In previous posts I documented the process of buying a house in Italy a little bit. In another post I described how we spent the weekend with -10 degrees after having gotten the keys to the house.

After we’ve been to the house in November, Pyke and me also went there in December again, together with my dad and Pyke’s dad. We took them for some semi-professional opinions on some of the renovations we want to do. That’s what dads are good at, isn’t it?

In Italy, any renovation can only be performed if you have a Denuncia di inizio attività (D.I.A.) or declaration of start of activities. Such a document is an official description of the activities that you are going to perform and has to be drawn up by a Geometra, some sort of architect type of guy (or more like a surveyer maybe). Our Geometro is called Marco and we had managed to get an appointment with the guy mid-December.

After having explained us the process, we went up to the house and discussed what we wanted to have renovated.

The basic structure of the house is okay The walls are good (big basalt natural stone blocks on the outside and concrete walls on the inside). The only thing we want to do is create a big opening in the ceiling of the ground floor so that we can create an stairs to the first floor. This will be a big hassel, because there are steel beams in the concrete that provide support for the floor. We have to either take away one of those beams and put the opening in the ceiling there (in addition to provide some of other means of support in exchange for the beams) or create a small opening in between the beams. This will take some time to figure out.

Electricity is less problematic. Currently there is no electricity in the house. The wiring is too old and has not been connected to the public electricity system yet. So we need new wiring and the connection to the communal system needs to be arranged. Attached you can find a diagram of the electricity of the ground floor. I have created diagrams for each of the floors in the house for the suppliers to look at. Let’s hope this is clear enough

Plumbing is the last thing that we want to have done. The basic thing that we want to have done is some rerouting of the hot and cold water tubing.

The process of getting all this done is as follows:

• First contact local suppliers (tubista or plumber and elettricista or electrien) that can do the work for you and have them create proposal. This will take some time, as they’re Italian…
• Next (or in parallel) have the Geometra draw up a D.I.A. with the activities thoroughly described. As the Geometra is an Italian too, take enough time for this. For some activities the Geometra will want to mention the supplier that is going to perform the work in the D.I.A. so there might be several dependencies here between the proposals that we’re getting from the electricista and the tubista and the drawing up of the D.I.A.
• Deposition of the D.I.A. You probably want or maybe even have to be present when this happens. We will be at least–hopefully the end of the March.
• The actual work now can happen.

At the moment, we’re in the process of getting the proposals from the individual suppliers. This actually takes quite a bit of time. We have a hard time getting used to the fact that Italians do not answer their emails (or least so it seems), still use the fax and do not call you back. Things are getting better though as a good friend of mine speaks fluent Italian and can make some calls once every now and then.

Later on I’ll post a little more (probably after I’m back from Italy–hope to be going there end of the month).

In the meantime, I just learnt that a niece of mine has bought a new house too and that they’re renovating as well. It looks like they’ve got a bigger job at their hands though.