It seemed simple enough. Find a couple of rundown old Abruzzo houses and transform them into a home for us – and Abruzzo holiday rentals for you.

We’ve shown you how our Abruzzo holiday rental villas turned out. Time now to look at how our own new Abruzzo house was built in just under a year.

(Click on the main headline title above – and watch a house get built before your very eyes !)

Considering we opened a week ago, I really should’ve got my act together and written this earlier. However Week 1 in our new career of providing Abruzzo holidays for couples was designed as a kind of ‘roadtest’, with all three Villas occupied to make sure that everything works. And with a sigh of relief, I can tell you it does. Aside from a leaking kitchen tap in Acquaviva, (each of our three villas is named after a mountain in the nearby Majella range), which Domenico the plumber is going to fix tomorrow.

(Click on the main headline title above to see how Villasfor2 has turned out – with pictures !)

In two weeks we move into our new Abruzzo home – and Villasfor2 opens in May. Now comes the hands-on task for me of creating a Mediterranean garden from scratch.

Some day very soon I’m going to have to sit down and start thinking about how to turn our acre of Abruzzo into a garden.

And to do that, I’m going to have to un-learn most of what I know about gardening in England and develop an instant knowledge of the right plants; and the right planning; and the right water-saving techniques that are all needed in a Mediterranean garden.

(For more – with pictures – click on the headline title above)