fun is slated for September. Before then, during the rest of April and all of May, the following will be efficiently tackled by The Builder...

...completing the roof of L'Esseccatoio, currently de-nuded of its rafters...

...re-constructing the other two roofs of La Casa Grande... the future Salotto e Sala da Pranzo... The Question of Which will be Which is yet TO BE DETERMINED, thanks to a structural flaw discovered yesterday with The Builder & Our Geometra concerning the rotten flooring of the Portico, precluding putting a kitchen in the little room off it. Alarmingly, the originators of expanding a rustic stone box into a mock-Baronial manse put the weight of two floors above on two overly burdened beams placed on two pilasters with too much distance between them. In essence, one side of La Casa Grande is resting on thin air... for cryin' out loud!!! But, back to The Question... I want la Cucina e Sala da Pranzo to be where someone else wants Il Salotto and visa-versa. Naturally, we will have a lengthy discussion...

...rebuild the Portico's flooring... topping it off with stone... and the sub-structure of the under-passage below it which leads from the Ramp Entrance up to Il Cortile... once we have built another arch where the Thin Air is...  

...and new sub-floorings and iron rods to hold fast the walls of these stone boxes... called La Casa Grande... leaning on each other with only the help of Gravity and A Prayer!!!

So, let us pause & take a gander at the new roof... 

the new copper gutters above the untouched... thank you very much... cornice of La Casa Grande's facade towards Il Cortile...

the wood overhang of the roof towards The Garden side of La Casa Grande...

more copper gutters & wood cornices over the entrance to the Upstairs Apartment. Here too will be a vine covered wood pergola... I envision eating out here under its shade on lazy Saturday afternoons in July...

the view from The Garden, which is still a dump... dammit.

and, for Compare & Contrast, a view of the Upstairs Apartment's roof to that of the Sala da Pranzo or Salotto's roof, depending on who you are talking to. Gads.

Panic over l'Esseccatoio...

Ahhh, che bello!!! Una giornata splendida!!! E' l'esseccatoio... ma va???

What's all the brick for? Where's the stone? 

And why are they on top of the TO BE CLEANED stone walls?

What was The Builder AND Our Geometra thinking of?

WE NEED TO SEND AN SOS... even on a Sunday!!!

Three text-messages & five telephone calls later, all became Calm & Wonderful & Beautiful again. Those ugly bricks will be covered by a wood beam. And, all that BLACK will be washed away by high powered water & sand. OK... Vuoi un panino con prosciuto o formaggio e pomodori, caro? A picnic in the dump of Our Garden. Gads.

Decapitated...

I have seen l'Esseccatoio denuded of its roof today. Shocking experience. Photos to follow. Gads.

Building with a Brand...

We finally got it. Late but, we got it... 

back when we first engaged Our Geometra, we made a tour to see four houses, which our builder... and the geometra too... had worked together to re-build. We didn't like any of them. They all looked like mountain motor court motels. We just thought it was their client's fault for such renovated disasters. This couldn't possibly happen to us we thought. We have discovered it is mighty hard to avoid.

First, there are the Anti-seismic Codes, a thick tome thrust on top of the already massive Italian Building Codes. Over 2,000 pages of Italian bureaucratic gibberish. You can automatically say bye-bye to any notion of saving, preserving or, just re-touching the quaint rusticity of your ad hoc constructed farm house cured for hundreds of years by winds, rain... and, naturally... farm use. Well, unless you...
A) really want to end up in prison... and, I am not kidding here...
B) you have millions & millions of Euros... I'll let you all change them into even more Dollars!!!... to avoid A) + those construction costs...
and...
C) you have anti-nuclear led balls to fight everyone involved in the project right up to City Hall. I dare you to try to fight an Italian City Hall!!! I just dare you. Remember, in Italy, all the Law & Finance Forces can have fun with a piece of the pie. We have already been visited by the Police, the Carabinieri & the Vigilli. I am ardently praying that no one else comes a' knocking!!!

