rachel68's activity

Dear Belvedere,   I am going to follow your advice and use the Geal base/barrier and then Woplus after the tiler has laid the new cotto. I was just wondering if you perfected a method for brushing the treatment on and what sort of brush/broom/mop/sponge you found was best for this purpose? I know it soulds daft but in my experience you try and few things and hit on one which is really good! I've got 100m2 to seal and add a finish to so can't go down the hand waxing route and anyway I don't want to be maintaining them every 6 months. As long as they look natural, have a slight sheen and are easy to clean I'll be happy. Also, did you need to use a cleaner on your new tiles before applying the base/barrier?   Thank you

Dear Belvedere,   I am going to follow your advice and use the Geal base/barrier and then Woplus after the tiler has laid the new cotto. I was just wondering if you perfected a method for brushing the treatment on and what sort of brush/broom/mop/sponge you found was best for this purpose? I know it soulds daft but in my experience you try and few things and hit on one which is really good! I've got 100m2 to seal and add a finish to so can't go down the hand waxing route and anyway I don't want to be maintaining them every 6 months. As long as they look natural, have a slight sheen and are easy to clean I'll be happy. Also, did you need to use a cleaner on your new tiles before applying the base/barrier?   Thank you

Thank you all. I signed lots of stuff...permissions etc but don't recall the architect asking me to sign a contract with the builder. We had an email from the architect saying the builder was now prepared to do the contract for €37,273 and we accepted. We are in a small village and the architect lives there now full-time himself and we have to tread carefully. On the other hand I feel we are being treated as if we are stupid and have no knowledge of what's involved so can have the wool pulled over our eyes. If we want to play fair can we turn to a local Geometra/Quantity Surveyor to make an impartial third party appraisal of what you should pay for such work as plastering done with two layers rather than three and strange 'labourers'' jobs to price up like applying a wash of PVA  sealer to plastered walls? How would you deal with disputing things with an architect within your village? Basically they are adding on everything they can and just hoping we'll not question things not done or finding an excuse to justify why we should pay for work not done. Within the preventivo were expensive things like supplying and fitting doors (now done by a friend of the architect not the builder) and decorating and laying a self - levelling compound on the floor etc. Somehow they seemed to have worked it out that we pay the same price without these works being done! Moreover I suspect the builder is not working on our jb at the moment until we agree to pay even more...at this point we've already paid him far more than the work done. Hmmm!!

We bought a derelict casale last year...exchange rate was terrible for the UK/Euro but time run out for the exchange rate to get better as it had been just in the months before we made an offer...grrr!!!...so we went ahead with it anyway. We knew we liked the area - the wonderful Sabina Mountains just an hour North of Rome and so served by by both airports (we drive from Ciampino to our door in just under an hour and enjoy the scenery on the drive too!). We don't have funds yet to start work on the main house but there was a little annesso which we are just making habitable now. We've seen lovely places sit unsold because of a stubborn-ness on the part of a vendor to accept a lesser price than they've got fixed in their head. When the property is lovely and with great views etc clearly these places remain unsold (unless there are inheritance problems etc) becuase they are asking too much and people walk away when they look into renovation costs. If you have an idea of the costs to renovate and really love the place why not make your offer in writing (this seems to get action when we did it whereas telephone conversations got us nowhere!) and then if they accept just leave the work until you can live nearby and oversee it. We're trying to do things with an architect from a distance and I'm pretty sure stupid things and questionable extras are cropping up which just wouldn't if we were nearby... Good Luck!

Thanks Fillide, At the moment, as you stand looking upwards on the ground floor above the big fat, rickety beams are wonderful old warped floorboards of varying widths. I love this look although I think a few newer bits have been forced in over the years. When you get upstairs the floor is caving in in places and is old small cotto tiles on sand or something crumbly! I wanted to lift and preserve as much of the cotto as possible...An issue is that we have been seriously stung by an avaricious builder in making an outbuilding habitable so being short of funds will have to go at the main house in piecemeal fashion now over many years. Presumably if you get in an engineer to sort out load bearing beams/steels...widening openings etc and you want it approved I'd be advised to get the structural package drawn up in one go?

Thanks for that! It seemed logical to me so excellent to know it is standard stuff and will keep the commune planning team happy as it is earthquake protectivetoo. We have 4 rooms of approx 30m2 each. Do you recall costs and if so for what size rooms? Thank you Rachel

Dear Filidde, Esme said you'd be the person to ask. I am trying to work out if our builder is being unreasonable or not in his proposed price in laying rectangular cotto tiles. The untreated 15x30 tiles cost €22 and I had thought another €20 to lay and grout. He is now saying it'll be more to lay because they are a bit smaller than average, plus another €7 to acid treat for salt problems, plus more for impregnating to stop staining plus more fore sealing plus more for grouting as he says small joints require individual grouting with a gun. I thought €20  per M2 was for laying and grouting. If he lays them untreated but leaves then clean maybe I could seal them against stain penetration, get him to grout and then do the finishing seal myself right at the end. I think we won't grind them this time as they have a smooth ish but clearly hand finished surface on one side which we are happy with but this sounds interesting for future rooms. When you mention sanded/polished 'bricks' do you mean literally handmade bricks used for walls or do you mean a floor tile? I'd love to see some pictures of your floors - they sound fabulous! Thanks

Thanks Belvedere for passing onthe advice given to you by there terracotta manufacturer. Did they mention anything about pre-sealing before laying to cut out efflourescence? Our builders seems to think the cotto we thought we'd have should be treated with what he calls 'acido' first to remove salts. Did you lay the tiles untreated, then apply two coats of base , then grout and then apply the top finish seal? It seems to me doing it this way, especially if we leave our tiles un-ground/polished is much less labour intensive than our builder would have us believe! Also, any thoughts on colour of grout?

Do you mind me asking what the going 'daily rate' for a general builder seems to be in Italy?

Phew so glad someone still believes in 'wrecks'! Having just bought a big one and after looking for a year at many other properties the thing that did it for us was finding something big enough to be a full-time home eventually and also knowing we wouldn't need to apply for permssions to extend it etc...we chose a derelict farmhouse (apparently one of the last in our village) near enough to a big city (hour from central Rome door to door) so that we could divide time between rural lifestyle but culturally stimulating activities not too far away. Airport access was vita l for us - just under an hour from Ciampino (Rome) so we'd never start our time in Italy with too a long drive and a long weekend would very be do-able. The architect who showed me the property lives in the village and gave us a general figure on renovating....I just hope he's not too far off...if he is the house is big enough to leave areas so it seems to me it's not all doom and gloom buying a wreck. Plus in its simple way....it's got soul I think!