april advancements
Continuing on in this catch-up series from the last push before we moved in, I’ll keep going month by month until we moved in late June. So now we are up to April 2022 where quite a lot was moving forward.
Not only was this the month where we’d hoped to have been in the house, but it also was the month that J closed on the sale of the old farmhouse, which meant we needed to move out - and with the new house still months from being livable, luckily a lovely friend gave us his country house to stay in the meantime. So it was a busy month of working steadily on the house, packing up the old one, finalizing the closing, moving to our temporary home, all while working quite hard back with our retreat business - hosting groups both in and out of Italy.
I know it was a bit of a bittersweet ending for him during the sale of the house he started restoring in 2006 and then ran art retreats for the years since. Then it was where I was primarily based since around 2018 and exclusively based since 2020. And in the hustle and bustle of everything else going on, the move out felt rushed and disjointed, also knowing he was renting it back just a month later to run a few art courses for the season. So we boxed what we could, stored some of it, took some of it with us to our friend’s house that we were going to stay for the month of April. We felt so fortunate to have this offer to stay at such a lovely home about 15min away while our friend was in the US. It became a bit of a refuge get-away for us during those weeks and a little period I look back on with fond memories.
Back at the new house, we finally became water-tight as the last of the window panels were installed. We went to the factory to check on the delivery of the main single pane which had come from Spain, then the workers came to install the side panel before the large truck came with the final piece. We even had to have some groundwork done to clear and make a steady path for the truck around he back of the house.
It was all-hands-on-deck and even some of the drywall installers and stonemason joined in to help. If you know the show Grand Designs (which was a comfort show during this entire process - and a show I’d highly recommend!) there is always a part where the windows are getting installed on a new build and on that one large pane, the ominous music builds and the narrator is telling all of the risks and “what-ifs” in case someone slips and the pane smashes into a million pieces. This is what was playing in my head the whole time I was watching them put it in. Everyone held their breath until it was fitted and stable. And then we even opened a bottle of prosecco and some traditional Italian Easter cake “colomba” for the occasion and passed out small plastic cups for everyone to have a celebratory sip.
The interiors were moving along as well and the resin had started to go up in the bathrooms - covering all of the surfaces from floors to walls to ceilings! And the marble sinks arrived for the main bathroom as well. The various sections of drywall coverings had been installed from the half wall on my office loft and the caging to cover the AC units in the ceiling between the kitchen and living room.
Outside we were finishing up the terra cotta terrace and I finished up the dark grey grouting. The stone wall in the courtyard was going up and the corten flower bed along the flat roof edge was installed and planted.
Then the large ponteggio (scaffolding) went up so that the exterior plasterwork could be finished safely on the high sections and the sloping roofs. Luckily this was only up for a limited time and the weather stayed on our side. Meanwhile I’d chosen the Italian terrazzo slabs for the sunroom floor and was excited to see it delivered to the stoyeyard.