My dad was kind enough to turn a piece of wood into a Casa Pura Vida sign. I’ll be heading down to the house in Italy next Thursday for a short weekend trip, but since I’m taking the plane, I’m not going to take the sign with me. This will probably have to happen later in August, when I’m heading down there by car.
My brother, sister-in-law and their two kids have just arrived at the house and are spending the next 12 days there. I’m looking forward to going there next Thursday!
I’m half way done with my little tour d’Europe as I write this from Rome, Italy. I’m here for a Core Spring course that lasts until coming Friday and will be heading back up to Valle di Gressoney after I finish here.
I drove down to our little place in the mountains last Thursday. I just *had* to get one a bit more skiing (or actually snowboarding) done this season, as the snow was so unbelievably good this year. So I left early morning from Utrecht to arrive late in the afternoon hoping to find the road to the house without snow. It all started very promising when I entered Valle d’Aosta. It was about 20 degrees Celsius down in Pont St. Martin and the drive up to the private road alongside which our house is was snow free a pretty long way. But then something unexpected happened. I found all kinds of trees lying across the road. They must have fallen under the weight of all the snow. So even though there was hardly any snow, I still couldn’t get up to the house by car and had to walk up again. I also did this in December and January. Whereas the last two times it took 30 minutes (December) up to more than an hour (January), this time it was easy to get up with the total walk taking only 20 minutes.
Friday and Saturday I did some snowboarding with Friday being kind cloudy and misty all the time and Saturday being an total blast. Nothing but sun and great conditions (although the snow is definitely not as powder’y as before).
Saturday night I went to Milan to hang out with some friends and after having a great pranzo (lunch) in Sesto San Giovanni (close to Milan) I went back up to Valle di Gressoney Sunday late afternoon.
At first, I was planning to go up to Staffal to ski again, but then I came up with a better plan. The weather was very nice without wind, and very clear sight, so I decided I’d try to climb up to Bec di Nona. Bec di Nona is a little pass straight up from our house reaching up to 2000 meter and should provide some great views over Valle d’Aosta on the one side and possibly Ivrea and the Piemonte area on the other side. The (current) background of this blog by the way is a picture of Bec di Nona taken this winter. A friend of mine and I have been there before in summer, but back then there wasn’t any clear sight. I took my backpack and went straight up. After 1 hour of walking I arrived at the area where the steepest climb began and this is also where you could clearly see the avalanches that had been wrecking the area.
I decided to steer clear of the avalanche slide path (that usually is a good idea I’ve been told 
) and continued my climb upwards. About 50 meters below the top however I unfortunately had to turn back. The snow was getting too deep. The powder underneath was covered with a thick layer of ice and packed snow after some probing I came to the conclusion that the powder still way too deep to continue the last bits upward. There were also various layers of crust in the snow, which supposedly adds to the danger of snow starting to slide. Don’t want to get caught underneath a pack of powder I would say . Dissappointed I turned back to the house after having some fun sliding down the hills (no avalanche danger there, the snow was only about 20 to 30 centimers thick there with limited inclination). I arrived back at the house using a different route and ended up in our backyard, where I took a few pictures.
Later that day I drove down to Turin where I took a flight to Rome. This is where I am right now. I’m having some great fun giving a Core Spring course here with 12 people and after I’m done I’m taking a flight back up again to Turin to spend another day in the mountains. Then I’m off to Switzerland to visit a friend on Sunday. Monday I’ll be back home again.
p.s. although I did actually read a fair bit about avalanches before I drove down to Italy last week, this little tour made me decide to spend some more time reading up on the subject. Although it’s probably only going to be useful next season it’s a very interesting matter…
As the video shows, the off-piste conditions in Gressoney this year were great. This wasn’t the only time the conditions where that good. It’s been snowing like crazy pretty much all of December and January. I haven’t kept track of the conditions in February, but last snowfall was March 5, about 40 centimeters.
I have to be in Rome for work the week after next, and I’m stopping by in Valle di Gressoney on my way down (driving to Perloz, then taking a flight from Turin). I’m thinking about taking my little videocamera so I can get some action shots done as well.
Also, I’m hoping the road to the house is going to be accessible (by car), so I don’t have to walk up all the way. Well, we’ll see…
Last weekend, Giorgio, Margriet and I went for another short weekend of skiing in Valle di Gressoney. We skied on Friday and Saturday. This was my third (yup, sounds like I’m lucky this year) trip to Valle di Gressoney for skiing this year already (I was there for New Year’s and for a short trip with Peter a few weeks later) and this was yet a totally different experience than the previous ones.
