Ducati Desmoseidici sighting

We were on our way to watch the Giro d'Italia this weekend in Venice, when we came across this beauty on the highway around Brembo (BG). Ducati Desmoseidici - a true motoGP bike on the road. This is a nice way to spend €60k - "if you have the means, I highly recommend you pick one up..."

Primavera means: new living room

It has been a number of weeks since my last entry. After the roof episode we took some time off from house restructuring. However, with the arrival of first signs of spring we have started work on the garden again and finished another room.

The living room was in a huge mess after 20 years of basically being uninhabited. In fact, this was originally the main room of the house, which included both cooking and living facilities. What is now the kitchen was formerly another stall. So originally, the whole family would have lived in this room, and the one upstairs. Similarly, over the last year we have spent nearly all of our time living out of the kitchen. So it will be nice to have this new room furnished and livable by summer.

Jose and his sidekick Roberto did an outstanding job prepping for a rewire, and then plastering the walls and repairing the mantel over the fireplace. The tone of the plaster actually changes throughout the day - it is almost iridescent. We have to figure out how to paint this without losing the natural warmth. Now onto the second bedroom...

At least we have a roof over our head...

Our house, is a very very very old house (1886)... well, ok, not that old. Not Tower of London old (1080 ish) or even William Shakespeare old (1560 ish), but definitely older than Oklahoma City (1890). Turn's out even a house built in the late 19th century needs a new roof every now and then. So, even though we were a little concerned that it was rather late in the season to begin roof work, we were reassured by our neighbors and (more importantly) 'Jose the roof guy' that it would be ok.

As we have quite a lot of roof, we focused on the part that needed the most attention - the bit over the spare bedroom that actually leaks in heavy weather. It so happens that this section of roof has also become a home to what seems to be a rather large colony of rather fearless pigeons. Pigeons which strangely also appear to enjoy tap dancing.

We started (well, actually he started) monday last week - the end of November. The first part of the process went swimmingly. Jose and his assistant removed the old 'tegole' (terra cotta roof tiles) one by one, exposing a further layer of handmade smooth 'cotto' tiles beneath. This was the basic weatherproofing. The piles of the two types of tiles are shown in the first picture. We have one which is marked 22 Marzo '33 (March 1933), which means this is the 'new' roof put on when what is now our kitchen was previously converted from an animal stall and hayloft nearly 75 years ago.

Once these were removed, the superstructure of the roof is exposed. This is basically a lattice of larger and smaller wooden pieces between 2x2 inch and 4x6 inch in thickness. Apparently, this lattice is largely held together by dancing pigeon excrement.

In the next picture you can see the tremendous beams that run lengthwise down the house and basically keep everything from falling down, domino style I imagine. I say this as a naive and dangerously inexpert house restoring type. At this juncture, I would like to point out the beautiful clear, blue skies. Perfect roofing weather.

So, you can imagine our joyful surprise when we awoke the following morning to find....


















So, needless to say we took immediate action:


to be continued...