More on Orta!

The apartment also has a truly charming little garden, complete with a palm tree and rose bushes. The door to it is in the kitchen.


Here's a picture of the living/dining room area (not too good a picture; I took it late at night):


















To my left, as I took the picture, is a little fireplace, and behind me is a window that looks out over the front area of the condo.





Here's my friend Mindy, taking a break from helping fix the place up when she visited in August of '04. She is sitting in the window I just described, and to her left is the fireplace (this was an earlier photo, before we got the pull-out sofa.)

Fixing up our little place has been one of the most fun adventures I've ever had. Northern Italians are extremely polite, friendly, and tolerant of ignorant Americans who cannot speak their language. The help and kindness we have continually received as Alan and I have attempted to re-make the condo will never be forgotten. To give you some idea of what we've done... here are some pictures!



















Here are some "before" shots of the garden...














This is another picture of Mindy, who heroically came over to help us work on the place. Here, she's taking apart an armoir that was so badly molded, it could no longer be used. Once we broke the armoir into pieces, we had to haul it to the local dump (open only on Wednesday mornings and operated by the only nasty-tempered Italian I've yet to meet, who shouts insults at you if you don't put each thing that you bring in its proper place to be recycled. He'll snatch any item he fancies out of your hand and trundle them off to his hut, which I suspect is furnished with 100% recycled materials.)

Here is a "before" and "during" picture of the kitchen:






The bath, before:



After:

















We installed a "lavasugatriccia" in the place - a combination washer/dryer!!! Learning how to operate it is half the fun, since the directions are in Italian!

More pictures...

Entryway...


There has been so much to do...
But it has been a blessing from beginning to end... a blessing we want to share!!