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Originally Posted by valerie
Hi John
We live in North Wales and can't wait to move out but alas we have to wait for the housing market to improve. We spent our summer holiday camping in Vasto as the house had no water and we could not do much without it. Paola has advised me that she will be meeting up with the builder to receive his estimate next week. We need to have the foundations sorted and some repairs to the roof. We have also meet with the electrician and await his estimate. We are keen to have solar power.
I am not quite sure when we will be going over but once the builder has done his job we will likely pop over just to inspect the work - a long weekend.
Are you flying over in October? We drove down as we wanted to take some things to the house. It was a long way but we enjoyed it stopping in France and Imola.
How much do you need to do on your property? And do you have much land. It is possible that Paola showed you our property as we mentioned that she had showed someone. I have great plans for the land although my husband is not much of a gardener.
Hope tohear from you soon.
Best regards
Valerie
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Dear Valerie,
How good to hear from you again.
The house is very old (former Baron's home - altho' not grand or pretentious however). The house is known locally as Casa Piccione (house of the pigeons) but in a recent visit to the property a fox fell from the chimney so the house will be called Casa Volpe! What attracted me and my wife Maureen to the house were the vaulted ceilings thorughout, frescos on the top floor, most of which we'll lose thro' water ingress but which we hope to restore, the cotto floors and the impressive stonework. The cellar in particular we thought was potentially outstanding - you can probably sense how much we fell in love with the place! The house needs full renovation which we hope to largely complete within 1 year and, with Paola's help, I'm cautiously optimistic - altho' my good friend Mike assures me that it is more likely to take 3 or 4 (Mike has recently completed renovations of his house near Perugia). We have agreed circa 2300 sq m (1/2 acre) but will hopefully be able to negotiate with the landowner to buy another similar amount. The land is quite stark however and will need work to create an outdoor living space eg trees, patio area, pool? etc but I am not a great gardener either! We will be meeting Geometra etc for the first time in October, so things should start to heat up around then. All being well, we hope to be in a position one year from now to be transporting stuff to Italy.
Kindest regards and I hope that you will be in touch again soon.
John