Whereas the previous two times we had quite some good weather, this time around it had been snowing for the full period we were there. We arrived late afternoon on Thursday and left again on Saturday around 5′ish. When we arrived it snowed already, and only on Saturday at 3pm, we saw the first bits of sun on the slopes. Sight was terrible on Friday and also on Saturday morning, with lots of mist and snow falling all the time. It still was a great weekend though, as going off piste didn’t really matter a lot: the pistes themselves were also covered in powder pretty much all day. The times I did go off piste a little bit (there were avalanche warnings all the time, so I didn’t venture quite far from the pistes to keep things safe) I was covered in powder up to my chest. Fortunately there wasn’t a lot of wind, which prevented things from becoming too cold.
We didn’t stay up in the house, as I figured with all the snow, it’s probably even more difficult to get there than two weeks ago. That time it already took us close to an hour to walk up there, but with at least another meter of snow, it would probably have taken even longer, not even mentioning the fact that I only have one pair of snow shoes and these are definitely needed this time of year.
Later on Saturday we went to Milano, to have dinner with Giorgio’s family (parents and grandpa of 96) and have a few drinks with friends of Giorgio. My Italian has definitely improved a lot this weekend, since I was basically surrounded by Italians all the time. Having a simple conversation definitely is not a problem anymore and I’m quite close to understanding a normal conversation as well. Vocabulary-wise I still have to do a fair bit of learning, but that’s going to be just fine as soon as I start reading newspapers (note to self: since you’re at MXP airport anyway right now, why not buy one).
All the locals in Valle di Gressoney are totally stunned by all the snow. All the records are broken, with almost 5m up in the mountains in the Dolomites. I hope it’s going to be snowing a bit more the coming weeks. I’m thinking about planning another short trip in March some time. As it looks, there will be skiing until the end of April or even the beginning of May this year, so even if March doesn’t happen, there’s still some time.
On my way to Oslo, from Milano, I sat next to a couple that coincidentally had been skiing in the Gressoney valley too. They stayed in Staffal, in a hotel called Ellex, supposedly quite nice according to them. One to remember. Also, this guy mentioned a website I had never seen before, called Gressoney Online. Lots of information about the Gressoney Valley.
I’ll post some pictures later on.
Last December I went skiing for the first time in the Monte Rosa Ski area. I figured I would do a little write-up about the area. The Monte Rosa Ski resort is spread over three major valleys: the Valle di Gressoney (the central valley), the Valle d’Ayas (the West-most valley) and Valsesia (the East-most valley). In total there is about 180km of piste, but (especially on the Valsesia side) with a lot more off-piste areas to explore.
The major villages from which you can enter the resort are Gressoney La Trinité and Staffal in the Valle di Gressoney, Champoluc in the Valle d’Ayas and Alagna in Valsesia.
There is about 180km of pistes here and all of them are well-prepared. The lifts are modern (as modern as it can get IMO) and some of them have recently been renovated. There is some blue here and there, although not abundant, a lot of red and few black pistes. 
Especially the ride down from Passo Salati to the village of Alagna is a challenging one. Plenty of pistes will take you through bits of forests and have plenty of breathtaking views. Generally speaking, the weather in this part of Europe is great with a great amount of sun. Snow conditions are generally good, although Austria and Switzerland will give you better conditions generally speaking (this was definitely not the case this season, as the conditions are great at the moment).
The off-piste areas in especially the Alagna area are very good. It’s not without reason Alagna is called the free-ride paradise. There’s also some very good possibilities to do some off-the-beaten path skiing in the region. The picture above for example shows the Bec di Nona pass (on the right you can see skiing tracks coming down). This interestingly enough passes right by my house in the area. On Hotel Jolanda Sport“>Gulliver.it you can find some reports from people that have been doing off-piste ‘expeditions’ in the region. Let me know if you’re planning anything in that region for off-piste alpinismo skiing. I’m always interested to hear your experiences and if I’m in the neighborhood, I might even join .
Below you can find a snippet of the map of the region, linked to the map provided by the official Monte Rosa website.
