Remodeling Living Room & Bedroom, and adding electricity

This is the second in a series of posts about my experience remodeling an apartment in Florence.

The living room as it looked originally

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I didn’t hire an architect. I got some advice from my “Geometra” and then hired some Moroccan guys and attempted to be be a “manager” myself. This meant discussing masonry and electricity in Italian, which I’m not familiar with even in English.

The main Moroccan guy was someone I knew through an acquaintance, so I thought that would lead to me being respected. Wrong. (Abdulaziz and the non-Italian-speaking one were fine. But the main guy… read on to the end…)

I didn’t know the electricity wasn’t up to code 😱

I thought all I needed the guys to do was pull down the huge cement shelves, open up the door that used to be there (where the vanity is in the photo) and paint, as well as take down a sheetrock wall in the next room.

An Italian friend passed me to an electrician who turned out to be very respectful, really solid and trustworthy, and I had to wonder if him being a Jehovah Witness had something to do with it. I learned that my electricity was not up to code and was non-existent in places, and that the “dreaded trenches” would have to be cut into the walls.

Overview of the “before”

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The room on the other side (originally accessed from the hall) was divided bizarrely by a sheetrock wall which eliminated the light and cramped the space. I had the guys remove it and then build a new sheetrock wall on the long side of the room where I hoped to add a bathroom if I could accumulate the funds.

Bizarrely divided room

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Images from the first weeks of work

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Demolition chaos

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Now, this next one, please watch if you have been in a guest in this apartment or plan to be.

All guests must please massively appreciate the outlets by the bed!

Making the trenches was an ugly job, and not just for the workers. For me, living there.

The trenches create a dust that’s like an alien who keeps coming alive again after being killed

I followed the guys around with a mop all summer, trying to get a handle on the dust, but it just reappeared and reappeared. It was as bad as the toxic dust storms I experienced in Qatar. I had no idea what “dreaded trenches” meant, until I lived through it for the entirety of the summer along with 40+ degree heat (104+) and no AC.

Dreaded trenches

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Yup, it was like this all summer. Me, on my own, with endless men in the house, creating filth.

No, workers in Italy don’t clean up after themselves like they do in the US 😧

As the summer progressed I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to get them to show up. Oh, and don’t forget, if you’re on a higher floor you pay extra for them to carry rubble down the stairs. And then your neighbor blows her lid because your workers are “damaging” the stairs.

When remodeling, (especially with stone walls because the dust is truly deeply madly horrendous) do NOT live there like I tried to do!

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Here is more on the effort to install electricity.

Anyone else surprised at the amount of tubes needed?

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Painting! Far more fun than digging trenches! (Although challenging to communicate with a worker who spoke only French or Arabic.😅

At one point I called a friend in Qatar and had him explain in Arabic to the painter what I wanted 😂

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I won’t show the “after” pictures on this post because there was still SO MUCH to do to pull the place together. It was over a year after this when the living room and the extra bedroom were complete, with furniture. I’ll end this post by saying that by the summer’s end, the main Moroccan guy seemed to think he had developed special access to me after being in my house all summer.

Already it was a tough summer with no respite from the heat or the dust, and I couldn’t afford to stay elsewhere, nor could I afford to have a break at the seaside.

On the last day when he came to get his tools, he started grabbing me, and pushing himself against me.

I immediately told him “no” and “I don’t see you that way” and I tried to push him off. He did not listen to my “no” and kept grabbing and trying to convince me by saying how exhausted we both were.

(Dai, Chandi, siamo entrambi stanchi!) Dude, my exhaustion doesn’t mean I want to sleep with you!😠

When his cajoling didn’t work after my first five statements of “No”, he switched tactics and said, “devi ricordare il buon affare che ti ho dato.” (You have to remember the good deal I gave you.)

If he chose to give me a good price that’s his decision and I’m not responsible for it.

Welcome to the brutality of being a woman in the patriarchy. A guy does something for a woman and thinks she owes him her body.

I managed to get him out of the house but I had moments of being seriously scared. It’s not just the PTSD that remains. It’s the outrage.

That was the end of me trying to manage workers on my own. The following year, when I was able to take on more of the work, I hired an architect. He protected me somewhat, but some workers still leered at me which was very uncomfortable and triggering.

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