‘time does not pass, it continues…’
The Big House
Years of darkness peel away and the beams in our rustic Italian kitchen are restored to their original warmth.
The house has taken on an entirely different feel as if it took a big sigh now that all those layers have been removed.
The ceilings seem higher and the rooms just that bit bigger, an optical illusion certainly but maybe it’s due to that big breath the house took, the shaking off of the past.
A fine dust has now settled on every surface in our rustic Italian kitchen, both up and down stairs, and will be returned to become part of the floor in the living room. We are using it to level the surface before we lay the slabs of rock flooring.
Our friend Claudio spent the day sandblasting the two rooms. He looked like the guys from Ghost Busters.
I never expected the end result to look this good and I am now mid way through coating the raw timber with a clear finish. We kept all the huge original nails used by generations past to hang various items.
It looks like a beach in our kitchen and all we need now are the deckchairs and sun umbrellas.
The sand is at least an inch thick in most places downstairs and we are waiting on a vacuum to arrive so we can clear out the fine dust.
Sam and I have been busy taking out the door and widening the opening between the rooms, and also taking out all the nails in the lounge room walls that held up the hideous plastic paneling. Luckily the render will cover any gouges and we don’t need to take care of the floor as it is now sand.
Everyone has been in to see the results of Claudio’s work in our rustic Italian kitchen, including two Aussies we met by accident yesterday as they were trying to decide if it was okay to walk through the borgata.
How wonderful it was to hear someone say ‘Mate’ and we ended up taking them both for the grand tour of the house and the village. They just happened to come at the perfect time to see the house in total disarray, anything now will be a big improvement.
This is the wonderful part about our house in Italy, it is a living breathing part of the mountains. It has it’s own history which we know will continue long after we are gone. I like that feeling of being a care taker, of leaving the house stronger than before, of giving something back to this valley and it’s people.
