Capitolo Sei: Interior Progress, Exterior Mayhem
Welcome to Chapter 6 of my posts on our DIY renovation of our tiny Italian villa! If you didn’t already catch them, click the links to read my previous posts in this series: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4 and Chapter 5. In this post, I’ll share how much progress we’ve made indoors after months of work and re-work and how we’re just now in late-November turning to our outdoor tasks.
After four months of daily renovations, we are exhausted. Pro tip, when you hear people say “it’s terrible living through renos”, they are not exaggerating, listen to them. We also exacerbated this sentiment by doing the vast majority of the renovations ourselves.
So, what have we done? Effectively we have improved every room in our house. It’s finally starting to look like a place we would enjoy on a vacation, rather than a construction site. The joy of not having to look at paint buckets and spackling tools everyday is in our near future (mostly because I just installed a waterproof roof on our shed so we can hide our construction items and pretend the work is over).
Room to room, we have attempted to create a clean, esthetically pleasing environment on a budget. Since we were left with a lot of old furniture, we kept the pieces we could adapt and improve, in an attempt to reduce waste and save money for more exciting purchases. In sum, after four months, here is a laundry list of our improvements.
Living Room
Removed and repurposed old furniture, re-plastered, sanded and painted all walls, painted brick grout over archways, refinished fireplace, installed ceiling fan, installed sconces, added sofa, coffee table, tv stand and cabinetry.
Bedroom 1
Dismantled wardrobe to repurpose main section, refinished wardrobe and installed wardrobe rail, refinished bed, installed ceiling fan, plastered, sanded and painted walls, created faux brick accent wall, added nightstands and lamps.
Bedroom 2
Refinished wardrobe and built support for mirror, refinished bed, installed ceiling fan, plastered, sanded and painted walls, created faux brick accent wall, refinished two nightstands and added lamps.
Kitchen
Dismantled cupboard with water damage and rebuilt walls, refinished countertops, installed new light fixture, installed stove and oven, replaced hardware on cabinets, added kitchen island and stools, refinished pantry, plastered, sanded and painted walls.
Bathroom
Installed toilet tank, removed bidet, installed washing machine, installed shower head, removed countless fixtures (soap trays, toothbrush holders, hooks etc,) plastered, sanded and painted walls, painted tiling work, installed vinyl flooring and trim, replaced vanity, towel bar and hooks, refinished mirror.
Fireplace Lounge
Refinished cabinet, refinished fireplace, built firewood holder, painted tiling work, replaced light fixture, covered up old plumbing, sealed exterior door and painted internal door, added chairs and small table.
Additionally, we also installed air conditioning units, new windows and doors, sealed an unused door for insulation from the heat and cleaned our water cistern.
I’ll share more photos when the finishing touches are complete because who doesn’t like a before and after?!
Our outdoor space is a different story. Doing work outdoors in the south of Italy in the summer and fall is virtually impossible. As Canadians, we are not unaccustomed to gross swings in temperature (from -35C in the winter to +35C in the summer), but that doesn’t mean we enjoy pruning trees or painting rooftops in 40C sunshine. Nor, frankly, are we interested in working from 6:00 – 8:00am to avoid the heat. No thanks. Instead we focused on our indoor space and finally in late-October, early-November, the 20C temperatures allowed us to get outside and get to work. Note: Italians are in puffy coats, I’m still working outside in a t-shirt and shorts.
The state of our outdoor space was horrific when we purchased the house. We faced years of untended property, huge weeds growing through our concrete back garden, trees overgrown, bee hives in every corner and oh so much dirt and debris.
By late-October we had made some progress such as getting rid of the garbage and tossing broken and unusable furniture. But that’s about it. This month, we resealed the rooftop, started power washing everywhere and built a waterproof wooden roof over the shed. We decided not to harvest the olive trees this year as they need some longer-term maintenance, so our next steps will focus on making a tranquil space in our back garden, which is now one step up from this original state:
To this, slightly cleaner state (blue spray-painted bike complements of my creative wife):
In a couple of weeks, we should have our outdoor mayhem under control so stay tuned. For now, we are simply enjoying the fact that our indoor space is virtually completed.
More to come on Under the Puglian Sun: Adventures in Renovating Our Italian Villa. Don’t miss a post, follow the blog below!
Stay tuned for Chapter 7: Our Secluded Garden Retreat…At Last!