Then, there are the construction components everyone loves & wants... the thick rough hewed chestnuts beams, the smaller cross beams clipped at a rakish angle, the interlocking terracotta roofing tiles, the copper gutters & drain spouts, the interior wooden slats for an exposed ceiling... and all are already prepared for you at the local building supply & just waiting to be installed. Pronto Moda. It's like building a house out of LEGO. You pick your seven or eight components and erect away!!! And, a LEGO house ALWAYS looks like a LEGO house. Another Law.

This is followed by the Laws of Labor. It states that what the builder + work-guys did yesterday, they do today & they will do tomorrow. You can talk, cajole, implore, discuss, remind, reiterate, recapitulate, go over & over & over & over until you are beyond caring about repeating yourself like an idiot. The outcome remains always The Same. And this is... how they have always done it. Get over it. They have a Brand to protect!!! 

It's not that we are dangerously unhappy with the Brand....
well, I was about two weeks ago. I felt so demoralized, I seriously considered putting il Poggiolo up FOR SALE and moving to Australia. I called Roberto to tell him of My Decision. He rapidly explained that Australia has KILLER bugs, snakes & other Highly Leathal Creatures which, the Lunigiana DOES NOT HAVE!!! And, Thank God, too!
Had we been savvy enough to extricate ourselves from Our Ingenuity & Fantasy... of wanting to retain il Poggiolo as it was but, mediating the leaky roofs, hoping for Hot & Cold running water in a couple of indoor bathrooms and having a Bunson Burner or two... whilst staring at a sanitized motor lodge rock complex a few kilomters away from Codiponte, awakening to the tell-tale signs of brand construction, we might have gone out an invested in those anti-nuclear led balls to fight off All the Powers that Be.... right up to City Hall... and beyond. But, such is not our Current History. Che sara' sara'. Gads.

Beauty in bad construction...

We fell in love with this. What is it, really? Charming but, terribly bad construction... 

Since beginning our little adventure in reconstructing the many parts of Il Poggiolo... La Casetta, La Casa Grande & l'Esseccatoio et al... we have continually been assaulted... well, our ingenuity & fantasies have been... by the poor, cheap or ill-conceived construction of the previous owners. 800 years of ad hoc building. And, we are now paying for it.
For instance...

...the lack of a proper overhang to the roof, on all sides, allowed water to infiltrate through the old mortar holding the stones in place. Thank Goodness, after so many years nestled together and by the art of stone masonry, le pietre have locked together to keep put the hut.

...the post-war roofing tiles... a cheap industrial French import called le marseillesi... were laid down on rough hewed wood planking without any water-proofing underneath. The water... an insidiously powerful force of possible or eventual destruction... sought its way easily through the fissures of the tiles to not only ruin the planking & beams, but also, the wood flooring of the apartment below. It rained for years inside the Upstairs Apartment, the very reason the inhabitants eventually fled first to La Stanzetta, and then, alla Casetta fitted out with an indoor bathroom & kitchen in the 70's.

...no gutters meant what water ran-off seeped directly into the foundations. Well, foundation is a bit of a joke. No excavation dug & lined with wood to form a mould for a poured reinforced-concrete base.  No. The largest stones found were placed right on the ground and the house was built up stone by stone and with little mortar. Too costly an item to use much of. They relied upon Gravity. 

So, the aesthetic of the house has been altered to save it from its former self. It is not quite the lovely beast it once was. However, it won't rain inside for years to come!!! I guess, we must be thankful for this basic convenience.

The new roof now...

...has restored chestnut wood beams resting on a reinforced concrete cordolo holding-up a water-proof, fire-retardant & isolated wood under-roofing laced with horizontal metal runners to lock the new roofing tiles in order without placing stones on top them.
...the spanking new copper gutters now serve as an enlarged cornice to keep rain water from lacerating the cordolo and the untouched stonework below. We are resisting this modification to the facade, much to the horror of yet, respected by Our Geometra.
...the new down spouts now carry the rain-water through conduits connected to the local sewer system.
It now smacks of a Swiss chalet but, it is all very practical, is done to code and is also guaranteed to last a life-time!!! Gads. 

The latest Before's & After's...

Aren't these fun pictures? Progress is such a satisfying emotion. Well, until the bill comes in!!! Now, on with the fun...

