Do not underestimate the impact of radiators to your interior!

Do not underestimate the impact of radiators to the harmony of your interior!

After a long period of great results and beautiful surprises, after smooth progressings and contenting solutions, has come a moment, unfortunately, we face some less funny facts. I am not going to file them silently under "Now I have to live with this". I am sharing them like the rest, in order to help others to avoid the same mistakes.

I know, it does not make a big difference, if you are 9,000 km away from your construction or away just for half an hour, when electricians and plumbers are at work, you better do not move from their side at all! They do what they think is most convenient for them and they do not communicate with each other, unless you are the interpretor. - Unfortunately, I have proof for it - see below:

plumber and electrician "marking" their territories on a wall in the dining area

Nothing is symmetric on this wall! - The good thing, I am saving money, because we will not buy the chest that was supposed to be at this wall to squeeze it inbetween these radiators.

kids room wall space wasted

And with the electrician already generously positioning their switches and pluggs far from the edge of the wall, the plumber had to go even further into the room. - A nice wall of over three meters, just gone! Where do I place now a wardrobe or a guest bed, please?! - My porposal: to order a new and higher radiatore that has 4 columns and ends in line with the switch. We might save 50% of its length. (Also not enough for furniture. I think we choose the wrong place for the radiator in this room, it should have been between door and window, as this wall is difficult to use.)


This heater is 5 rows too long !

To compare: a good sample

In order to match the wall size the radiator above was ordered with 4 columns instead only 3 and it is also higher (until switch) than all the others.


But now to our even more special cases in the bathrooms:

squeezed too near the door and too high!

Angelo sent me a 2nd picture from a different angel - there is not mucht to do, although I do not understand why the space between radiator and tiles must be bigger than to the door.

oups !

These pictures do really hurt!

Angelo defends all radiator placements (he claims we have choosen them and have seen the red crosses on the walls for the positioning), however, with this one he agrees to distroy his spatulato wall to correct the position. But we made a compromise: he is not moving it further right, but just further down so it is at least in line with the finish line of the tiles of the shower. - Later, I will buy 2-3 hooks for towels, and fix them between radiator and shower, so I do not need a 2 meter arm to catch a towel.

Now I have to live with this... (tubes are installed behind the wall and wall is tiled)

How could this all happen?

When we were "positioning" the radiators for our house we went through all rooms with the plumber and he had a red spray can in his hand. At that time the house was in bare shell state. I think, I had in mind how doors would open and maybe also our indoor window shutters, probably possible furniture placing as well. At that time, it was said, that the radiators are included in the plumber's "package". Of course we checked what kind of models we would get and if an "upgrade" would be necessary. My husband choose some normal okay looking radiators from the catalogue and the plumber apparently agreed on our choice. Anyway, everything seemed to run smootlhly.

Of course, the plumber would calculate the size of the radiator necessary to heat each room appropriately.

Attention: here was our mistake! Don't copy that!

Did the plumber exagerated with the heaters size? Yes, in the bathrooms, we should have discussed and determined the size before. For under windows or in niches a more exact size should have been choosen.

In other cases, especially in the kids room and dinig area our mistake was to choose "slim" radiators. Only 3 "columns" deep. So, in order to have the same heating power the radiator has to be 40% longer than a radiator with 4 columns. Someone should have consulted us about the impact of the choice of radiators.

Maybe it has also happened because during the last 13 years we had not to deal with this kind of radiators. Over half of the time we lived in Asia with built-in ceiling airconditioning - and the rest in Germany with an overhead radiation heating. It is not common at all in Germany, but in Swiss terrace condominums. Although the ceiling heating has some disadvantages, I really really enjoyed the radiator free walls very very much !!!

The Living Room is Coming

living area flooring done

The installation of the parquet (natural oak) is done for the piano terra (ground floor). Angelo handled it all by himself, day by day. Last night he sent me the picture with sofas without legs.

