On 19 September, the first bit of work on the house started. Michele Gigli is a builder in the village who was recommended and introduced to us by David and Carol. We had arranged for him to start earlier in the year, but he had to cry off as there was an overrun on another job of his. In spite of the fact that we would have a house full of guests, we were happy for him to start. It meant an 8am start to the day for us all, but it was very exciting that something was finally happening and a price worth paying.
The work he was here to do was a refurbishment of the second floor bathroom – one of the few things we could do without needing permission from the comune. We had been desperate to have a decent second bathroom and a proper shower.
We had already been to the tile suppliers that Michele recommended and had bought the only suitable floor and wall tiles they had in stock. We’d also ordered the shower, sink, vanity unit etc from Leroy Merlin to be delivered after Michele’s start date. We had decided to keep the same layout and to reuse the toilet and bidet. Every Italian home has to have at least one bidet and this is the bathroom we decided would keep one. The shower would be bigger and we also wanted a larger hot water heater to allow for more back to back showers.
This is the bathroom we were replacing. The tiles at the base of the shower were cracked and we had decided not to shower there until we had a new bathroom.
The pictures below are the result of the first half day’s work removing the old bathroom furniture.
Later that day, Michele sent this picture of the base of the shower. Given that we had not used this shower since we moved in, that water must have been lying there for a very long time. If we had showered up there, goodness knows what might have happened.
Michele told us the shower base would need to be raised as the existing water outlet was above floor level. A couple of days later, however, he proudly revealed that he’d managed to lower the outlet pipe (which was buried in the wall between the bathroom and our future living room). The pictures he took were a little surprising, but this is how they accomodate plumbing in old houses like ours. Everything needs to be done in the walls as the floors are all tiled and solid underneath.
Less than a week later and things were starting to take shape.
The order from Leroy Merlin, however, appeared to be stuck in a warehouse in Palermo. We tried going into Leroy Merlin to chase up the order, but they were unable or unwilling to help us. So we enlisted the help of Dominick to call the Leroy Merlin customer services phone number and chase up our order. They took my number and promised to call when they could give a delivery date and time. They were true to their word and the order turned up on 30 September (the last day of the delivery window on the original order).
Things slowed down once the job needed the co-ordinated activities of builder, plumber, electrician and painter. But by 10 October we had a bathroom close enough to completion for Fenella to try out the shower. Sadly, the water wasn’t mixing properly and would only come out scalding or freezing. After some investigation, it turned out that the hot and cold feeds were the wrong way round (cock up of builder / plumber). Frustratingly, the plumber caught COVID-19 so we had to wait for his recovery before we could have a properly functioning bathroom.
This Saturday, Michele and the plumber came to put things right.
Pretty much the finished article.
While we had Michele around, we asked him to help rehang some hooks. Martin had hung them in the guest room and they had been fine during Fiona’s and Rowan’s use of that room. Then suddenly they just fell off the wall. When Michele saw the rawl plugs I had used, he just laughed. He said you need a much longer screw and rawl plug in these old stone walls. The picture below illustrates the point quite clearly.
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