Roberto's Stanzetta before...

and the same afterwards. Personally, we love the RED!!!

The First Floor 70's Bathroom...

transformed into the Kitchen. We didn't stray too far from the 70's color scheme, did we?

Our Sala da Pranzo acting as an impromptu Korner Kitchen...

now made into a sort of a fancy-schmanzy county Dining Room. May I say? I am not responsible for the decor. No. Someone else is. So, look elsewhere to lay The Blame.

A once-upon-a-time dowdy Bedroom...

is now our Salotto with a fancy-schmanzy fireplace. This too is not my fault. I was corralled by the same person responsible for the Sala da Pranzo decor into paying money for the antique marble fireplace facings. One day... when all this is over... I will learn not to say... OK. We'll take that too!!! Gads.

A new view of the week...

OK... now for this week's view. Ta-daaaaah! Miracles do happen. The radiator was mounted and roaring with heat, as were the others, when I arrived for a Post-Easter Weekend Inspection. The blotches are disappearing as our SAGE GREEN lightens to its originally planned shade. However, the painters want us to wait until this coming Monday before laying on the third & last coat of calce paint. They feel the walls need the extra time to absorb better the first two. Che sara' sara'. I guess, Progress must come in small incremental steps... dammit!!! Gads.

Radiators...

This was last week's view of My Bedroom in La Casetta. Remember? It is also this week's view too. Please note the lean-to radiator. It wasn't supposed to be like this. No. The radiator was supposed to be mounted & radiating heat by now. How come? Good question.
We have waited for four months to have heat. Heat means drying-out the walls. Drying-out means the walls can be painted. Painting means having all our lighting fixtures mounted. Mounting means calling in our cleaning lady to scrub & scour the house. Scrubbing & scouring means we can move-in with our furniture & belongings. Moving-in means we can live... and cook... and sleep in our house. That's how I understood The Math. Have the builder AND the painters understood this same simple & linear equation?

NO THEY HAVE NOT!!! 
The builder thought to himself... Well, the painters are painting so, this means they don't need the radiators to dry-out the walls. 
Whereas, the painters said to me... We could sure do with some heat. Our masking tape doesn't even stick to the walls or the flooring because, they are still too wet. 
This was odd. I had asked the painters to tell the builder, if they ever found that they needed heat. I then asked the builder to ask the painters to find out if they needed heat. Did either of them do that? NO, THEY DID NOT!!! 

The problem with these guys... basically... nice fellows is, if they see no reason to do something, then, they...

A) don't do it...

and also...

B) they do not call, write, fax, e-mail or tell you face-to-face that they haven't done it... what you have bitten the bit to have done... like... how about... maybe... perhaps...  gosh... install the frigging radiators... to have heat, to paint the walls, to mount the lighting fixtures, to clean the house, to move in, so we can LIVE!... and COOK!!... and SLEEP!!! in what we have just spent several thousands of Euros for the Right & Privilege to do so. Gads.

An update...

OK...

La Casetta has been painted...

There is heat...

The kitchen is ready to rock ' n roll with un piatto di pasta or, un caffe'...

The electricians come on Tuesday to mount all the lighting...

And, the cleaning woman will start on Thursday to scour & scrub for two days...

We are waiting to hear when the darn antique furniture... which was bought almost a year ago!!!... will be ready for the move. We do know that it won't be until at least the Saturday after the Easter weekend. The dealer's truck & staff are available only on Saturdays. Gads.

An almost finished cordolo...

Cement hardens fast, even in the rain & humidity of Codiponte, this first week of Spring. 

A few views of what a cordolo looks like before the restored tree trunks are returned to their favored places, marked by the iron plates, bolting them to the cemented cage of the cordolo.

Wherever there is a plate, there will be a beam. The cement of the cordolo on the inside will be hidden by a band of stucco. The interior walls of stone below it will stay visible.

All that wood is the new exterior cornice to hide the cordolo from view. 

By the end of the week after Easter, this first of three roofs of La Casa Grande will be finished. Then, the roof of L'Esseccatoio... or, drying shed...  will be tackled before returning to complete the other two roofs of La Casa Grande. Don't ask me why this is the procedure. I just get to pay for it all. Gads.

