A new pergola

 

We have a new pergola on our roof terrace. It does not only protect us from the sun but also from rain! Lovely to sit outside and listen to the rain drops falling on the sail fabric.

One more month of summer. And my little Cycas palm tree will grow.

 

And if you think the cycas palm was planted in a plastic pot - no way! It is an not easy to find real terra cotta pot. The weight? 30-40 kg! I got two of them, and a strong guest who carried them two floors up! Thank you! :-)

And if you wonder how we got such a nice pergola - just in case you wonder - yes, of course, it was Angelo, as always, who managed to fix all by himself, although the given measures of the ordered pergola (Unopiu) did not exactly suit our terrace. Here you see him at work:

 

He worked on the construction a couple of days. All we were able to do was to provide drinking water, clean up after him and worry about him climbing around on the balustrade. The longest work was the drilling with the wrong drill bit, but at the end it was all fixed and perfect! It even survived the first rain storms!

 



Beautiful! Thank you! Now the roof terrace comes to life, with shade and palm tree(s).

I was thinking it would be nice to have a ping pong table up here to play table tennis. But maybe the winds are too strong. Or a hammock... framed or not... let's see!

ringhiera blu

I am jealous myself ...

I can't be there right now.

Instead I am sitting here in super cold Germany with 10 degrees and rain.

But at least I have something to dream about !!! :-)

PS: one would almost not see the antenna....

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And here to compare one "BEFORE blue paint" picture:

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photo update of the completet ballustrade:

Fantastic job, Angelo ! Salute, cincin !

blue blue blue

Isn't this colour amazing ?

This ringhiera (balustrade) is not for bellezza (beauty). It is for safety.

But now, with this blue coat of paint it became really beautiful !

And here we have the first bathroom to come to life !

With some blue colour it looks so inviting !

Many ask me what the palazzo is doing. It is progressing so fast ! You won't believe it because I have no time to blog. But Angelo is still on site and pushes the work continiously. He is there everyday. And he sends me pictures everyday. I just can't keep pace with him and post everything new and pretty.

BTW, I am back from Bangkok (back in Germany). I spent there three full days. We did decide on the school for our son. But not about the place to live in. Actually, I could start the countdown for the move to Thailand now ...

Unfortunately our German school holidays for this summer start late (end of July) and the British international school holiday in Thailand end early (mid August), so there is no time to spend summer holiday in Italy in our house and on the beach. It seems that we have to wait until next year to enjoy what Angelo is preparing and organizing so well.

Do you know how big of a role does football play in Italian men's life ?

That big:

- our 6 m high TV antenna -

I am filing this post under the label "Now I have to live with this". BUT I am NOT going to live with this. Either out neighbour is going to sue us, or I am going to buy a metall sew ! - was my first reaction.

I wrote a post and saved it as draft, because I cannot publish something I am too emotional about.

So I slept over it - one night - two nights ... now it has been almost four weeks. It kept me from writing about other nicer things a lot. But now, this thing needs to be introduced. 

My husband explained to me, that the antenna needs to be six meters high because of the mountains behind Pizzo, and in order to capture some channels that he would not get otherwise - some football channels.

Got it?

Italian men's first priority in life: FOOTBALL.

Italian men's sense for aestetic, that is very high, comes after football.

It seems that I am the only one in the family who disapproves this ugly monster antenna.

Italian women probably are used to this technical support for their husband's hobby.

Even my little half-Italian son seems to not understand me.

He said about the photo : "Wow! How cool! Looks like a space station's antenna !"

(He is 6 years old)

Well, I hope it must be possible somehow to move that thing to the left (close to the wall of the house). If one sets a foot on the terracce it should not be the first thing to see. It needs to move. I will keep you posted.

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update: it was possible to move all to the left! :-)

What we did today

Pizzo weather today:
20 degrees Celsius (in the shadow), calm sea, Stromboli view

This was a beautiful moment:

Seeing our son playing with his friend from the neighbourhood - on our terrace for the first time - it felt like we finally live here ! Although it is not the case yet. So, while kids were playing, others were working...

Inside CC was grinding the beams (travi) to prepare them for the paint job

I was making sure to order the right quantity - and the right size of tiles (6,5 cm x 25 cm) by drawing the pattern with crayons on the wall (I opted against 12,5 cm x 25 cm, which looked too much like bricks).

And : I decided on the hight: 1,20 on the wall with the sink and max. 1,30 on the wall with the toilet flush push botton. (for internal use: 6,45 m2, Ricordi, bianco Capri, finitura lucida, d'Agostino)

Outside, others tried to clean the facade from some spots with a high-pressure cleaner.

Some minor kids scribbles were scratched away and Angelo wanted to repair it with colored plaster

Angelo at work.

I discovered that this time a I have a wide angle camera to shot the entire house in one picture ! And while making more pictures I scented some lovely fresh and sweet fragrance in the air....

 

... I looked up and saw this orange in neighbours garden right above me. The flower of the orange tree does not only look like Jasmine it also scented similar to Jasmine. What a lovely surprise this morning !

More oranges in neighbour's garden

See, while others were working I was taking pictures.

In the afternoon, we drove to Vibo to place the orders for the first bathroom - finally. And when arriving in the shop, CC stumbled over a Bisazza mosaic sample - that we added to our order spontanously (just to have some colour over the sink) - and CC almost ordered a tourquis colour because he liked the first picture in my flickr set (see last post) that much ! (I sent him the link last night) I am pretty lucky with CC's taste !