Umbrian Rubble

Renovating a medieval town house in Umbria. By fax and by blind faith. In my spare time, I've renovated my share of buildings. Maybe more than my share. But the real cry for help was probably the time I went for the Italian Momma Of All Renovation Projects: a big, scary, abandoned house - way over on the other side of the ocean. A house that wobbled up and over neighbouring apartments, on a steep and narrow street, in a tiny town in Umbria.

Italy? Umbria? What? Renovating in Maine wasn't hard enough? Even in the US, I don't claim to understand more than 70% of what contractors are saying. Over there, sure they speak Contractor, but they do it in Italian. Factor in Degree of Difficulty or Style Points for not being fluent in either of those languages, and you begin to see the thrill that this kind of house could have for the truly addicted. This was it. A reno junkie's dream house.

Exactly how abandoned are we talking about?

Abandoned enough. Abandoned before heat and electricity were considered chic. And one other thing this place didn't come with - bathrooms! So, you tell me . . . if this house was built hundreds of years ago where did people "go to the bathroom" all those years? No, wait, don't tell me.

Although the last human tenants had checked out generations ago, (leaving dishes in the sink and mattresses on the beds, I might add) we still had squatters of the furred and feathered variety. This was the flop house of the animal kingdom. Feral cats got in on the ground floor here. And stayed to raise families. Pigeons did the same on the upper floors. Pigeon nests, pigeon eggs, pigeon poop, baby pigeons, teenage pigeons, old retired pigeons, dead pigeons. We had the whole pigeon life cycle spread out in front of us. The first time we tip-toed up to the dark, spooky top floor, one of the pigeons whirred right by us and out a window taking with it one of the few remaining panes of glass in the building. In a couple of heartbeats we could hear it hit the street 5 floors below us.

The good news was that the view out that window went on forever - taking in an Umbrian lake and half of Tuscany. Breezing by the facts that 1) the stairs were on the outside of the building, 2) that some of the floors had caved in and that 3) you could see daylight through the walls in places that weren't even windows, somehow, in spite of all that, we were being pulled to the house like little pieces of metal to a magnet.

Blame it on Kiki

But we weren't even looking for a house. Honest. We're not talking about implus purchases like picking up the National Enquirer in the check out lane over to at Shop'n Save. This was exactly like going to Italy on vacation and coming home with an actual house. How could we let this happen? What would have been so wrong with of one of those nifty ashtrays shaped like the Coliseum?

I've found that in renovating, as in real life, everyone needs a motto. Ours is "when in doubt, blame someone else." Actually, we have two family mottos. We found the second one is a Swedish home magazine and it is "Livet i full fart". It means sort of life in the fast lane or look out coming through. We just like how it looks on the family crest. Anyway we like to blame Kiki for the whole house-in-Italy-thing. She came to visit us while we were minding our own business on a long anniversary trip in Umbria. She had never set foot in Italy in her life, yet six days later she was pestering us about this falling down house with its tattered green "Si Vende" sign thumbtacked to a window. She made me call for an appointment by saying the words I'll never forget; "I'd pay for part of it." That must just prove how very weak we are because that is all it took. We quickly guessed the house was big enough to be made into two apartments and I made the call.

That's when we met Giancarlo. He became our realtor first and then our contractor. Word to the wise, if you don't truly love your local Italian realtor, don't buy that fixer-upper from them - because they are about to become your contractor and new best friend for the next several years. That's just how it is often done in Italy today. Check out some houses that the contractor/realtor has renovated and think about it overnight. We know now that we had beginner's luck big time when we got Giancarlo. Although it may not have seemed like a magic moment when we first met him in the pounding rain, typically late - dachshund on one arm and a pretty, blond, Polish wife on the other. Enigmatic. Mysterious. Taciturn. Miracle Worker. Great friend. All of the above. All I know is that he has saved us from ourselves a hundred times. And our adopted town loves him (we, of course, try to bask in the reflected glory) because he took an embarrassing pile of rubble in the center of town and turned it into something of a Kodak moment.

A banker in his life before contracting, Giancarlo knew how to run numbers and get paperwork taken care of without any of us taking up the Italian National Pastime of standing in line. Over the course of renovating 80 or so houses for foreigners like us, he had developed a kind of sixth sense about what they wanted. And, totally smashing the stereotypical image of continental casual, he and his crews kept their noses so close to the grindstone that people in town often took us aside to intimate they weren't so sure these guys really were fellow Italians. Like the scene in Butch Cassidy, they kept saying, "who ARE these guys?"

