Take one Abruzzo house. In fact, take two Abruzzo houses. Knock them down. Start again. An update on rebuilding our Abruzzo home and your Abruzzo villas for two.

Considering we lost pretty much the first two weeks of June to what seemed like non-stop rain, such has been the rate of progress since then that I'm starting to think Marco, Nunzio, Antonio and the rest of the crew on the site for our new Abruzzo home and your Abruzzo villas for two are in fact cunningly-disguised super-heroes. By night, they save the world; by day, they build almost faster than the human eye can follow.

Think I'm exaggerating ? Check out things a month ago. We were busy drilling 10-metre deep holes, 31 of them, and filling them with concrete to provide a secure base for the foundations. Take a look now. Foundations - done and dusted on the house and the villas. Now we're getting the walls up.

Not that we knocked everything down. We've retained just a fragment of a long-gone house in the garden. A reminder of how things looked when we first set eyes on this tranquil corner of Abruzzo. Besides - every garden should boast a romantic little ruin.

On Friday we took ourselves off to the Spoltore building supply company in Lanciano and signed an order for an eye-wateringly large sum of money to buy all the windows; all the doors; and all the shutters. And all the assorted handles, hinges and brackets that'll make them all open and close properly.

It wasn't just a one-way deal either. In return for my order, I got a beanie and a T-shirt. In fact, we got two beanies and two T-shirts. I strike a mean bargain.

At the end of this week, everything will be finished up to first-floor level on your villas and our home. (Funny how it's subtly changed in recent weeks from 'Abruzzo house' to 'Abruzzo home…'). Then everyone, along with the rest of Italy, will down tools for a couple of weeks of r'n'r around the awesome Ferrogosto holiday on August 15. (One week to build up to it; one week to recover afterwards).

After that, the walls are finished off; the roofs and tiles go on and then the fun bit starts of deciding what goes inside - and where. 

For us though, the really exciting news is that by around mid-October, the building programme will be sufficiently advanced for us to firm-up a date for our opening next Spring. The date when your Abruzzo villas for two will become a reality. Keep watching !

(Click on pictures in text for larger images) 

Abruzzo home, Abruzzo house, abruzzo villas for two

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 5th, 2008 at 3:23 am and is filed under About Villas for 2, Property, Daily Life, About Abruzzo. 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.