Italian Adventures – We Bought a House in Italy!

Summer 2022

When we viewed the house in June 2021, the kitchen was in the southeast corner of the house, where the traditional Umbrian fireplace lived. It’s beautiful and a showpiece. I asked the Geometra if we could make this room the dining room and open the shared wall between the kitchen and the living room. We would then make the current pantry / dining room the new kitchen (in the northeast corner of the house).

After reviewing the code, electrical and gas, we got permission to flip the kitchen and dining room. The Comune also gave us permesso to open the wall but within very specific parameters, given it’s a load-bearing wall. YAY!!!

The first priorities were to update the former dining room to make it ready for the new kitchen to be installed, and updating the bathrooms. Once those projects were finished, Marco & Stefano would open the wall and create the arch.

If you watched the movie Under the Tuscan Sun, there is a scene where they are opening a wall and giant boulders come tumbling down. In the movie scene, it’s a little dumb because they start at the bottom, so naturally the upper portion will become unstable and begin to fall. Fortunately, my builders were smarter, but it was fascinating to see the pile of rocks that came from the wall!

The living room (il soggiorno) (below) before the wall was opened

And after….(ignore the furniture placement, this was temporary while we were cleaning up). The line of sight to the beautiful fireplace now from the living room is amazing. The opening now also brings in so much extra light into both rooms. BEST decision ever!

My pile of rocks…I asked Adriano to incorporate as many of these into the garden design as possible so that I could retain some history of the house. He created retaining walls in several areas and they are perfect. However, it barely made a dent in this pile. It would live in this corner of the house for more than a year, but alas, I finally got someone to haul them away.

Now the dilemma was how to fill the gap in the old terracotta floor where the wall once was. We would never be able to match the terracotta given their age, so Marco suggested that we create a mosaic design incorporating the colors in the marble, stone and floor in the new dining room. Brilliant!

Marco shared a picture of a mosaic design and then I started searching on Pinterest for ideas. I really wanted to capture the colors of the room but also the spirit of the Umbrian region. What spoke to me was olives and vines. I printed off a bunch of pictures, cut them up and made a piecemeal design from which to draw inspiration.

A local craftsman began creating the flooring tile and once complete, he came and installed it. The end result is stunning! It looks like it has always been there and another way we have made this house our home.

Spring 2023…The result…