Up-to-date information on the prices for a skipass can be found on the official site for the Monte Rosa Ski resort. At the time of writing (season 2008/9) a one-day skipass will set you back €36,=. Three days will cost €102,= and 7 days €211,= (all in the peak of the season). This will give you access to all the lifts in the main areas, as well as in the smaller areas such as Gressoney St. Jean and Antagnod.
There are ski schools in each of the three main villages (Staffal, Alagna and Champoluc). As far as I know, all have English speaking instructors, although you have to ask for them. There are baby-pistes and also enough blue to get you going. There are also some baby-parks in the region (Staffal, Gressoney La Trinite) to keep the kids occupied.
I don’t have a lot to say about accommodation in the region, as I’m staying in my own house in the region (half an hour driving from Staffal). I’ve heard good stories about Hotel Jolanda Sport; they definitely have good food! Another interesting option would be to stay at the Rifugio Guglielmina, (one of) the highest permanently occupied hotels in Europe. I don’t have a clue about prices, the website also doesn’t give a lot of information. I might try to found out more later on when I go there in a week again. Another hotel I heard good stories about is Ellex in Staffal, right next to the lifts that go up to both the Champoluc and Alagna area.
Food on the pistes generally is very good, as you can expect from an Italian ski resort. Lunch times can get a bit busy at some of the rifugios, but generally very much worth the wait. Not a lot of places as you will find in Austria, with music pounding all the time, but relaxing places instead.
Map for Monte Rosa Ski
Restaurants in Valle d’Ayas
Restaurants in Valle di Gressoney
Restaurants in the main valley (Valle d’Aosta)
As some reviewers on Snow-Forecast.com also comment, there is not a lot of entertainment going on in Gressoney La Trinité during the night. Apparently, Champoluc and Alagna have a bit more to offer, but if you’re going to for some big apres-ski, obviously Austria (Anton, Ischl) are your better bets.
By car from West or North-West Europe, getting the to Valle d’Ayas or Valle di Gressoney is a matter of taking the Swiss route, through the Great St. Bernard tunnel, linking Switzerland with Italy or the Mont Blanc tunnel linking France with Italy. Valsesia can best be reached I think via the St. Gottard tunnel, linking Italy with Switzerland, but then a bit further East.
For Gressoney and Champoluc, flying in is best done through Torino airport (TRN), which is about an hour drive from Gressoney La Trinité for example. Milano Malpensa (MXP) is a good alternative for those two places and probably the best option for Valsesia. Cars are generally not very expensive to hire. A small car for a week will set you back about €200,= to €250,= (snowchains are about €50,=).
As Christmas approached, I figured I should end the year in style and spend the last days of the year abroad. I could have lazily spend them at home, but hey, what’s better than looking at the weather predictions, finding out there’s going to be a whole pile of snow coming in the Alps and booking a last-minute ticket to Milano. At first, it looked like I would be able to talk a few friends of mine into joining, but the ended up going nowhere, so on the 28th of December, having slept for only 3 hours after a nice party in my hometown Utrecht, I woke up at 6 and took a 9am flight to Italy.
For those of you following me, last year, we bought a little place in the Northern parts of Italy, close to the French and Swiss borders. We did lots of renovations in the last 8 to 10 months, such as installing electricity, water a bathroom and giving the entire ground floor a paint job. This means I didn’t have to arrange place to stay and only had to book a flight and rent a car.
There’s one slight little issue with the house though. The last 2.2 kilometres (1.4 miles) of the road to the house are not publicly accessible but owned by a consortium instead. This has two major consequences and one minor one. The minor one is that the road is not maintained as well as a public road. This is not much of an issue. Granted, the road gets a little bumpy in places, but nothing your average little Fiat 500 rental car won’t survive. The first major consequence is that the road is not cleared of snow. This is a problem of course.
The house is situated at 1150 meters above sea-level and it’s obviously not unlikely that there’s snow at such an altitude. Problem number two is that there’s no communal water system and that the privately owned water system is shut down in winter times to not allow it to freeze up. In other words: getting to the house by car is (if there’s snow) not an option (unless I’d have a big Range Rover or anything similar, which I don’t) and second, once at the house (by foot or in the best-case scenario by car), there’s no water.
Fortunately, I had anticipated the second problem. The last time I was there (in September) I hauled about 50 liters of water to the house (mineral water that is), so any cooking- and washing-wise I’d be okay. One of the basements is below the ground so the water would not freeze up (I hoped). The first problem (the road) is obviously a bit more fundamental, so I figured, let’s reserve a hotel for the first night and see what happens.
