I was excited to restore this property, consisting of 4/5 rooms on the ground floor and a room on the roof terrace. Included in the sale was what was once a stable, which will be restored to form a stand alone unit at a later stage.
We started work at the end of November and the ground floor and roof terrace were finished in June. Initially the work went very quickly although we had to do lots of structural work, as removing the panelling and plaster revealed that the walls were in poor condition. The house was built at a time when earth based mortar was used between the stone blocks, and the rising damp which is prevalent in Nardò (the water table is high) just washes away the mortar over the decades.
As you can see in the video, most of the walls were panelled up to a certain height. Wherever you see this you know this has been an earlier (not very good) solution to rising damp and that the walls behind the panelling are not going to be in great consition. The house was also very dark and we had to add beams in order to widen doors to let more light in. There was also an archway into bedroom number 2 where removing the plaster showed that the original beam no longer had any support on one side so we had to build a new wall (with foundations) infront of the existing crumbling one and rest a new beam on that.
Another thing which was fiddly is that we had to take up all the cementine around the edge of the livingroom in order to be able to be able to pass the plumbing and wiring conduits as we wanted to save as much of the floor as possible and it is difficult to take them up without breaking them.
We started work at the end of November and finished the main house and terrace at the end of June, having treated rising damp, replaced windows and doors, re wired and replumbed, adding fancoil units and a heat pump, added a bathroom, replaced some of the original floor and re roofed the original bathroom and the stair well. Lots of plastering and structural work.
As you can see from the before video, the parapets on the terrace were crumbling and needed partially rebuilding and new coping stones. The surface needed a deep clean, regrouting and then a protective finish.
We needed to present a ‘change of use’ SCIA for the room on the roof terrace which was a deposito but is now a large bedroom with ensuite bathroom. This produced significant delays due to the council being super ‘job’s worth’.
The room appeared on the current floor plans but the council insisted we access the land registry archive as it didn’t appear on the pre 1942 plans. This took weeks as we also had to access aerial photos from the 1950s. Since 1942, in the historic centres of towns, all building work or changes to existing buildings has required permits and no such permit was on record. While it is true that adding unlicensed rooms on roof terraces is very common it was clearly not the case here. Sure enough, there was nothing on record but the room was clearly pre 1942. The windows and doors were visibly older than this and there were stone details on the facade. The room had been a hay loft and, while installing the bathroom we found the opening to the old chute which lead to a to a storage chamber and then to a neighbouring property. In the end we had to have an ‘expert’ report and the council relented. A far cry from the days where it was enough that the sellers declared the property as predating 1942 – something to be aware of when you are purchasing a property.
After a lot of blood sweat and tears the top room is also now finished and we are moving on to the property next door – more of which later. Il cortile Antico will be available soon for short term lets – watch this space!
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