We are getting closer...

This is almost OUR SAGE GREEN.

If we can get that contraption under the right window mounted & connected to the water heater in the attic, the color will lighten considerably, as the walls dry-out from the warmth from the radiators. 

In the meantime, I am practicing my Hallelujah's, in preparation for The Day THE SAGE GREEN arrives. Gads.

When...

We won't be in La Casetta for Easter!!! 

Here is The Dammit of all the feste italiane, which have Come & Gone, while we wait to move into 1/3rd of our Tuscan farm house down in the Lunigiana...

Natale... or, Christmas.  Once-upon-a-time, there was a contract stating we would be in La Casetta by December 20th. Promised for sometime in mid-January, we forfeited The Daily Penalty for several costly Extras to be stricken from payment. We would have done better to have opted to stay with The Daily Penalty. We are now nearly four months late. The Math says it would be a lot of Euros by now.

Santo Stefano... a rest day after Christmas.

Capodanno... or, New Year's and, in my mind, the best time to fool around with a move. Such a worthless holiday... wherever. However, it was NOT in the cards.

Epifania... the Italians do not officially have a Santa Claus. Instead, they have this Medieval witch, La Befana, who brings toys for the Good and coal for the Bad. We got neither and still no house!

Santo Valentino... it's not an Official Holiday but, the Italians make a big deal out of it anyway... fools for pink & hearts.

Domenica delle Palme... Palm Sunday, when everyone gets a palm frond. I don't need a palm frond. I need my house!

Pasqua... The Italian name for Easter and a much less of a deal than...

Pasquetta... when Italians troop out into the country en masse for The First Pic-nic of the year. You see, they are never far from eating. Hmmm? Maybe, it is why their houses are never finished on time.

And, finally...

Giorni dei Santi... Saint Days, one for each day of the year. Ninety-six to date. Your Saint Day is the Saint covering your birthday. In my case, I have the totally unheard of saintly presence of Blessed Federick Ozanam. HE HASN'T HELPED!!! What Saint could with a name like that? Gads.

The moment for il cordolo...

The skies always appear to be grey & full of rain...

meanwhile, the Work-guys are moving a pace with the cordolo. The wood pieces you see are the forming troughs for the cement & iron rod structure of the cordolo.

Here you can see the iron cage of the cordolo, which will be enclosed with another piece of wood before pouring the cement. The iron is soldered to make a sort of chain link... like the band of a hat... all the way around the various parts of the roof. Then, additional cross beams are placed on top of the restored tree trunks, which will already be in place within short iron troughs connected to the cordolo, followed by a sandwich of an under-roofing of wood panels with an isolation filling in between. Finally, an additional rain-proofing is put on... in day-glo yellow... before the ultimate touch of the terra-cotta roofing tiles. I am out of breath! Could it be all the excitement? Gads.

The Garden today...

There goes the neighborhood...
the Garden is in a worse state than to have us called White Trash... whatever that is in Italian... though we are NOT in Puglia... one of the junkiest regions of the Italian boot... or, Campania... representing Il Mezzogiorno... or, The Italian South... in this exalted category. Think trash & what comes to mind? Naples, the capital of Campania, for sure!!! 

We have a good excuse though. We are a building site. But, come to think of it... this might be those citizen's excuse too. However, we hope to be finished by June. Some of the beauty spots I've seen near Napoli are in a perpetual state of construction. I hear it's a way to avoid paying the taxes you get socked with when all is done & finished.

So evident is our bright orange plastic fencing around The Garden... like a nuclear waste dump... and said to be for Reasons of Security & Safety... the Carabinieri came a calling the other day... looking for clandestine workers besides other nefarious occupations with builders. Thanks to Mr. Berlusconi... his rightist government is more than just hysterical about immigrants... it is maniacal. It suspects they are lurking everywhere. But, hey! I AM AN IMMIGRANT!!! You missed me. However, I am gainfully providing work for the local Italians... let us NOT forget this Vital Point, please. I also have Il Permesso di Soggiorno to do so.  

