New ceiling under pink room

You can imagine! January/February! Winter indeed!

The climate in Le Marche in winter is changeable. The Apennines crush up against the sea and the weather seems to too. One day the wind from Russia will bring sunny freezing conditions and it just needs a central European low to come whistling down and Bingo!...a metre of snow no prob.

Another day and you're basking in warm sunshine and the wind is up from Africa and if the Sirocco blows you find Saharan sand all over your car. It’s like that. When it snows it snows and when it rains it rains and when the builders turn up it’s usually sunny.

The foundations were now being laid with a system of drainage for residual damp underneath.

The upper-inner flooring had been removed and the house in places was an empty shell floating in the landscape. It seemed so fragile and exposed that I feared an earthquake or a strong wind might reduce it to rubble more readily than the builders were doing.

Black room before new floor

Last picture of pink room

For two whole weeks it rained, snowed and sleeted and my visits became scarcer. There was nothing to do anyway and the trip across the mountains at this time of year was perilous, the pass through to Foligno likely to be blocked at any time. The land around the house had become a quagmire such that the crane (for later roofing work) couldn’t be positioned and quite frankly I was depressed about the whole thing wondering why I’d bothered to buy such an ugly lump of brickwork in the first place. Such negative thoughts were somewhat relieved when the magnificent girls ‘bruniswain.com’ did some historical research which linked the house with a local (now non-existent) abbey and found it to be possibly over six hundred years old and originally a convent. This was submitted to the Commune for an historical grant and the application was successful. Then the first Spring days burst across the valley and the few sparks of re-kindles interest worked on my spirits and suddenly everything again seemed possible.

Winter’s like that isn’t it.

In a twinkle the new inner floors were put in and the lower flooring was knitted together with the walls and floors. The earthquake/wind phobia subsided.

Next episode: The Roof!

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