Keys
As a continuation of the last post, I want to share our experience with our new Italian home. As I mentioned, we purchased a home on auction near Milan, Italy in 2014. Going through the auction we were able to purchase with cash received as an inheritance. We didn’t have enough to cover the entire amount, so we took out a small loan from my wife’s parents to be paid back over the next year. We participated in the auction in late March. The court ruling stated we had to pay the amount in full within 60 days, which wasn’t a problem because we had the cash. However, we had most of the cash blocked in a CD with ING Direct at the time. The maturity date was about May 10. only a few days before the payment for the house was due. Taking it out early would have been the difference of 4% interest to .4% interest. (Interest rates in Italy are unbelievably low) Seems simple to wait for the maturity date, but had to pay before they would start processing the documents to make the house ours, so everyday we waited was another day we would have to pay rent in our current apartment.
In the end, we chose to wait for the maturity date. Which we estimated getting us keys in June and Moving in at the beginning of August after we did some work in the house. You really have to see the pictures of the kitchen when we purchased it.
What we hadn’t thought about is that in Italy holidays happen almost every day. Italy has literally double the amount of work holiday’s from that of the U.S. So, because we waited for the maturity date, the document processing moved a lot slower, having lined up with a large chunk of Italian holiday. The stereotypes about government work remain true here as well. We waited, and called, and waited some more. Finally about mid July they told us we could come accept our keys.
The Plan
You know how things don’t always go the way you planned? That was our case. Our intention was to move into the house as soon as possible, and August was the goal. We had a small list of things we needed before we could do that.
- Throw out trash, old TV’s, and mattresses left behind
- Fix walls from humidity damage
- strip tile from kitchen walls
- Relocate gas line to inside the wall
- Install radiant floor heating in kitchen
- Place floor tiles
- Replace toilet tanks (inside wall)
- Paint
The big project was going to be the kitchen, so I’ll describe that in a minute. Important to note is that just after we purchased the property and made the plan, I was blessed with a job with a short commute working with an Argentinian Architect. So the schedule was already tight only working at the house at nights and on Saturday’s. Well when we didn’t receive our keys until mid July, our hopes of moving in for August were gone.
That’s OK, time to adapt!
What we decided was that we would clean up the house and paint the upper floor. We would start moving things into the living room for storage while we lived upstairs. For me, it was an easy decision. I suppose I learn that from my parents, who lived through the winter in the living room of the house that my dad was building for us back in the 70’s. They live there to this day! For my wife however, it was a bigger sacrifice, especially considering we had just learned we would have our first daughter ‘K’ early the next year. It’s not easy living in dirt, especially when you’re pregnant and your mother ingrains the idea in your mind that ‘dirt is bad’ your entire life. I do tease her a bit about that.
The Help
As you can imagine we had a little bit (a lot) of help trying to accomplish all in such a short time-frame. From friends, family, church members, and missionaries, all of whom we are sincerely grateful for. For example, my father-in-law who worked as an electrician when they lived in Albania, decided to use his vacation time to come and finish our walls and install the electrical system. The missionaries did everything from stripping tile from the kitchen to painting the upstairs rooms.
August is a month of vacation for most Italians, in fact August 15, is a catholic holiday where they celebrate Mary’s assumption, called Ferragosto. So like most businesses my work decided to shut down. Which was a big help since my father-in-law and many others were working in the house alone during the day up until that point. We got the upstairs in order, and decided as planned that we would take a few weeks off and visit my wife’s parents in South Italy. Beautiful by the way. I’ll share some vacation ideas in future posts.
Upon returning from our vacation we decided it would be OK to paint the living room even though we had not finished covering up the gas line. You can see a photo of my wife with a painted wall with the gas line visible. Well from the stress/physical strain my wife had some complications with her pregnancy, which put her in bed for a month. Now we had even more help than I could handle. Have you ever tried managing a project where no one speaks your language? It’s not easy.
Kitchen
The big project before we could call our house a home. So back from vacation, and we are officially living in the house. Upstairs in the main hall we had set up a temporary kitchen space. Electric grill (no gas yet) I think we had a microwave. Our hot water heater ran on gas, so we used the electric grill for showers as well. After one time, we learned that waiting for the electric grill to heat enough water to take a decent shower took far too long. Luckily our neighbor let us borrow his camp stove.
The kitchen project was and still is the biggest project for our home. My wife in bed upstairs and finding out my employment couldn’t afford to keep me on when September hit, allowed me to work each day without the distraction of running from work to home. The kitchen was an old 70’s tiled walls. The floor was a double layer of tile. I guess the previous owners were not interested in tearing up the old ones. So I had a job to do. I knew we needed a kitchen as soon as possible, but not knowing the area, or the names of products made it difficult to find what I needed for the radiant floor. I found out in order to install I would have to remove about 75 square yards of dirt. This I stored in the garage until I could find a pickup to move it all. We ended up using our car.
In order to speed the up the process I ended up installing some 5 inch piping across the kitchen and into the bathroom under the stairs where the water access started. This would allow me to finish the floor system before I had finished setting up the hot water heater. Truthfully, it wasn’t a popular decision among my Italian support team, but it did have it’s advantages in time. I guess I looked like ‘that crazy Americano.’ I’m proud to say I learned to think outside the box from my father.
Through all the stress and backache, the kitchen started coming together piece by piece. I wasn’t able to test the floor heating, but I was sure it would work. Tile installed. We ended up using our floor tile for our back splash as well. I’d do that different looking back. And our kitchen was born. Nothing special, just a basic ‘Mondo Convenienza’ package. In order to get gas set up we had to have our residency established in the property. I still remember the look on the face of the inspector that came to give us the certificate of occupancy. He asked amidst all the chaos, “You live here?”
“You better believe it!”
Long Live DIY’in
Next Step:
Italian beaches
