My Lucca , My Tuscany: PROJECT REPORT JULY 2015

Grass cut already

OK, so on to what most have been waiting for. Get to know our neighbors and how have the progress been over the last 3-4 weeks.

We will be his new neighbor next year

When we arrived July 4^th 3 of the old beams had been taken from the roof, when we left 8 of the 9 new beams was installed, including all most of the new concrete structure along the walls to support the roof. They also had started on one of the walls that should have extra insulation.

Old beams to be changed

As you may understand, we are not doing insulation due to the cold weather in the winter time, no it is for the warm summer day as we had it these 3 weeks in July with more than 35 deg. C each day.

Reinforce part of the wall

Reinforcement block, looks like good insulation too !!

On our way to a pizza the first evening we had to see what had been done. The pleasure of working with Limpresa are that they send us regular photos of what going on so that the roof was gone was not a surprise, but to see the changes in live where very exciting.

Pasqual Cosentino, the person behind our

construction company Limpresa

Galileo Menichini, our architect with

the company GLIARCHITETTIASSOCIATI

The area around the house was secured according the rules in Italy, but we got around to see what we wanted, not climbing the stairs the first day.

Checking !!!

I had plans of do a lot of cutting grass the first week, again that was taken care of and they had made parking on the land behind the house.

First day we also noticed the type of tree we had in the garden. Walnut, and I had never seen this before and tried to get this cleaned. It was a bit to early in the season, and I will not do it again as my nails did not get clean in two weeks. Part of what you call experience.

Walnut tree

Day after day we passed the house and could see on a distance how it progressed. One day the new beams had arrived and a few days later the first beams was installed.

One of the expected regular visitors wondering

how the view will be

Over the weeks on vacation we had several meetings with the architect and the construction company as well the electrician. With electrician we had to ensure we got enough power and the cable into the house could take any addition for the future or if we moved on with additional solar panels one day. What we are used to in Norway is not the same in Italy, maybe it is because of the electricity prices are different.

There was a lot more support from the Italian government before installing solar panels, today you only get a bit when you sale the over capacity to ENEL. However it is my basic education after 5 years study 40 years ago, so I have a bit more involvement in that than some other issues maybe. We had to include lines for outside work, garden kitchen and any pool that may come, in addition agree on fuse sizes and lines inside the house.

Looking for governmental support ??

We went away from the breathing roof and made a decision on extra insulation on the walls the turned south and east. Hope it will help on the air in the bedrooms for guests during the summer time.

New beams on the spot

Progress for the next month or so will be that before they finish the roof they will do the floor at first floor. Have open air in the roof make it easier to lift out any trash. When that is done and roof is one they will start in the ground floor with digging and digging and digging out a nice bit of mother earth.

The progress plan is flexible. Even it is more predictable weather in this area than like Norway flexibility is needed as long as it kept within the progress plan and what is on the right side of this plan do not move.

Not all will be 90 degree corners

Over the time we visited the house in these weeks we also got to know some of the neighbors. Very pleasant for us and obvious people to invite to the big day when all is finished.