Crikey. I got up this morning to do work on the new www.howtoitaly.com website but didn’t because my inbox was full of emails from people all over who have evidently heard about the odtrc saga – though maybe that’s not so surprising given its dominating every conversation I have – and who have offered to help in whatever they can.
So, in answer to some of them: Paul – thanks for the tea and sympathy but today, being bright and sunny, I’m actually finding the whole scenario fairly amusing and am now sufficiently over it to be able to go to the bar to relax with a frothy cappuccino which has just the right amount of coffee to give you a much needed caffeine injection and just the right amount of froth to leave you with one of those milky moustauches. That, and popping down to the beach and paddling in the sea – oh you can take the girl out of England but you can’t take England out of the girl.
Tia – thank you, thank you, thank you. Our builder really is a lovely man and he’s managed to save the pretty, traditional Sardinian fireplace that was in the upstairs bedroom and also got a huge digger in (well, we parted with the Euros, obviously) to excavate the old lemon trees that were in the front garden. He’s put the lemon tree on his terreno (allotment) and is also looking after the fireplace until its ready to be put into our new house when the odtrc saga is over. But being able to bat some ideas about via internet would be wonderful. I’m not worried about the outside of the house, I know that that will look fabulous. It’s more how to utilise the space that we have inside.
Shirley – I envisaged myself as a gust of wind, whirring through the dream home last night. Unfortunately, it was galeforce winds at the time, so I limited myself to being just a gentle breeze. Great idea, though not sure I can convince rational, serious, accountant M to do the same, unless I first ply him with a bottle or several of the best wine from the fantastic Capichera vinyard down the road.
The before photos are on my other PC so I’ll upload those tomorrow.
4 responses so far ↓
bootsnall // January 16, 2007 at 8:03 pm
Oh, I hope your current state of amusement at the situation continues! Just a thought – when my mother was designing her house (she’s not an architect or house designer, either), she made scale models of the thing and most of the rooms – and even a scale model of herself! That way she could “see” it in terms of how she’d fit in it. I’ll be following your progress!
Jessica
Emma Bird // January 19, 2007 at 5:58 pm
Thanks, Jessica. That’s a fabulous idea. However, I did make a model giraffe at school once and unfortunately, one side turned out severely anorexic and the other severely overweight. I hope that doesn’t happen to me!
I will get working on it this weekend and post the pics here.
Tia // January 20, 2007 at 6:20 pm
Hope things are looking better this week. do you have the general floor plan with at least outer walls measurments yet? If you do you can tell me what your preferance of rooms are how many floors, and size priorty and we can get started with ideas. If you need help basic outer dimensions we can help there also. I will be following you progress. Email anytime you like … tia
Emma Bird // January 23, 2007 at 9:29 am
Tia, we are still waiting to hear whether or not we can add a small extension on the ground floor. If not, the outder wall measurements will be 12m by 6m. We can use all of this on the ground floor and the first floor. If we go into the attic, we should be able to get away with a bedroom and bathroom and make the rest a covered veranda. The basement can also be 12m by 6m as this does not affect our volumetria (or max cubic metres)