\u201cWe need to fill in your holes\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cNooo… you are not to go near my holes,\u201d I shout back. It\u2019s not the first time I have had one of these weird conversations with Mick Kelly (Michele) our Italian Architect.<\/p>\n
\u201cI like my holes they\u2019ve been there forever, why do you feel the need to fill them now?\u201d We are talking about the alcoves in the three rooms that were once kitchens in the apartments which will now become bedrooms. I have visions of making them into nice inset shelving units for books and candles or a wardrobe space.<\/p>\n
\u201cRosie it is better for the seismic level of the house. If it was straight brick it would be okay but the walls are stone so they are irregular and with movement holes are dangerous. A solid wall is safer than a wall with a hole. Holes in the wall make the structure weak and you have a lot of holes already for window\u2019s, doors and fireplaces. We need to fill in the unnecessary holes for safety.\u201d<\/p>\n
What he is saying is that in the event of an earthquake the house would less likely to crumble on top of us if we had more walls and less alcoves.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut we live here beside the lake where there are no earthquakes,\u201d I grumble.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, the lake does protect us from earthquakes, but there is still potential of movement.\u201d<\/p>\n
I still find it a little magical that the lake somehow absorbs movement and protects us from earthquakes in such a seismic prone country.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen the lake dries up and drops below a certain water level, the surrounding land moves a little and can affect the structure of the house,\u201d he explains patiently.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think there\u2019s any fear of that have you seen the front garden? It looks like we\u2019ve moved to Venice.\u201d The Venetian theme around the house has been caused by the unusual heavy rainfall we have been having and exaggerated by the fact that the roofers and plumbers were not watching what each other were doing, so the roofers put one drainpipe on the far corner of the house and the plumbers put the ground drain inlet hole on the near corner of the house. The realisation that never the two shall meet only came about when the scaffolding came down.<\/p>\n
This is noted in Mick Kelly\u2019s notes. We\u2019re walking around the house on a \u2018finalising phase 1 inspection tour\u2019 with Andrea our builder who has proved to be amazing. Mick Kelly speaks some english but Andrea speaks none he just goes by my facial expressions and hand gestures and understands perfectly. Our project manager disappeared about a month into the project so a new project manager was elected called \u2018Google translate\u2019. It\u2019s done quite a good job but sometimes makes mistakes with the finer details. I\u2019m rolling my eyes behind Mick Kelly\u2019s back and Andrea is laughing.<\/p>\n
We walk into the bedroom. \u201cYou sleep here?\u201d asks Micko. \u201cYes,\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut it is dangerous,\u201d he says pointing to the plaster that has been chipped away to put in the new wiring for the light. \u201cIt needs to be filled otherwise pieces could fall and it is heavy.\u201d<\/p>\n
I find enough Italian to say, \u201cIt is okay it over Ronan\u2019s side of the bed.\u201d Andrea is laughing again but Micko isn\u2019t having any of it, \u201cI am serious it is dangerous!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOkay okay\u201d I say rolling my eyes again. Andrea is agreeing to get Roberto out to finish filling the ceilings asap.<\/p>\n
Later that evening myself and Ronan are laughing about how safety conscious Mick Kelly is when we hear a crash upstairs. It takes us a while to find where the noise came from and then we walk into the room Ronan is using as his office. A large piece of plaster has fallen from the ceiling and smashed all over the computer and printer.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe he has a point,\u201d I say. \u201cWell, at least it saves us knocking the old plaster off.\u201d<\/p>\n
We quietly cross the hall and move our bed to a room downstairs. It\u2019s the 5th room we have slept in since we moved in six weeks ago. Sleeping around has a very different meaning to us.<\/p>\n
I text Mick Kelly to say they can fill my holes, better to be safe than sorry. I\u2019ll buy a bookcase.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cWe need to fill in your holes\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cNooo you are not to go near my holes,\u201d I shout back. It\u2019s not the first time I have had one of these weird conversations with Mick Kelly (Michele) our Italian Architect.<\/p>\n
\u201cI like my holes they\u2019ve been there forever, why do you feel the need to fill them now?\u201d We are talking about the alcoves in the three rooms that were once kitchens in the apartments which will now become bedrooms. I have visions of making them into nice inset shelving units for books and candles or a wardrobe space.<\/p>\n
\u201cRosie it is better for the seismic level of the house. If it was straight brick it would be okay but the walls are stone so they are irregular and with movement holes are dangerous. A solid wall is safer than a wall with a hole. Holes in the wall make the structure weak and you have a lot of holes already for window\u2019s, doors and fireplaces. We need to fill in the unnecessary holes for safety.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2548,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[235],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-how-much-does-it-cost-to-live-in-italy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rosiemeleady.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rosiemeleady.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rosiemeleady.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rosiemeleady.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rosiemeleady.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2547"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/rosiemeleady.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2577,"href":"https:\/\/rosiemeleady.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2547\/revisions\/2577"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rosiemeleady.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rosiemeleady.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rosiemeleady.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rosiemeleady.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}