Casal dei Fichi - Progress - December 04
Luxurious holiday apartments in Italy's stunning Marche.
If you are reading this it means that at least we have got the web site online!! In fact getting this site up is taking a lot longer than planned so since the blurb below we have been back, in the glorious sunshine we picked our olives and took them to the local press and have now our own olive oil. Rosario has began working on the site and we now have a crane erected. Here are some photos to prove it!
Much more important though is that finally we have planning permission to start work. What we understood to be little more than a formality became a protracted and complex activity with repeated submissions to the local planning officer. Work couldn't start without approval of the entire project and each week Michele, our architect, assured us that the revised plans would be submitted for approval "lunedi prossimo" - next Monday. At our meeting last week he explained that it was now simply a matter of agreeing the wall positions in the attic so that the floorspace to window ratio was acceptable. Apparently the planning official for Francavilla d'Ete is a Sicilian, a people known for their thoroughness and he was not prepared to accept the acres of velux windows that we are installing as real windows! Still Michele, slightly embarrassed, promised that he was confident that next Monday the final approval would be forthcoming.
We got in on Tuesday (16 Nov). Work will start dopo domani, ("after tomorrow") in the heirarchy of Italian soons that sits somewhere below subito (immediately) but we are ever hopeful. Our plan of moving out on New Years Day (2005) needs revision but it will not slip to New Years Day (2006). In the mean time Rosario has built the road - not much to look at but before it was done it was impossible to get a car more than a few metres down the track, now we can get the crane, lorries and most importantly builders to the house.
Our next trip is early in December, we hope to catch the olive press in the next village before it closes for the season and make our own oil, and while we are there we look forward to seeing the first stage of work - demolition mainly - complete.
Retrace the optimistic story of the creation of Casal dei Fichi:
May 2004 - going backwards
January 2005 - going forwards