During my full apartment renovations and in between painting ceilings and walls, I fell into what I can only describe as the sequel of ‘Diplomacy’ that is hiring Italian builders and the myriad of ‘would you believe it’…. consequences.

 

Buying any kind of property here or anywhere else, usually means you find some hidden treats, that the previous owner kept out of sight and whoops failed to mention (and I’m whacking the sarcasm klaxon here). When I say treats, I mean bloody effing nightmares. Mine so far hasn’t quite reached the levels of incubus, but the bill has slowly been creeping up, along with some other unexpected joys.

 

Casting my mind back from the 43c heat of mid-June last summer, to January of this, and like a lot of the Northern hemisphere, it’s also freezing cold at night. I’m near the fourth largest lake in Italy, only a few buckets short of Lake Como, apparently; which does bring in fog and some icy gusts, although generally it can be a little milder than the surrounding mountains.

Umbrian Hill Town in a sea of fog

The builders started doing some of the outside work as it’s a quieter time of year for them and they could fit me in. They were repairing the underside of my entrance stairs. Water had got in around the guttering, and the mortar was spalling and cracking in places. There is also a lovely Heath Robinson special of old piping to take the runoff into a flower bed. Which is also. obviously leaking. Each day that the fog lingered it seemed that we uncovered extras and even though I had sensibly built a buffer into my budget, my eyebrow was already twitching.

Damn that leaky gutter

Then, I had been gradually meeting my neighbours, the men for some reason tend to show themselves a little later as they may be at work. The first one was my downstairs’ neighbours, worse half. He’s a miserable git and I occasionally hear him shouting at her through the floor (side note, I can also hear him taking a whizz due the acoustics of tiled flooring).  But in complete male chauvinist style and … bearing in mind I’d at that point been here over 2 months, and he’s never so much as knocked on the door and said hello, but he deigned to tell the builder that my stair gutter had leaked onto his wall and caused some damp inside the house. He is correct, but he told the builder to fix it, without so much as mentioning any of this to me. The builder comes upstairs to discuss this with me; he looked sheepish and asked me what I wanted to do. I said, neighbour needs to speak to me not you, mumbled something which sounded remarkably like what a dick, and made him a coffee. Ten minutes later my buzzer went, dick… I mean neighbour was standing there looking shifty. I introduced myself and extended my hand. He looked ever increasingly awkward (busted more like) but I said I’d get his side fixed outside, inside was up to him. Really, he should have got this sorted ages ago with my predecessor, but we all know that’s not how this works. My apartment now, my problem.

Moving onto hiccup no.2, the previous owner liked to place enormous and very heavy terracotta planters on the steps, I’d moved them all except one massive one as they’re just in the way coming up and down. However, the biggie, had cracked some tiles and let some more water in. Guess where the water is coming in… yep, dick… I mean downstairs. Tiles all had to be replaced and later a waterproof membrane. The planters went for a one-way trip to the tip, both broken and hideous. I did however strike gold at the tip and found a whole pile of demijohns, they are now cleaned and resplendent on my veranda.

 

House is freedom

House is love

Under the stars, and the skies above

Lyrics and Song by: Cafe Du Midi

By that point, I’m freezing going in and out to see progress and take the lads coffees and donuts. It’s about 2 – 3 weeks until the new kitchen arrived and the builder merry-go-round started all over again. But get this, they would not take the old kitchen out, nor could they take it to the tip, I had to arrange for it to be collected. The tip office is only open first Tuesday of the month (sounds like a good gig, ha ha), so I was hoping that would get sorted in time, to avoid becoming another bureaucratic treat to unravel. Also, the kitchen peeps wouldn’t take the tiles off and fit the new tiling. The old kitchen when I arrived last November, was sporting some heavily patterned horrors with a toadstool relief, by that I mean it sticks out and looks even more annoying and ugly. The oven was broken, even the door didn’t close and required a stool to keep it shut. The builder was charged with getting rid of the mushroom tiles and the re-tile. I gave him my old fridge and the dishwasher as well, otherwise they would have just ended up at the tip.

 

I knew there was going to be some dust and noise when the tiles came off, but holy Christ on a sandal wearing bike, it was indeed biblical and bloody relentless. I’d taped up all the doors and yet still the dust creeped into the rest of the house. I thought the hammer drill was going to do something other than shake a few pictures askew on the walls. But then the fun started.

 

Let the games commence

When I chose and paid for the kitchen I went to a showroom that had been recommended, I was very recently in Italy, and my Italian was pretty threadbare. As it turned out when I went to the showroom, one of their staff had lived in Ireland for 10 years and his kids were born there. His English was excellent (this will become important later); we had a good laugh and the kitchen got specked and paid for. I asked him 4 times if this included everything – taps, power points, everything hooked up and working. Yes, absolutely he said each time. When they called to confirm dates, he even said they needed two days as day one is all the cabling, sockets etc. So imagine my surprise when 3 hours later the two kitchen fitters knocked on the internal door and said we’re finished. What then followed doesn’t entirely warrant repeating as it wasn’t the guy’s fault. But they did let slip this isn’t the first time its happened.  However, I had a lovely set of units, but the oven, taps, lights and zero sockets were connected, the taps were sitting in a box on the counter. The kitchen company said oh no, we don’t do that…. Ah ha… but I literally stood my ground for over 3 weeks, while I flat out refused to sign their work order as ‘complete’ and to pay the second instalment. I don’t have what I paid for. Dear god they tried every coercive trick in the book to get me to buckle, including sending the boss around to gas light and be rude to me.  But I fastidiously refused all their games and time wasting to wear me down. I had, by this point got the builders who took the tiles off, back in – between them and a crazy Romanian sparkie, who was absolutely amazing and I renamed him The Maestro, to fit in the sockets, taps etc and connect the gas and give me a working kitchen and re-tile.  I refused to pay the kitchen company bill, unless they agreed to deduct the cost of the builders retro fit. Eventually and after a lot of calls and site visits, where they tripped up their own colleagues claims and promises, I got the bill reduced.

 

Ta da…

But all of this has been to get the apartment to a point where it is finished, where I can relax and enjoy the lovely space, lake views and my veranda. I finally finished in mid-April, when Team Romania came back and ripped out the old shower room and fitted a new one. At one point it looked like somewhere between an East End lav and an Egyptian tomb.

 

As, this was now their third job at my place, we were getting to know each other, and I knew who took sugar, who liked a slice of homemade cake and also that they were invariably late. They would play music from their own home country and one day one of them brought his accordion to play some tunes. I also subjected them to a lot of my dodgy playlist, I have a lasting memory of the three of them in the tiny shower room with me in the doorway teaching them to sing, ‘Gold’ (made even funnier as one of them was super tall and one a complete shorty like me).

Nothing left to make me feel small

Luck has left me standing so tall

Gold

Always believe in your soul

You’ve got the power to know

You’re indestructible

 

Lyrics by: Gary & Martin Kemp, sung by Spandau Ballet

 

Since then, I have stripped and painted the veranda and sealed those tiles, decorated the spare bedroom and cleared and replanted the garden and pruned my first olive tree. I have a family of geckos living alongside me and they’re not eating nearly enough mosquitoes.

 

Moral of the story:

 

• For the good ones there is always homemade cake, fresh coffee and 80s pop classics.
• Plaster dust gets everywhere. I shit you not.

 Updated playlist / Give this a listen:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3Gvu1BmDkmjTljKnraEm1d?si=mkKZel3ZQb-WK79Doz4Yag&pi=pi=3.142

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