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Fig. No. 1: The living room (soggiorno) facing west. At the top of the stairs are
2 little steps up through the archway into the living room. On the right side of
the arch you can see a stone "donut" sticking out of the wall (I guess Silvano
and Natale thought we might need to tie up our horse, if in the unlikely event we
get one, in the living room!).
Fig. No. 2: Let's call this, "Stair with flip
flops." As originally constructed, the
building had no internal link between the
floors. Because of its central position, both
physicaly and functionally, we wanted a real
stair in the atrium: something comfortable,
compact, and because of its visibility from
almost every room, sculptural. The stair
curves around a punched metal plate, each
tread just floating out from the center.
Fig. No. 3: The other half of the living room facing west. We're working on the
fireplace to get it to stop smoking. Apparently the mouth of the fireplace
opening into the room is too large, so we're making it smaller. We're having a
piece of copper fabricated to close off part of the top and a metal plate on legs
fabricated to raise the fire up. Whether it will solve the problem is unknown. As
our friends cautioned in dialect Italian: "You know, you really can't tell how a
fireplace is going to burn until after it's built". Under the window is a shallow,
roughly carved stone basin that drained outside, suggesting that this room was
probably the 19th century kitchen area, with cooking done in the fireplace.
Sometimes when we go over to Lulli and Cristina's house for dinner, they cook
the meat (carne) in their fireplace. Needless to say we are ALWAYS available
to go eat at their house, "Fiume," in the lower part of Montanina.
Fig. No. 4: That's Steve at the top of the
stair. The space that the stair runs through
is two stories tall and the stair connects to
a bridge which connects the living room to
our bedroom. We call this central space the
atrium, and we had big hopes of using it as
a greenhouse during the winter, but it's a
little too small!
Fig. No. 5: A view of the north half of the living room. The floors are chestnut,
as are the beams which are part of a open stone ceiling.
Fig. No. 6: The bridge from the stair with
the master bathroom beyond. One of
Steve's projects is to bend and shape a
wood cap on top of the rail.
Fig. No. 7: The master bath. There are 2 parallel walls of glass block which
form the south side of the atrium and the shower wall. You walk behind the
glass wall into the shower.
Fig. No. 8: Looking across the bridge
towards our bedroom. At the top of the
atrium is an operable skylight which faces
north. It really helps cool down the house in
summer.
Fig. No. 10: Our bedroom (camera da letto) faces east, and the north and east
walls are stone. The ceiling is also stone with square 6"x8" chestnut joists
(travetti) about 18" apart. Our bed was one of first purchases. It's iron from the
early 1800's with painted medallions. Interestingly, it's made to take apart for
ease in moving.
Fig. No. 9: The view out of our bedroom
window facing east. Click to enlarge.
