To say I am gutted is an understatement. Today I was supposed to sign to purchase our new house. The champagne was chilling in the fridge. I had taken time off from work so that I could spend time with our builder and Fräulein to look at the house and put the plans together to bring it back to life. Yesterday the estate agent copied me in an email saying the signing has to be postponed because one of the old dears who is selling the house is in hospital and they are waiting for her to be discharged (or to say goodbye to this world). I don’t normally swear in my blog but. oh bugger!

I shouldn’t really be surprised after all this is Italy.

January I fell in love with an old house in the countryside, the house is a 35 minute drive from our little house in our cute village. I persuaded Fräulein to come and have a look at it, even though we haven’t finished decorating this house. There are a couple of things that need to be said about this new house, first, it is beautiful, second, it is huge and third, parts of the house date from the 1800s.

Fräulein and I made a life change about three years ago when we started to look after houses for Americans and stopped teaching English to sticky horrible Italian children. This progressed after we organised for a roof to be repaired at one house, then a kitchen fitted in another house and now we project manage complete house restructuring. We even have a website Greytek

While searching for a home for a client, I dropped upon this house, it didn’t suit their requirements, for example they actually wanted a kitchen and a bathroom and this house only has one cold water tap and a sink.. But I love it and it has great potential.

The house might not have a bathroom (there is a toilet in the garden) but is has a huge garden, I have managed to persuade Fräulein that I need a red tractor to mow the acre and a half of garden. Next we will argue over who gets to drive it.

Anyway, the price they wanted for the house and land was more than we wanted to pay so we haggled and managed to drop the price by 35%.

I thought it might be interesting over the coming months to add a few blogs of the purchase process of buying this house, and no doubt the tears and swearing that will happen as we restructure the house and finally instal a toilet and kitchen in the house.

The new date for signing the house purchase deeds is next Wednesday so don’t hold your breath.

Fräulein is going to buy some nice soft loo roll for the toilet and a place to put some newspapers and magazines..

Oh! I need some help thinking of a name for this house. Pecora’s Folly might not be appropriate, so start thinking and bounce me some ideas over.