I just replied that the wooden flooring looks fantastic. Sofas look a bit bulky for our small living area ;-) and not too bad without legs. But legs can be found in the white Santa Fe tool box in the yellow guest room. It is coming along!

A Bathroom Vision in Blue

A dream of a bathroom! How colours can change the atmosphere! Actually it is not just painted blue walls, it is spatulato, a Venetian technique for making painted walls shine like marble.

a vision in blue

blue and pearl grey wall colour harmonizes two different pattern of Vietri tiles on wall and floor

the lighter blue of the ceiling matches one hue of the wall tiles

the wall paint reduces the strong contrast (see before here and here)

stucco borders frame the painted areas

view from above (while painting the ceiling)

beautiful perspective of a blue bathroom dream

A "specialist worker" waxing the surface of spatolato finish in order to obtain a surface similar to polished marble.

Bath room with spectacular sea view

I wish I could be there! I have not seen it in reality yet. I only have these photos for now and have to wait for summer. 

What a dream in blue!

Grazie Angelo!! You are becoming the new Michelangelo with this project! Thank you for choosing the right blue and for spending so much time on the spatulato technique.

Small Vietri tiles for small Kitchen

San Pietro 10 cm x 10 cm Vietri tiles by Francesco de Maio

This will be our small kitchen in the seminterrato. It is the one for the guests, in case they want to cook for themselves.... or when we rent out this entire floor as our guest residence.

There will be red kitchen. Something allegro. Red is a happy colour for a stone vaulted cellar. So next step is choosing tiles. We were looking at some bold Vietri tiles with red flower ornaments, there were some with quiet modern designs from the latest collection. But these tiles (20x20cm) were too big for this small area and also their red tone might not match the red tone of the kitchen, we thought.

Somehow tired after having choosen seven different pattern of tiles for the main kitchen, we were easlily caught, when our "personal" sales consultant of our frequently visited sanitary shop, presented us "San Pietro". A tiny geometrical pattern of something red and green on a 10x10 cm tile. Totally different from all these big designs we just ordered. Kind of boring, but also cute and tricky, a bit 70ies?

seminterrato kitchen walls are now tiled

The installation of these tiles were done in a couple of hours. There was only one email exchange necessary between Angelo and me to check wheather I am ok with an extra column of "San Pietro" on each side since we had enough excess tiles. - Oh, yes, and one extra trip to the sanitary shop was necessary too - to buy more of the white tiles, since I miscalculated the correct amount (for two kitchens).

Now, waiting for kitchen delivery...

Kitchen Tile Mix completed

The kitchen tile mix is now completed and walls are painted. - I am happy and relieved how the Vietri tile mix turned out.


the niche of the kitchen completely tiled

detail of the niche

entire result: Vietri tile mix completed

And I am very glad that I did the last minute change for the "u"-shape "frame" around the niche. The bue tiles (Greca blu) would have been just too bold. However, it is still a frame as its pattern does not involve much with the rest of the mix but more with itself.

After all, I have to admit, the best would have been to just continue the mix on both sides of the niche without any "framing". We only ended up like that because we started running out of tiles and needed to think how to integrate some left-over tiles from the bathroom that do not really match the mix. But at the end we made it!

How many tiles did we break? Very few, I guess. Good job, grazie Tonino, Mimmo and Angelo!

Also special thanks to Angelo for his patience and for allowing me an extra day to redesign some areas in- and outside the niche.

Yesterday, Angelo also finished the painting of the kitchen walls with our pearl grey colour.
The parquet for the flooring will be delivered next week.

The kitchen will be deliverd mid of July - just in time for our summer holiday.


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Update:
You might be interested in what inspired and reassured me to dare a wild mix: the Thun villa in Capri, an Australian villa in Positano, the D&G villa in Portofino and a restaurant in Sicilly.

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Remark:
Our supplier, Callipo in Vibo Valentia, has a good selection of Vietri tiles, thereof Francesco de Maio is our favorite manufacturer.