Moving to Italy: Remodeling

The turn into the driveway is too sharp for most cars coming up the hill. Impossible for trucks. 

When my in-laws decided to re-tile the downstairs living room and kitchen, George helped them move all of their kitchen supplies and main room furniture into the garage. Next he took a sledge-hammer to knock down a doorway-sized hole from their bedroom into the garage so it could be used for a temporary living space. Eventually they wanted to create a small bathroom in the garage so that his parents wouldn’t have to keep climbing the stairs to use ours. The arthritis in his father's knees made the journey up the steep stone stairs quite painful.

But first the kitchen badly needed to be updated. Many of the floor tiles were broken, the sink was old, and the cabinets small and decrepit. Having long ago given up on it as a practical kitchen, on their vacations at Gabi they had been living upstairs, using what was now our kitchen where the floor tiles were still in pretty good shape and the walls not quite so aged.

They would save money if George did the demolition of their kitchen, so after creating the new doorway to the garage and installing a door, he took the sledge-hammer and slammed it against the kitchen and living room floors to break up the old tiles. He then hauled out the resulting wheelbarrows full of rubble. This took several days. 

Two days after he finished, the tile setters slowly drove their truck up the steep road, went on up past Gabi to turn around in a wide spot, then came back down so it could easily enter our driveway. They drove past Zio Remo’s house and pulled around our house to the front door. With the boys excitedly watching downstairs with their grandparents, and the twins running back and forth chattering on the balcony with me, the men unloaded and stacked a mound of floor tiles in the middle of the courtyard. The more delicate wall tiles were stacked inside the house. Marino made sure they left enough room in the courtyard so that Zio Silvio could get by with his tractor while the work progressed over the next two weeks. 

James cycling in front of the downstairs floor tiles

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 By the end of July, the kitchen floors and one wall had been tiled, and the workmen moved on to the living room and hallway. My in-laws bought a new stove, and chose a new set of kitchen cabinets, and over their protests, we moved the small refrigerator downstairs. The kitchen looked brand new, and I no longer felt guilty for having the best set-up while my in-laws struggled. And a few weeks later, when her sister, Zia Amalia, came to visit, I’m sure Rina was proud to show off her new living arrangements.

Taken many years later, but everything is the same: Floor and wall tiles, cabinets, refrigerator and stove.