Two years ago, almost to the day, we spent our first night in our big, scary new house in the Italian countryside (you can read about it here). It was dark, cold and damp as we huddled by the fire, drinking Dolcetto, eating pizza and trying to decipher the German labelling on hundreds of keys.
This week, with the renovations still moving along nicely, our part of the house finally became habitable once more and we were able to spend our second first night there.

It was a bit different to last time… thanks in no small part to the presence of heat, light, hot water and furniture, but also because we were in a completely different part of the house. What is now our home was previously almost entirely agricultural. Our living area was a stable, our entrance hall a garage and our bedroom a hayloft. We’ve tried to keep as much character as possible while also introducing a few modern comforts, such as underfloor heating, LED lights, solar-powered hot water, a state-of-the-art kitchen and some lovely big windows. I’m reliably informed that the look we’re going for is called modern rustic. Or something like that anyway. Right now it’s more building site chic.

Not everything has changed though… we celebrated, as is now tradition, with a bottle of Dolcetto – this one kindly given to us by our builders as a house warming gift – and a pizza and I still haven’t worked out what most of the keys do.
There’s a bit of finishing still needed, (ok, there’s a lot of finishing still needed) but it feels amazing to finally be living here again.

And the guest house is really starting to take shape now too… we’ve given the kitchen a new lease of life, fitted five beautiful new bathrooms and revealed as much character as is physically possible. Progress.
Our attention now is turning to the outside, where we have destroyed our lovely garden in the name of building a swimming pool. The underpinnings are in and we’ve built a supporting wall to be doubly safe, we don’t want the pool sliding down the hill and destroying the 2016 vintage of Barolo. Now we just need the good weather to continue so we can get digging.
Exciting times!!

Congratulations – it looks stunning! Our new favourite saying is: “I never said it would be easy, I only said it would be worth it!” So worth it. Bravissimo!!
Thanks!! And that’s a great saying… finally it’s starting to feel worth it!
Exciting times, indeed! 🙂
Exciting… and rather dusty!! I might have to change the name of the blog Living in the Dust Bowl. Building site life is dirty!
Wow! It’s going to be completely gorgeous! I love the whole rustic modern style good to know what it’s called! 🙂 And yes, you did nail it!
Ha ha, thanks Lynette! I didn’t know what it was called either… the internet has its uses!
Looking beautiful!!! Congratulations! Hope to get there one day.
Thanks Suzie, you’re always welcome, just let us know, it would be great to see you here!
AWESOME!!! Looks beautiful! Congrats!
Thanks Diana! There’s a long way still to go but it’s certainly getting there!
Bravo! Absolutely gorgeous and I can only imagine how great it must feel to see the pieces coming together so nicely. I really like the sound of modern rustic…has a nice ring to it!
Thank you!! It’s so strange seeing it come together as we’ve talked about it for so long, discussed every single detail at great length, and all of a sudden we’re living among it. There’s loads still to do, of course, but it’s getting there. Modern rustic sounds fancier than it is. I blame Pinterest.
Looks amazing! Very inspiring – I’d better keep working so as we can start on ours!
Ha ha… thanks Lorna! How are your plans coming along?
Had a bit of a titter at the thought of the swimming pool sliding down the hill 😉 The place looks amazing though – well done! Why are all the keys in German??
Thanks! The previous owner was Swiss and was obsessed with labelling everything… tools, drawers, shelves and, of course, keys. She left us hundreds of keys, all labelld, but all completely indecipherable!
Google translate is your friend – although Swiss German is a bit different I think!
My favorite is ‘large door cantina under chicken house’, all one word in German, obviously, but we don’t have a chicken house or a cantina under a chicken house. It’s very confusing…
Ha ha! There’s a blog post in that alone! 🙂
Booking myself in.