Coming along

The initial excitement about our new bathroom gave way to anxiety as the work seemed to lose steam. Once the plumber and the electrician had come through to lay their respective pipes and wires, the muratore didn't appear to be making a lot of progress.

He's the fellow who does most of the work of actually deconstructing and then recreating the new space, and "mason" or "bricklayer" seemed like an inadequate term for someone so central to the project. But when I examined the gouges he'd cut into the walls--le mura--for the pipes and wires, I saw why these people are called muratori. There's no wood framing, no sheetrock. Building here means tearing apart bricks and cement and thick plaster and then putting together more of the same.

Either this requires a fair amount of time where nothing much happens, or our jovial muratore had another gig he was working at the same time. But little by little cement went on over the channels for the new pipes. And yesterday the tiles for the floor and walls arrived, which indicated things were moving ahead.

The tiles for the floor were moved into the back end of the kitchen, along with a lot of bags of cement and grout, in addition to the construction dust already in residence.

The tiles for the walls are currently camped out in the hall outside the front door. As you can see, we're not shying away from pattern.

Today the muratore showed up first thing (which in our household means 9:00 a.m.) and set to work building a new floor. He used some kind of laser device to make sure everything was straight and spent a lot of time measuring and remeasuring. He certainly looks to me like he knows what he's doing.

Note the red laser lights,

We could hear his little cement-mixer going and when I peeked in he had already laid down half of the floor.

By lunchtime the kitchen and dining room were blanketed with a layer of cement dust and the new floor was done.

Those are wall tiles sitting on the "box," the floor of what will be the shower.

The cement will spend tomorrow drying, and then on Friday, if all goes as planned, the tile guy (I haven't learned yet what Italians call the tile guy) will put in the terrazzo floor. Next week the wall tiles will go up, then the shower and toilet and sink and the lights. Valentina the architect says we will be done by next Friday. We shall see.