...And relax

Finally, after months of hard work, on Friday afternoon we completed the renovation of the apartment ceiling project. With two hours to spare before guests arrived. We still can't quite believe it's finished.

Over the past week we've had early morning starts and late night finishes, poor Reggie has missed out on walks (and even taken himself off on his own in protest on a couple of occasions, having worked out yet another escape route from the garden fencing), I've had to put my office work on hold, our diet has consisted almost entirely of pizza, and we've felt like the waking dead, but very gradually things have come together.

When Reggie takes himself off on his own and doesn't want to come back down the terraces, the only way to get him down is to carry him down. All 29kg of him...

Once again, we've had a tremendous amount of help from generous friends: on Wednesday, Paul and Kathy spent the entire day painting the freshly plastered walls in the apartment while we continued to do filling, sanding, boxing-in, grouting and other jobs that we'd hoped to have finished before painting day; on Thursday, David and Sarah put in a heroic effort cleaning everything: the living room/kitchen area hadn't been touched since the work started and not only was all the furniture piled up in there laden with half an inch of plaster/concrete/mortar dust, but the dust had worked its way into every nook and cranny imaginable. They cleaned like demons while we continued trying to tie up the last few niggling jobs, and they didn't leave until long after dark.

Friday morning saw us up early and bleary-eyed once again, and after a quick check over of things in the apartment, Stuart headed off to hit Obi in time for when it opened in order to buy the last few bits and pieces that we needed to finish things off (one more sheet of plasterboard, some LED light bulbs, a new curtain pole). While Stuart was out, I finished a little more painting and started the final clean-up of the areas that he wasn't going to be working in. 

We were almost tripped up at the final hurdle: after buying the necessary items from Obi, Stuart got back into the car to head home... only to find that it wouldn't start. After spending an hour in the Obi car park (like we had that to spare!), the car finally decided to play ball and Stuart was able to make it back to the house to rush through the last bits of work needed - under considerably more pressure than was planned!

Thankfully, we did finally get to a point where we couldn't do any more and while I dusted, vacuumed and swept my way out of the apartment, Stuart headed out for a tour of the valley's dustbin areas to dispose of the considerable amount of construction-related rubbish we'd piled up over the course of the last several weeks.

We finished at about 1.30pm, with guests due at 4pm, so after a quick lunch we made a dash to Esselunga, and before we'd even unpacked the shopping back at the house, the buzzer for our (now fully functioning) electric gates was ringing and our guests were arriving!

We greeted our guests as energetically as we could muster, complete in our paint-splattered work clothes that we hadn't yet had time to change out of. Thankfully, once again, we seem to have been blessed with a lovely set of people as guests - they were warm and friendly and seemed thrilled to be here. I think we were both in a bit of a state of shock at having finally finished the work, and certainly a tiredness-induced stupor, so goodness knows what they must have thought of us, but they seemed happy. 

I must admit that we were pretty pleased with the end result as well:

After settling our guests in, we gathered the energy to take Reggie for a long-awaited walk at the cava track above Vellano before finally collapsing on the sofa with a bottle of wine - too tired even to really know what to do with ourselves!

We had a blissfully long, undisturbed, stress-free night's sleep, a lie-in on Saturday morning, and spent the weekend taking things very easy. 

Saturday morning saw us taking Reggie for a good long run out in the woods between Vellano and Macchino, and in the afternoon, after paying a couple of overdue bills, we headed to Montecarlo for a quiet glass of wine, almost feeling as if we were there on holiday.

We invited our guests up for a drink on Saturday evening and spent a very enjoyable couple of hours getting to know them, while Reggie gradually worked up the courage to get close enough for a sniff or two. 

On Sunday morning we paid our first visit to our friend Michelle's new restaurant in Macchino for a quick cappuccino and catch-up with Michelle before taking Reggie for a walk, and then treated ourselves to lunch out in Montecarlo.

Reggie was pleased with the doggy bag we brought back from lunch!

It will be back to work as usual from now on, but the weekend has been blissfully free from paint/sawdust/concrete/mortar/plaster/wood stain and all the stresses of the last few weeks. All the hard work almost seems worthwhile just for the joy of having a weekend off where we don't feel obliged to do anything - something of a rarity for us.

So... coming soon will be a blog post on how to construct a Tuscan ceiling (step 1: don't do it - get someone else to do it for you...).