I arrived on the 28th and immediately drove up to the house (or at least, I tried to). The snow was worse than expected (good for skiing though) and the private road was indeed not accessible, even not with snow chains. So I walked up to see how far that would get me. All together it took me about 30 minutes of plowing through half a meter snow. The electricity worked, the heating system (electricity-based) also worked, so that meant that if I was willing to walk half an hour up and down every day, I’d be okay.
I decided to make it an easy first day and take the hotel owners up on the reservation that I made. The remaining days I did stay at the house. An impression of what went on during those few days:
Heating-wise, I didn’t manage to get the living room warmer than 15˚C with all three heaters turned on. During the night, I only had one of the heaters turned on (the one that doesn’t make a lot of sound) which resulted in a temperature in the early morning of 7˚C. While out for New Year’s (I stayed at a friend’s place in a different valley that day) I turned off all the heaters and when I came back it was 2˚C in the house. The kitchen was left unheated and it didn’t get above freezing there (neither below I think).
Water-wise, I could only flush the toilet by taking a bucket of water from a spring 200 hundred meters up the hill. Now this is already a lot better than last year, when we had no toilet at all, but when you have been living in luxurious hotels the six weeks before that with room service, a freshly made bed and bathrobes, this is obviously a big difference. Also, I couldn’t take a shower, but that’s where the pool came in. Nope, there’s no pool in the backyard… There’s a pool on the way to the skiing resort including a Russian bath and all that… So that’s where I had my evening routine every day: first swimming, then a session in the Russian bath and after having showered, back home. Also, I learnt that melting snow to survive does not help you a lot. It’s a lot of work for a very tiny bit of water. I can definitely understand now that surviving in an ice age is pretty much impossible…
Exercise-wise, I had to walk up the hill for about 30 to 40 minutes (depending on how many groceries I brought) every evening and 20 minutes (taking shortcuts by walking straight down instead of following the hairpins in the road) down every morning. In addition to that, I skied for the first three days and for the second three days I took some snowboarding lessons. I had never boarded before and all my kiteboarding friends called me a loser when I told them I only skied. So I also took the occasional beating while learning to go down a hill dude-wise…
Last but not least, I celebrated New Year’s in Valle d’Ayas. Normally, driving up to Valle d’Ayas (and specifically the place friends of our own there) takes a lot of time (Valle d’Ayas is really long), but this time I could take a shorter route, which was quite cool. By taking up the ski lift and skiing down, it only took me 45 minutes to get to Champoluc instead of the normal 2 hours. Unfortunately I had to wait for the Navetta (the shuttle bus that takes you from various places to the skiing resort and back) and this took another 45 minutes. But well, skiing there is obviously way cooler than driving there (hiking might even be a little bit more cool, but I’ll leave that to coming summer or so).
I took plenty of pictures, some of which you’ll be able to find in this blog post. Others can be found in the web album for this trip.
p.s. when I look at these pictures, I realize I really should clean my camera, there are dust honkers all over the place 
It’s been a little while since I posted an update on Casa Pura, our humble house in the North of Italy. I just returned from a very short trip last weekend and the renovation is going quite well I can say.
Let me start where I left you: beginning of March. As I said back then, we were in the process of gathering proposal from various suppliers, such as the elettricista, the tubista and the muratore. The main goal for 2007 was to install the electricity, water heater and the tubing / piping for the water (both hot and cold). If possible, we also wanted to make a passage from the first floor to the second floor (at the moment, the only way of getting to the second floor is from the outside–which is a little cumbersome in Winter).
As I said earlier on, we prepared detailed documentation of where we wanted the electricity installed. Finally, after having visited Italy in March and after having communicated a lot by email and phone, we had an appointment late April to start installing the electricity. Although we had documented everything very thoroughly, it is vital to be present when the elettricista first arrives. The documentation gives some guidance, but in no way gives him enough of an idea about the specifics of what you want. So, be there when the guy starts his work.
In two days, the elettricista did all the milling in the walls and got the electricity working. Not with all the fuse boxes and sockets and all, but the basic stuff was working. After having done this, the muratore would have to come and fix the tubing in the walls. Then, the elettricista would finish his job, by installing all the sockets, the fuse box, et cetera.
So far so good. Beginning of May and we had the first part of the renovation behind us: electricity is installed.