Building a house by blind faith and fax machines?

At this point, we've used the house to rationalize many "inspection" trips to Italy. "Sorry, gotta go now. Got to go check on the house. Again!" And, it was true, I've done dining table sized models of the house and dozens, if not zillions, of annoying diagrams for Giancarlo to follow, but he still had to make a lot of day to day decisions on the ground, by himself. For other decisions we went back and forth on our trusty fax machines. A bit of a Luddite, but with a photographic memory, he has just been dragged kicking and screaming into the world of computers and email. But, he has no fear of faxing and I have a shelf full of the big fat three ring binders stuffed with faxes to prove it.

It certainly helped that Giancarlo spoke English. And, that I spoke enough Italian to have meaningful discussions (well, they seemed meaningful to me) with the plumbers, electricians, town engineers and such. Most days I'd have to say the whole arrangement worked like a charm. But, there have been days I would have given anything to have been there in person. Like the day they cut down the massive, picture-perfect fig tree at the end of the garden and sent me a stack of photos of them stacking the wood up in a pile. I guess figs are like tough Italian weeds because it has all grown back but what the heck was that about?

The waiting game

They say Rome wasn't built in a day. It turns out houses in Umbria aren't, either. We've determined that patience (and/or being easily amused by the smallest sign of progress) helps a lot in any renovation. Maybe even more so when you are renovating a five story house with two foot thick stone walls. In a town with curving tunneled two foot wide streets. In our particular case, it took us three years from the time we were gingerly picking our way through the pigeon guano till one fine April when we spent our first night in the house.

Here's how we passed the time: For the first year, we sent fax after fax filled with inane questions, complicated diagrams and proposals leading up to the day we bought the house. The second year was pretty quiet. We spent it watching the lira/dollar ratio improve almost daily and wishing we had bought the house "now" instead of "then." During that time Giancarlo was getting the required metric ton of Italian permits and waiting for his favourite builders and masons to become available. OK so, no progress, but no bills either. It gave our checking account a chance to quit making that gasping noise. At least for one year. Then the renovation started. How much was the renovation? They say a typical, top to bottom, Italian renovation will often cost one or two times as much as the initial price of the house. Depending on how far gone it was to start with. Ours was pretty far. So, house price, times three, equals liveable house price. If that thought doesn't snap some of the stars out of your eyes when you are gazing at those listings in a realtor's window - nothing will.

The last year was the only year there was really any heavy lifting. But once the big, honking crane was planted firmly in the garden, it became a veritable beehive of activity - with three or four people, pretty much all day everyday, for the whole year. To our way of thinking this wasn't too bad considering, well, this was Italy. And considering how much work the house needed. When we started, we didn't have anything - now, we're living like people. We've got dishwashers, and showers with hot water pouring out of them, ISDN lines in the walls and a satellite on the roof. Heck, we've even got a roof.

All’s well that ends well

The money (at the time we would say, "it's only lira"). The waiting. The dirt. They're all old news because it's over. We're in. We've slept there, and we've even eaten there.

For our historic first, non-picnic, meal in the house, we asked our neighbour Nico if we could borrow a pan. He is an architect and an artist, and unfortunately for him, we knew where he was at the time. It was almost 8 o'clock at night, and he was outside sketching a plan for the garden. Typical Umbrian, he loaned us an armload of pans with himself on the business end of them, and in half an hour he was cooking tagliatelli and making a sauce of porcini mushrooms that he had personally hunted up in the nearby woods. He brought fresh herbs, salt, everything. We had a stove and some wine, that was about it.

Sitting at the table, several hours and several glasses of red wine later, Nico looked out an open window at the lake and the lights around it and then looked back around and said "You know, some friends from Milan asked me to go through this house when it was for sale and tell them what I thought of it." Pausing a second for dramatic effect, he said, "I told them 'Forget about it,' I said it was impossible." Raising his glass, he said, "I can't believe we are sitting here having this fine evening."

Neither can I, Nico, neither can I.

About the Author: Stew Vreeland is the artistic director of an advertising agency. Once a client of Umbria Rentals, he liked the area so much be bought a place of his own. He spends his time between Maine and Panicale, and runs the real estate website See You in Italy.