7 September - Birthday, and a new House Under the Tuscan Sun?

John's actual birthday started with a bit of a lie-in, but not much because we had to vacate the villa by 10am. Our daughter and family were up early and packed and organised to leave by 9am. She had also prepared John's breakfast for him. We felt there was one last opportunity to enjoy a coffee and pastry together at the cafe 5min down the road, so jumped in our two cars. 

On the way, John and I spied the stone house that had caught our eye while browsing a local real estate website the day before, and which we had organised to view at 11am that morning with the agent. Our daughter was very keen to have a look at the property too - it was only 500m down the road from the cafe. We gulped our coffees then all went to tramp around the outside of the house and its outbuildings and generally  ruminate over what sort of work needed doing on it, and what the possibilities were. We were all extremely taken with it. The property ticked many of our boxes, more than we probably thought possible. The downsides are that it fronted onto the local road, and would require more structural work and money than we had been considering.

Not daunted (she wouldn't be doing the work!), our daughter gave us the thumbs up, and jumped in the car with her family to head off to Florence for the next three days. We drove back to the cafe to meet the real estate agent, and an expat English translator. After another coffee we headed the short distance to the property and spent an hour and a half going through the two main buildings and looking over the section. 

Located at Il Passaggio, Pergo, between a pizza shop and bar to the east,
and a cafe-bar, pizza shop and supermarket to the west

It has 2 main buildings, and assorted outbuildings on a small plot of land facing south to the sun

Site plan, overall just under 600m2, front garden about 180m2

View from the road. The property includes the driveways each side.

Between the buildings. The left house is livable,
the right needs re-roofing and some upper floor work.

Between the buildings from the east

From the south. The middle brick lean-to would be removed, also some of the block wall.

View from the east. The second house has a garage under it at each end

View across the road from upstairs

View from the entry loggia

Gorgeous view from the main building

Bedroom (top level)

Living room (middle level)

There is without doubt plenty of opportunity for developing the property and making it extremely attractive and comfortable. However the annex building needed to have a completely new roof and flooring, though its walls were good. The main building was more of a refurbish job, with completely new kitchen and a bit of floor levelling. The garden area below the second house was about 9m by 15m, and would mostly just need hard work - vegetation clearance, knocking down a shed (old butchery) and converting the piggery shed into an outdoor kitchen - but faced south over a beautiful landscape of rolling hills, wheat and sunflower fields, and would even have room for a small pool if desired. The Tuscan dream! We suspected this place might spoil any future properties for us - it really was pretty special. The agent showed us a costed breakdown of a full renovation provided by a builder. It was a bit eye-watering, but then we'd expect to do an awful lot of the non-structural stuff ourselves.

By 1pm we needed some time out so said goodbye to the agent and translator and headed back into Cortona town to enjoy another lunch at the terrace restaurant. It was John's birthday after all. 

Lunch in Cortona

Cortona from below

Cortona this time was alive with people - rather more tourists than might be ideal. With plenty of more discussion under our belt we backtracked again to have another look at the property, this time during a rather heavy rain shower. It was very exciting - we could see the possibilities so clearly. By the time we ended up hitting the road to get to our accommodation booked in Pistoia for the night it was after 4pm. 

We arrived in Pistoia before 6am, found our Airbnb easily, dragged ourselves to the Conad supermarket down the road, where we chose a few quick and easy items to heat up or have as a salad for dinner at our place that night. Of course after dinner everything about the property was going around in our heads. John slept pretty well but I was awake an awful lot, thinking about all the pros and cons and ifs and buts.