Then the second part started: looking for a tubista and a muratore. During the week in which the elettricista finished his work, a tubista and a muratore were also contacted to look at what needed to be done. The tubista was okay with all our requirements and we set an approximate date for the works to start. The muratore also came to look at the house, but wasn’t particularly interested from the looks of it. While the geometra was inspecting the house with his, he was smoking cigarettes outside. Well, maybe that’s how things work here in Italy we thought.
Anyway, about 6 weeks later we had planned two weeks on site and that’s when we had also set up appointments with the tubista (or idraulico as others seem to call it), muratore and elettricista. We had planned for the muratore to first arrive. He would have to fix the tubing of the elettricista after which the sockets and the fuse box could be installed. Next, the tubista could come to install the tubing for the water and gas.
We arrived in a Saturday and had expected the muratore to arrive first thing Monday morning. Before that happened we first decided to tear down the wall separating the two small ‘living rooms’. The prior owners used one of those rooms as a bedroom and the other as a living room I think, but we wanted to get more light in there and start using it as a living room. Tearing the wall down was done in about half an hour, but taking the rubble down to the garage (we’re storing a lot of rubble there we gather all over the place) took us about 6 hours. The end result was good though.
Fast forward to Monday morning. Apparently, the muratore had figured since we were going to be there for two weeks anyway, he might as well just come in the second week. In other words, he didn’t show up! Hmmm, this screwed up our entire game plan. Second problem: the tubista that was originally planned for didn’t want to come anymore. He had a different gig somewhere else. Nice going!
Luckily enough, the geometra was able to arrange a new tubista on the spot and on Tuesday the guys started to install the tubing. This was done in two-and-a-half days and that was all for the first week
Then the quest for a new muratore began. I dropped by the geometra who was not able to find a new muratore at first. I dropped by the local flower shop (the owners of the flower shop own the house next to us) and asked for a muratore. They knew some, but all of them were busy. I then dropped by at the hotel in which we stayed for a while before the house was ours. They also knew a few guys that could get the job done, but all were occupied. Just as I was thinking I was out of options, a guest in the hotel overheard our conversation and chimed in. He told he knew a muratore. He gave me the phone number and off I went, back to the geometra. Long story short: Monday morning (after first having promised Saturday, but one of his guys was ill) he turned up with four guys and in little under 8 hours, he had fixed everything. Phew…
The next two days were great. It was the connecting the dots: doing a little painting, having the elettricista install the sockets and the fuse box, having the tubista do the hot water. Almost half a year of preparation resulted in a massive change in the looks of the house (internally at least) within a few days.
Other things we did in the two weeks we were there: a lot painting (not just inside, also outside), cleaning the garden, buying tiles for the bathroom, buying a toilet, buying a natural stone kitchen surface.
The next major challenge was the bathroom. We had originally planned for my dad to drop by in the two weeks we were there to do the tiling. But due to a family emergency, he wasn’t able to come. My mom and dad however did want to go to the house, so they planned for two weeks of holiday in July. Right after the party for my 30th birthday they left and took all the stuff with them that was needed to do the tiling. In two weeks, they took care of installing the tiling, cleaning a lot more and fixing three little supporting walls on which the kitchen surface would have to be fixed.
Together with my dad I fixed the kitchen surface this month in a short weekend trip to Italy and also did some more painting. Unfortunately my dad wasn’t able to get the tiling on the bathroom floor done, but this is not such a big deal as for now, we take a shower outside. We’ll probably fix the tiling on the bathroom floor somewhere later this summer.
All and all, I think the renovation is going quite well. We’re still on schedule to getting most of it done and over with by the end of the summer, or at least, before the winter season. One thing we won’t be able to get done is the inside stairs. Well, it’s okay to have this wait until next summer or so.
Money-wise we’re going slightly over budget, but it’s not more than 5% or so, so we budgeted things quite realistically. I’ll try to post a budget overview later on.
Some lessons learnt:
p.s. note that the old pictures have been taken with my Pentax K10-D and the new pictures with my iPhone, so the old ones are of way better quality than the new ones. I think the contrast with the old situation is even more than the pictures show.
p.p.s. A big thanks to my dad and mum: they’ve been great in helping out so far!!!