What to do? What to do? What to do with The Garden? Nothing until the cement mixer finds another home.

Poor scraggly prune trees. All that ugly dirt is waiting for the go-ahead for Marcello to arrive with his ditch-digger to set all like it was before. I cannot wait to seminate! I feel it to be My True Destiny!

NOT forgetting to get my hands on tearing out all the junk I keep finding. This is a tractor part engaged in making a make-shift fence. Wretched contadini! Gads.

Little black hoses...

Gosh.... will Wonders never cease? And, so soon after My Initial Shock with a paint color earlier in the afternoon. I had no idea that the dangling black rubber tube draped across the facade of my years old farm house is my only access to running water in La Casetta. However, I do have a hunch some clever person will come along & invent another method and/or placement for said tube. Burying it might be an idea, no? So novel too. Gads.

The SHOCK of My Life...

Naturally, the photos do not do any Justice... 

maybe you had to be there, when I walked in to see a yucky candy wrapper blue-green on my newly stuccoed walls of La Casetta. I knew... instantaneously... it wasn't The Color I had spent so many Euro's on various paint candidates to find just THE RIGHT SAGE GREEN for Mr. You-know-who.

You can see the difference between the wall as I found it today and The Right Sage Green on the middle panel in the photo below. Sadly, all those colors look off in the photo, with much thanks to the rainy day outside with its waining & wavering light. 

I called the painter but, my cellphone conveniently was out of juice, refusing every attempt to be kick-started. I then called our geometra, however, he wasn't available either on his. So, I corralled our builder and he said... Non e' giusto. A man of few words, is our builder. He then left me to gaze at the horror. Finally, while soothing my worried color sense on a piping hot plate of gnocchi & funghi at my favourite local trattoria, our geometra called to tell me that that sickening blue-green was only the primer coat. WHEW!!! Crisis averted. Gads.

The MarGas Experience...

The MarGas Company? Well, cutting right to the ditch...

I waited for over four months and had to pay nearly $3,000 to have four guys take two days to cut a gaping twelve foot long trough and on My Ramp too, stick an ugly iron cover over a hole already dug off ramp and probably gouged out by a previous Gang of Four from the MarGas Company, run a cheap industrially looking black tube into the guts of a Communist looking niche with a perforated G A S on its door, which is pretty Communist too, if you think about it, and, before high-tailing it back to whence they came, from frigging Viareggio, an hour's drive away, they slathered a cheap cemented over it all and said... My, oh, my! What A Good Work we have done?

Hell, if I had known it was going to be a simple Cut & Cover, I would have hollared for a pick... and done it myself... dammit... and saved myself some Euros!!!

I cannot wait to see what my first gas bill is going to be like. Gads.

Un-do to re-do...

A few photos... one, in an unusual spring sunlight... of the Upstairs Apartment's roof-less-ness before the cordolo is built.

The Procedure is... the old chestnut beams are removed for restoration. Then, the first 1/2 yard of stonework is re-built with the old stones and cement mortar. The refurbished beams are then returned to their rightful positions before the cordolo of cement & iron rods in constructed. The cordolo is sort of capping which keeps all together. Once-upon-a-time, only the tree trunks held the stone walls & roof as one unit. Now, The Law dictates a cordolo and Good Sense requires the under-flooring of a solaio to keep all together, through thick & thin and, hopefully, through shake-rattle-and-roll!

The beams are more than heavy. It needs four work guys to carry one off. The fourth fellow is out of view in the photo. He was adjusting his ipod for the upcoming effort. Gads.

Spring springing...

The dapper capitano, who gives the weather on the RAI-TV morning show, Buona Mattina, said we are due for several days of uninterrupted sunshine. Well, it is about time! And so, not to miss the opportunity of this Good Weather, and in light of a hefty consignment of over 50 plants of various blooms & foliage, I am off to Codiponte today to get cracking on creating a green barrier just inside the  the garden stone-wall around Il Poggiolo. We are looking a bit nude since the stone mason/gardner eradicated the perimeter wall of its prickly roving vines... along with everything else.... dammit! I must deal with filling in for the "everything else" while the going is good. Gads.