Work’s at last started on our Abruzzo property rebuild. But before our new Abruzzo houses can be built, our old Abruzzo houses must come down. Welcome to Demolition Day !

I say 'at last', but as I've previously mentioned, it's actually been pretty quick. Working with Gianmarco Poli's Abruzzo Project agency, we first set eyes on our acre of Abruzzo on 10 May 07. Since then, we've gone through the process of actually buying it; drawn up the building plans to demolish the two existing ruins on the site – and in their place construct our own new permanent home and the three villas for your holidays for two and had those plans approved. Time now for a little action.

Remember how it all looked just a couple of weeks ago ? The two houses nestling in what had become a beautiful  and spectacular wildflower meadow. A fitting finale.

If you've ever wondered why we moved to Abruzzo – here's a big part of the answer.

One  chapter ends. Another chapter begins. At 9.30 in the morning of Saturday 24 May to be precise. 

It took Demolition Domenico most of the day to flatten the main house, taking particular care to salvage the massive roof timbers which we'll clean, cut to size and reuse both in our new house and the three villas.

As well as the timbers, the main house produced stupendous quantities of Majella stone. (And stupendous quantities of rubble). For the moment, that's all gone into laying down the temporary access roads to enable to construction crew to bring their heavy equipment right into the heart of the site. But when that work's done, the stone will be recycled to provide terracing in the garden while the rubble will become the foundations for paths, terraces, patios – and the carpark !

On Sunday, Domenico turned his attention to the house which'll be transformed into the three villas where you'll be enjoying your Abruzzo holiday for two next year.

This house was a much later addition to the site and in rural Abruzzese style, built to house farm animals on the ground floor and people above.

We'd already taken off the bulk of the old hand-made rooftiles, (which themselves had been recycled from another long-gone building), and some lovely old terracotta ceiling bricks, but aside from some more good wooden beams, there wasn't too much else to get excited about. A little more stone. A lot more rubble.

The rebuild's just started – bookmark this site and come back often to watch our Abruzzo house – and the villas for your holiday for two -  take shape !  

(Click on pictures in text for larger images) 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 27th, 2008 at 9:54 am and is filed under About Abruzzo, About Villas for 2, Property. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.