It’s been a while… I’ve been enjoying some fine holidays… Things all started when we finally got word about the elettricista being able to start installing electricity in our house in Italy around Queensday. Normally, I’d be at home for Queensday, ‘coz my house is located right in the district where the best (outdoor) partying is going on. Normally, I’d have arranged a few turntables, invited a few DJ friends of mine and started a party, but not this year.
Saturday, I was off to Milan. That night, we had a nice party in Plastic in Milan. Sunday, I traveled to Perloz, to start working with the electrician on Monday on the electricity. Things went quite smooth, as I had a friend over, speaking fluently Italian. This helped a lot of course.
This picture by the way shows the spring where we get our water from. The little metal tube you can see gets us water and the little whole next to it, has some shutters in it. From the spring, currently, there is no tubing to the house (well, partially, but it’s not connected). Later in the week, we also met with the tubista (plumber) to start investigating how to install hot water and to fix the tubing issue.
Margriet, this friend of mine, was invited by the Dutch consulate to join for a pre-Queensday party on Tuesday night. So Tuesday afternoon, we drove back to Milan to attend to this (quite formal) event. That was nice too… Thursday morning I drove back to Perloz, to meet with Lars and Pyke, for two more days of working at the house.
When I was there earlier in the week, the weather wasn’t very nice. This time round, it was 22 degrees, even at an altitude of 1150m (that’s where the house is). The cherry blossom was very nice…
Friday, I flew back to Amsterdam, to finish off the day at Margriet and Giorgio’s, where we had a few bottles of wine and some nasty Sicilian drink called Mirto or Nirto (I can’t exactly remember).
Saturday, I left for Greece. Only having left the airport 10 hours before, I was back at about noon, to join my sister-in-law, brother and two kids to fly to Lefkada. That’s where we met up with up with my parents, other brother and family and two friends of mine. We had rented two boats to take out on the Ionian Sea for a week.
The week flew by, unfortunately. We took the boats to Ithaka, Meganisi, Kalamos and lots of deserted nice litle bays, where the anchor settled the boat and allowed us to swim and relax. At one point, my dad (one ‘the other boat’) threw the anchor out in a place where it was very rocky. Now, if you know anything about anchoring, you shouldn’t do it in rocky places. The anchor got stuck and I had to release it at a depth of about 10 meters… Worked out fortunately, but because I forgot to clear, my ears hurt a bit after that… Traveling back, I had my little niece take my suitcase, which got me some nice pictures
Now I’m back home. I came back Saturday night, after which I had a BBQ at Margriet and Giorgio’s. Yesterday I had another BBQ at Martijn and Nicole’s so I’ve even seen some of my friends again. Tonight I’m off to Denmark for two days and today is all about preparing for that gig… Too bad, because I already got two phone calls from friends inviting me for a kite surfing session…
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:
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.
In previous posts, I document the process a little bit that we went through to buy a house in Valle d’Aosta, Italy. Last November, the moment was finally there: we got the keys for the house and drove up the mountain for the first time as owners of a little place there.
It was COLD! We knew it was cold, so we had taken the necessary clothing fortunately. We didn’t know however that is was going to be that cold. When we drove up the mountain, we saw the temperature dropping from +1 or so, to -5 or -6, and then it was only 5pm and it was still light out.
The first night, we lid a fire in the fireplace and drank a couple of glasses of wine to keep ourselves warm and we went to bed early (we had a bus with us filled with furniture, such as beds, blankets, et cetera). The next morning was terrible! We didn’t have running water (we could have ask some locals to turn it on for us, but we didn’t bother doing that for this weekend), we didn’t have electricity and the only source of heating was the fire. It was was too bad though that the fireplace didn’t work very well, causing the smoke to sometimes not go up the chimney, but into the kitchen . Anyway, we started working (cleaning, etc) and quickly got a little warmer.
Then, the most beautiful thing happened. The sun had reached enough height to reach our little plot of land and all of a sudden, the temperature started to climb very quickly (or at least, so it felt). So we had lunch in the sun, opened a bottle of good red wine and toasted on our newest acquisition.
Although it was cold, the remaining two days were very nice. We cleaned the whole house, we gathered a big list of things to do, spoke with a geometra (guy that can help us get local things done such as reconstructions and renovations) and more.
Hopefully (if the weather is okay), I’ll be going there again near the end of December, to speak more with the geometra and to start planning for the renovations.
I’ll keep you up-to-date. For more pictures by the way, look at the previous post on Casa Pura Vida.
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