This season's project

After months of puzzling over estimates, discussing options, and general worrying, we finally launched our first (and, I hope, last) major renovation project here in Italy: a new bathroom. More accurately, a crew of extremely competent workmen appeared Monday morning and got the project started.

The existing bath is on the hall with the three bedrooms. The new one is in a slightly awkward location, back behind the kitchen.

That's because there was already a good-sized room there with plumbing for a sink and toilet. We assume it used to be a laundry, but we've already put the washer and dryer in an alcove in the existing bathroom, and we've never used the odd room behind the kitchen for anything but storage. It was the easiest place to put in a new bathroom, so that's what we're doing.

The first step, which happened on Monday, was to tear out the terrazzo tile floor.

It was a noisy, messy job, carried out by one very hard-working guy. All the debris was carried down to the street in buckets.

As you can see, it's not just the tiles, but the cement under the tiles that had to come out. It all got dumped into a truck parked in front of the building.

We live on a pedestrian street but you can get permission from the city to park there while work is being done. You just need to apply for a permit, pay a fee of a few euros, and put up a security deposit of many hundreds of euros more.

Today the plumber and his "ragazzo" came to install the new pipes and the "box," the floor of the shower. This picture looks like abstract expressionism, no?

The plans that previous owners filed with the city show the room as a closet, rather than a laundry. (I assume that meant lower taxes.) So even though the rudiments of plumbing are already there, the city required that we hire an architect and pay several hundred euros in permit fees, as if we were starting the new bathroom from scratch.

Our architect, Valentina, came by yesterday to see how things were proceeding. She brought along her little girl, who is absolutely scrumptious.

Valentina and the plumber were discussing where the shower head should go, while I tried to follow along. Of course we ended up doing it the way they suggested. 

Here's the crew later that day, examining the "tubi" (pipes) that had just been laid down. 

That's our plumber in the foreground, his "ragazzo," and, in the hat, the "muratore," a word that translates as "bricklayer" or "mason" but actually means the guy who does all the demolition and construction, including installing the tiles. 

Here's the plumber again. This picture doesn't do him justice; he is really cute. He speaks nice, clear Italian that I can mostly understand, he's patient when I try to speak Italian to him, and he says things that I can tell are very funny even if I'm not quite sure what they mean. I think he's scrumptious, too.