Daily update parte sette

Work on the house continues to make progress, albeit slow. Paolo the builder has been gone for some 3 weeks now to complete another job, having finished his first phase. Now just (!) the roof, flooring, plastering, drainage, and lowering of the ground around the house remain for him to do.

The electrician has finished the first phase of his work, and the plumber is due to start in a couple of days. We’re still tussling with whether or not to install a ventilated roof (which enhances insulation), but are having an impossible time trying to get meaningful numbers out of people and make comparisons. We’ve recently selected and given the go-ahead on the custom windows and doors, as well as all the bathroom fittings. Now for the kitchen, and the downstairs floor, which we’re tussling over – Maria wants coloured stone pellets with resin, and I want coloured polished concrete. Both may be moot if we can’t find anyone local or reasonably-priced to do it.

Given where we are with everything, I must confess that the July deadline to be out of our rental house and into our home looms ominously close, rather too close for my liking. We could well be back in the caravan for a few weeks until everything’s ready.

If only we had our architect and project manager to help us – his fleeting presence seems barely sufficient as a reminder that he’s involved, let alone directing matters. However, I suppose I shouldn’t complain – at least we’re seeing progress, and it also seems as if we’ll stay within the projected cost. Friends of ours have had to fire their geometra (essentially the contractor) because she failed to submit their permit applications, resulting in a several-month delay on top of the mandatory 60-day waiting period (for certain urban houses, which ours is not) to begin their renovations. And any time you switch personnel (architect/geometra/builder) there’s another inherent delay and potentially additional hidden cost as one departs and the other arrives. We’ve reluctantly stuck with our architect and builder for this very reason. (Unfortunately being your own contractor is not an option – applying for all the permits has to be done through a geometra or architect.)

It’s an interesting process after all, if one is able to step back from it and look down on it objectively. It seems that humans incur a sort of minimum degree of imperfection and inefficiency whatever they do. In Italy it seems that minimum degree is a tad higher than other western countries. “Teamwork” is also not a term whose origins are or whose current residence is comfortable in Italy, and so getting the builder, the plumber, the electrician, the roofer, the window-and-door maker, the marble guy, and the architect to work together is a challenge that elementary school teachers would appreciate.

But even with these potentially frustrating tendencies, there’s a lesson – this is just the way it is. Nothing you can do to change it. And in the process we learn as much about ourselves as anything – what we find important for our comfort, what we like aesthetically, how far things have to go before we reach our “for-heavens-sake-just-get-it-done” stage, what it takes for us to snap, how we deal with resistance and differences of opinion, what our own tipping points are, and doubtless a few others to come.

And so next time I hear our umpteenth “Bruto!” response to our desires, I’ll take a deep breath (this is deep breath country), and in the time it takes me to count to the requisite number, I’ll remind myself how much I’m growing in that precise moment.