Our first visitors!

Phew! What a couple of weeks these have been! My sister-in-law and her family, including two wild girls of 11 and 14, came to visit us and the B&B part of our house was still far from finished. Actually, it was still closer to "derilict" than to "habitable". Only a concrete floor, dust and dirt everywhere, no doors, no bathroom, scattered cardboard boxes and other stuff of which we didn't know where else to put it...

So when they announced they would like to visit us, we kind of went into overdrive. I need a bit of pressure in order to get going, but this was close to madness. In a matter of weeks we had to decide about which wooden floor to put on the first floor, whether we were going to use the same tiles for the guests as in our bathroom, which bed we would order for the guests, which doors we would choose, find nice second-hand wardrobes we could restore and to do all of the actual work. In the end, we didn't really make it. The doors couldn't be ready in time (in spite of big promises), the flooring company hadn't ordered enough wood and Dopey Dwarf, the magic plummer, had made a total cock-up of the guests' bathroom. Some of the plumming had been put too deep into the wall, making it extremely difficult to connect e.g. te tap for the sink. Or the two exits on which I had to connect the shower tap were too far apart by almost a quarter inch. In the end, we hired some help with placing the tiles because we couldn't manage ourselves anymore. By the previous Sunday, when our family arrived, Christine and I were both knackered. Exhausted to the point of collapse. Fortunately Cosetta, our Italian mum, lent us a hand with the enormous cleaning job. Christine had also had to finish the plasterwork on the stairs which had created a mess you wouldn't believe. Even Thomas was surprised about it! :-)

But in the end she's done a cracking good job. I'd dare challenge all professional plasterers to do it just as well.

When my sister-in-law and her family arrived and saw our guest room, they were speechless. Even though there still weren't any doors and the toilet still has to be glued to the floor. No, not bolted because otherwise we'd probably pierce through the floor heating tubes! ;-) So it would just be a question of sitting on it very carefully. Hehehe... I'll post some pictures of the result later. Let me just conclude that they had a wonderful holiday here in Italy and that we all throughly enjoyed the warm sunshine during the outdoor lunches...

And a last picture of the two sisters...