Casal dei Fichi - Progress - May 04
Luxurious holiday apartments in Italy's stunning Marche.
This is the original email update we sent out some 9 months ago - somewhat optimistic...
Some of you may know that we are planning on moving to Italy. Some of you may be sick to death of hearing about it!
For anyone who still has some interest here is where we are up to ...
We have bought a farmhouse in the Marche region of Italy. We completed the purchase on the 30th March and now in mid May we are waiting for our architect to send us the plans for submission for planning permission. We feel that this is a portent of the pace of progress that we can learn to expect. For anyone who isn't an architect or a geek - we have drawn up the plans ourselves, given him a very clear brief and sent him electronic drawings. To be fair he still has a fair bit to do, especially in making sure that the plans meet local regulations etc and we think he is sympathetic to what we are trying to achieve. We only think so as he always communicates from behind his dark glasses through a series of young female interpreters !
When we say we have bought a house we really mean we have bought two houses. (As part of the Napoleonic legacy?) the house was actually split into two halves and owned, we understood by 2 brothers. Bob went back to Italy and met them at the house(s) and spent a day negotiating the land available - not easy since the wall dividing the houses continues (metaphorically) through the fields so each party had to agree where the boundary should be. Finally they settled on just under one Ha (about 2.5 acres) - a result, we would have ideally have liked slightly more land to the south side but still - a substantial plot, more than enough room for a swimming pool, tennis court, a few rows of vines, vegetable patch, herb garden, some more olive trees to supplement the 20 odd and 2 fig trees that we have already - and of course a small car park.
When we arrived at the notary's office to complete the purchase we were slightly surprised that the vendors were actually brother and sister (later we found out they are cousins) - though more of a shock was the notary announcement that since it was two properties we were liable to pay twice to have each registered with the land agency (urbanisation) so that was EUR3,000 that we hadn't budgeted for, the first of many... And having settled a large sum to the grinning siblings, a smaller amount (though not as small as planned) on the notary, we left the office and settled some more euros on our estate agents, recovered a parking ticket from the hire car and headed for the airport. We reflected that we ought to be in a restaurant celebrating so after checking in we headed for the nearby coast, unfortunately we got on the motorway in the wrong direction so ended up having a celebratory beer and sandwich at an hotel in an industrial park. There will be plenty of time for leisurely lunches soon!
So what are we going to do ? The house is big, about 600m2, our London home is about 110! We are going to convert the ground and first floor into 6 one bedroom apartments and the loft into a large one for ourselves. The ground floor was originally the stalls where the animals were kept, the middle of the building was wasted with 2 parallel staircases and useless corridors, virtually all the timbers supporting the top floor are rotten as are the ones holding up the roof. So there's plenty of work to be done!!! We are hoping to do much of the internal works ourselves, since we understood that the architect worked on a percentage of final cost basis we wanted to make sure he was aware of our intentions and structured his charges accordingly - oh don't worry he reassured us, if you do the work yourselves I just charge more ! All the same his charges seem reasonable and he has committed to doing more than we had expected.
The apartments will be rented to holiday makers. We think that there is great potential, the house is set in the foothills of the Sibline mountains which are the highest part of the Apennines - the backbone of Italy. On a clear winters day you can see the snow (yes you can ski) on the mountains and every day you can see many attractive hill top towns and rolling hillsides. We are about 30km from the coast (yes you can dive) and right in the middle of land which is ideal for walking, cycling, sightseeing or just relaxing. We are about 2km from the small town of Francavilla d'Ete and there are a couple of pleasant medieval towns about 10 minutes drive away. We think it's so beautiful we've decided to live there.
We will furnish the apartments to a high standard and each will have a private outside area. On Saturdays we will clean like buggery after one lot of punters leave at 11am and the next arrive 5 hours later (yes that's 6 kitchens, 6 living rooms, 6 bedrooms, 6 bathrooms, 45 windows... and no we won't have a cleaner), graciously welcome our new guests and make sure they go home and recommend us to their friends ! We will maintain the gardens, keep the pool clean etc but will NOT be doing breakfasts, dinners or mid-week cleans - our move to Italy is about experiencing a different lifestyle so ultimately having time to do other things (or do nothing !) is important to us.
We hope to see as many of you as can make it, our plans show a large spare room and we'll always welcome guests. If you fancied spending a holiday in the up and coming barely discovered Marche region though, we'd love to greet you as customers and we naturally offer a hefty discount to friends (especially out of season.) Or if you know someone who fancies a holiday in Italy... We are about an hour from Ancona airport and just slightly further from Pescara, both of which are served by Ryanair with flights from under one euro from Stansted or Frankfurt. Rome is about 3 hours away by train or car. The form is generally to pick up a hire car at the airport - hence the requirement for a small car park!
Marche is on the eastern (Adriatic) side of the Italian peninsular. It's neighbours include Umbria and Toscana (Tuscany) to the west, it is south of Rimini and north of Abruzzo. (Some guidebooks call it Le Marche - that's technically correct the Le pronounced lay) is the definite object feminine plural (ie the) but is generally discarded. Other more reactionary guidebooks translate it as The Marches - if yours does - bin it .
But that is all some way in the future, over the next few months the plan goes:
Wait for planning permission. (Apparently we're the first people to do this in our commune and they're very excited about it - probably means they won't have any of the relevant forms - let alone in triplicate !) Hope that the builders can start before Europe closes for August then plan to move out in the autumn. Get Roger our Manchester builder to join us for 3 months then do all the internal work - floors, walls, plumbing, heating, wiring, kitchens, bathrooms - buy furniture (x6) and cheap but tasteful internal artwork - we're looking for help here (you know who you are!). Get everything up on the internet, take bookings and then:
Easter 2005 - Grand opening party!!!
Retrace the optimistic story of the creation of Casal dei Fichi: