A new start!...

We dreamed to write this post months ago but, for reasons too difficult to explain on a blog site, here we are announcing the start of our restoration works only now.

The D-Day will be the 31st of March 2007. Finally!!!!!

Now we are excited to start the recovering and restoration of this beautiful old Tuscan farm.

I promise to all of you to write regularly about to project and all its steps.

Yesterday I got a mail from a friend who I respect very much. He wrote me this beautiful words:
“quando mi necessita una cosa non smetterei mai di desiderarla, ...... ad un certo punto vedrai che le forze dell’universo cospireranno perché ...... accada!”

For all of you who are wondering to realize a more little or dream, I invite you to find out the meaning of the words above and to go for it!!!!

Spending a little more time on our blog today I would like to bring up the argument of preservation, conservation and restoration of a building with a true story.

Not just the love of old things and preserve them, but living a project day and night, feeling responsable for the beauty in our hands, spending time to teach ourselves as much we could, reading, talking with experts and, last but not least, confronting us with the different way of restoration during the last 30 years in Tuscany.

We, after teaching ourselves, are more aware how many buildings can be ruined, their special character obliterated or swept away, by the ill-advised and hasty actions of new purchasers.

These mistakes usually arise because of ignorance rather than malevolence towards historic buildings. The fault may be laid at the feet of professional advisers, builders, owners, or all the three of them.

Buying an old building you have to be prepared to accept its particular character, its quirks, even its warts.

It is essential that you adapt to it, rather than trying to iron it into shape according to a completely different model.

There was no standardization in old buildings; they followed the logic of their location, the dictates of materials and the skills of the period. If you make those undulating plaster walls around the house plumb-straight, with every corner razor-sharp, your Tuscan farm will have disappeared.

You will have thrown the baby out with the bathwater.

In an unaltered property, the door and windows will follow the proportions of the building as a whole. Replacement doors and windows, especially those easily bought off-the-shelf, have no such sympathetic relationship to the building.

It is very important to seek professional advice at the earliest possible moment. We discussed with different specialists on old buildings of this type and period, and asked to look at other work they have done.

The specialist were people as architects or a chartered surveyors with experience in historic buildings; it is their expertise and attitude to the building which is the issue.
It took some time to choose the builders, the firm we nominated for the restoration of our farm, but we ensured us that we have found the best people for the job.

We will move slowly, to know the property thoroughly, and find out everything we can about it.
First we will spend our money on the essentials. Once we will start, works stay under discussion daily.

We will first work with what we have …we don't attempt to make a simple house grandiose

When we have to add to the building or do new work in the interior, we will not ape the existing.
We will work first respecting and understanding the character and qualities of the old but,
adding own contribution, respecting the proportions and form of the building.

The new work will be honestly of its time, our own time. Our approach of the very beginning will be taking the responsibility to keep the character, age and charm of our historic old Tuscan farm.

So for those of you who thought we would start ripping out the building carelessly with a bulldozer maybe this little introduce has more sense.

Another friend has already played with our project and you can find out in the picture how he did restore our main fireplace!!

I would like to invite you to the links below.
Three different people,
three different stories,
but one thing in common.

www.sextantio.it preserving the past...
www.arteagency.com preserving the past and present...
www.flickr.com/photos/lesec/ preserving of the present...