Category Archives: Structure

Triumph of the Sledgettes II

11 Friday May 2012

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Continuing in our mission to prove how much can be accomplished by a determined woman with a tiny sledgehammer, our new acolyte Marcia amply demonstrates that nothing can stand in the way of a will to destroy! Flush with our victory over the ceilings, and restless because the riding trek we’d planned for the day had been cancelled because endless rain had ruined the paths, she decided to have a go at that bathroom we’ve been wanting to remove off the side of the house.

First a sleepy resident salamander has to be given the bad news about his home.

Wielding our weapon of mass destruction. Shock and awe!

Removing the plumbing fixtures requires something more than a sledgehammer, but the concept is now revealed.

You may recall, this view of the future kitchen used to look into the bathroom. Think french doors and (perhaps) a wider opening.

View from the future kitchen sink. Except we’ll remove the bidet. Probably! The Supplicant Angel is under the cherry tree beyond.

I spent the day with a machete, massacring the humungous vines that smother everything on the property. To each his own! More about that later.

The Joy of Destruction

08 Tuesday May 2012

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What wonderful friends I have. First Friederike helps me banish negative energy, and now Marcia has helped me banish the rotten ceilings, revealing the beautiful beams of the new roof above. Actually, ‘help’ is not quite the right word – once she got that crowbar in her hands, she was a one-woman show of destructive force. My job was to pitch them out the window and stack them up below.

Getting started, showing fine crowbar form

Looks benign from this angle, but the animal scat up there was disgusting.

The finished product; the beams came down easily in this room because they were rotten, but were too heavy for us in the others.

Bath ceiling is particularly pretty as it’s the hipped part.

Above the master, the hall ceiling will remain in order to have a little place for accessing the roof through the window (for repairs).

The nails are so old they’re hand-made, square ones

Caber toss championships

Boards in space!

The landing deck

Neighbour Alberto has kindly offered to take them away and burn them. Only a few boards were salvageable, this pile is all rotten.

Reward time!

Which Lintels?

19 Thursday Apr 2012

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The next step in construction is to reinforce the lintels above many of the windows and doors. In Wonky Versus Perfect I railed against having to make everything plumb, but of course now that I’m looking at the existing windows and door lintels I realize there are too many variations. And while there are bigger issues for Godzillavilla than whether or not her window headers all match,  I also discovered that few of the ones she currently sports are actually attractive.

So Angelo is going to get his wish and will be able to take them all apart, bung in some steel, and plaster them over again.

Now we have the problem of choice, to wit, the selections below:

The ones that don't physically need work, having already been rebuilt with mattone and concrete, are - naturally - dead ugly.

It requires a bit of imagination to see the beauty in this, but there's a nice hint of a curve - though it obviously needs help from steel to carry the beam above.

Of course the prettiest (and structurally most sound) lintel is the one that's slated for destruction because the opening is supposed to be widened for French doors leading to the garden. Now I'm rethinking this widening idea!

Then we have the Tuscan classic wood lintel, a look I love but which I'm coming to realize doesn't fit the Ligurian aesthetic. You've probably realized this is NOT a photograph of Godzillavilla...

So what do you think? This will be on the agenda for talking to Angelo in a couple of weeks, so all opinions welcome!

Full Villa Tour

06 Tuesday Mar 2012

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Since my mastery of video editing is really, really limited, I’ve decided to give you a house tour using stills for now. The house is ‘semi-interrata‘ which means the bottom floor is open to the outdoors on one side, but the earth is built up around the other three. So the original entrance leads to what will be the cantina (basement), which is not really counted as part of the livable house.

Bottom middle door was the main entrance. The door above it will have a wee balcony (it belongs to the reading nook you'll see later).

You can see how the earth is built up around the other sides of the house. To the left, just visible, is the concrete structure shown in the photo below.

And the concrete structure (the old toilet) is being removed so a new entrance, with French doors, can be created. That way we can directly enter the new kitchen from the garden.

Back to the cantina. When you first enter on the bottom floor, this is the main room. In order to make it legally livable we have to excavate the floor, so for now we're just going to clean it up and leave it as general unlived-in basement space.

From that room we go up the stairs towards the living room and kitchen, on what becomes the main floor.

The living/dining room, as seen from the stairs. The partially removed wall will be completely removed in the future.

At the top of the stairs turn left to this bedroom.

Or right, to the big bathroom with the double-whammy view from what will be the shower/bath.

The master bedroom also gets two windows.

The third bedroom is currently accessed through the master, so we're reworking the (massive stone) wall between them in order to be able to get to this room off the hall.

That’s it! I hope this helps you visualize the whole house a little better. Look at the photos along with the floor plans from the previous blog and hopefully you’ll be able to see how it all fits together.

Where to Put the WC

27 Monday Feb 2012

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Here’s the challenge, and if anyone has an idea about how to solve it, please tell me: There is only one bathroom on plan for Godzilla, and for a place that sleeps 4-6 that’s not great. A second bath was supposed to go on the ground level, but it turns out we can’t go forward with that floor without completely excavating the existing cement floor to provide the air space underneath that is now required by code.

Main floor existing and proposed. Existing gross bathroom turns into lovely terrace overlooking garden.

Top floor with bedrooms and the mega-bath.

For this puzzle, you therefore have two floors to work with (shown), and a few caveats.

  • The top floor already has a bathroom planned and yes, we could squish two in that space but that would result in two rather sad, cramped bathrooms instead one fabulous one. I’d rather wait to pee than ruin that luxury.
  • The main floor has a space under the stair that we were planning on having as a reading nook, but it could fit a toilet and small sink (with one heck of a view out of the french doors that are supposed to go in there).
  • The main floor also has potential access through metre-thick stone walls into the old torre, but the ceiling height is lower, making this option possible but challenging.
  • A third possibility lies in carving off some space in the planned kitchen. The existing toilet (the one that drains directly into the garden, yuck) is supposed to turn into french doors that open on to the garden, and any other way out is awkward, so it is being removed. Apart from it not being an approved extension in the first place.

So there you have it. Take a look at the plans and photos and let me know if you have any brilliant ideas.

Kitchen looking towards old bathroom to be removed

The planned mega-bathroom

One of the smaller upstairs bedrooms; could these have WCs in them?

Planned reading nook and french doors. Would it be just as lovely as a toilet?

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