Spring improvements...
Archive post April 19, 2019…
Our Spring Home Improvements campaign continues apace…
Our painter, a diminutive & congenial fellow, came and tackled a peeling wall from humidity and/or water infiltration, filled in several cracks never repaired after the earthquake of 2014 in the Salotto of La Casa Grande and one nasty issue of…? Issue of…? An issue of an unhinged paint-job up in the MBR of the Appartamento Azzurro. The first and last are the most annoying:
we have a mystery humidity issue on the wall at the corner of the stairs in La Casetta. I thought water was a trickle down effect. Ronald was wrong and so was I. Apparently not always. The hypothesis of Our Painter for the flaking paint and rippled plaster & paint is caused by a sub-terranean drain pipe, and one not part of il Poggiolo’s drain infrastructure, which passes along and well below the wall of the stairs from our neighbor’s aia… or, courtyard, to the sewers below us all on this side of Codiponte.
I remember, way back in aught-9, while the Builder Guys were re-building Our Collapsed Great Wall at the entrance ramp to il Poggiolo and digging the trench-to-China to isolated the complex from the muggy soil around it, of discovering a vast and layered network of water pipes running below what would eventually become Our Terraced Garden… filled with olive and flowering fruit trees. Sorry. Sounds like an advertisement. It is. The weaving course of pipes looked more complicated than the LA interstates lacing through that city. The painter sanded, chipped, and dug out the disturbed area of wall, administered a sealant, plastered three layers of nylon netting and stucco, followed with You’s adore Sage Green paint color as the finishing touch, once the plaster had set & dried. The next day, a stain of humidity. Better but not best. We are now obligated to watch for further signs before re-addressing this issue. The Official Speak.
The latter is the sad & confirmed result of doing things on the cheap, gainfully aggravated by a collective ignorance and time worries from both myself and an available handyman commissioned to… do… The… Job. What’s the ol’ adage? Beer before wine, you’ll be fine but, wine before beer, and you’re sick for a year? Well, for paint, the admonition is… nothing catchy comes to mind… Don’t EVER mix paint types. The walls were originally covered in a lime-base paint… calce. A near perfect & natural substance which allows i Spiriti e l’Anima delle parete to breath. A fact I did not retain. It was many years ago. In came the handy-man to re-paint the Apt. Azzurro, post-earthquake, with Our Gorgeous Antique Blue in an acrylic-based paint and what happened? The calce rebelled. Like the walls are busting out underneath from suffocation. One entire wall’s paint-job of acrylic is lifting up AND off, for cryin’ out loud. Cannot tell you the embarrassment when I showed Our Painter the situation. Another adage and entertainingly explained by Cher’s pumber father in Moonstruck… You have to spend money to save money. Got that lesson down now. The painter and I have postponed this last Paint & Paste Project until the new windows of the Azzurro Apt. are installed.
Il Poggiolo is missing it eyes! Blue, they are and will be once again. A couple of windows & doors of La Casa Grande and Azzurro Apt., in all directions but, most evident from the aia, are now boarded up with plywood panels awaiting the restoration of their original structures. Two operai came last Monday and carried off the near-death array of windows & doors away… from the effects of wind, rain, cold and searing heat off the aia’s stone in our Summer heat-waves. Il Poggiolo now looks like it’s been in bad fight. The house will have to stay that way until after Easter. It will not be at its best for the On-the-aia Pasquetta Picnic on the Monday after Pasqua. The good news is we will be set up for that Commie Holiday, May 1st. At least that!