[QUOTE=pwalmsley;8422059]Hi
Well we may find out at a later date
Can I ask without being nosy (O.K so I am)

How long have you been in Italy? Nearly 3 1/2 years, feels longer as I rarely go back to the UK. More likely to go to Spain or France!!

How good is your Italian? Rubbish. My Italian friends tell me it is getting better, but incidents like the passport debacle remind me how bad it is and I have "mental blocks" in conversations all the time. If I can't rehearse, I find it hard. My nearly 6 year old is fluent...

How do you find living in Italy in general, we are only there at the moment as a tourist I suppose. Would it be realistic to think of moving there on a permanent basis eventualy?
If you have enough cash - and this is a movable feast - you can live here. My OH has his own business based in the UK, I don't work, to live here on a pension would be near impossible without another source of income I would think - I'm sure those around that age will answer that better though as it must depend on the pension I suppose! So either loaded or a source of income is needed. Expect all utilities to be twice as much as the UK and you might be pleasantly surprised. Bureacracy is a pain and slow and customer service is pretty much non-existent. BUT if you love Italy enough you can do it! I'm living proof of that! I'm on a downer with the place right now, but I wouldn't move back to the UK unless it was to a penthouse in London with the right views....

Hope that helps, and I am waiting with baited breath for other responses, they will come, I know they will!!

Would love your input on these questions, but don't won't want to appear to nosy.
Both myself and my O/H love being out there and find it harder and harder to come back to the U.K . In fact my other half will be there in April as he is taking building materials and equipment down to work on the house, I won't be there as I've to much work to do at home.
Is the weather getting better where you are? here we have had a harsh winter because we only need a flurrys of snow and the whole country comes to a stanstill anyway (but joking aside it has been bad)

Gorgeous today, but it has been the worst winter I've known since visiting Italy and living here!!

I didn't realise you'd been here so long Testa!! I've been here for 2 and a half years and I am here as my partner is on secondment with his British firm. My Italian is getting better but it still doesn't feel natural or fluent and I make an idiot out of myself all the time!! I've got two kids who are at school here and both of them are now fluent although it's been hard for my son who is now 10. I live up to the North of Torino and there is hardly any English spoken here at all so I do need to speak Italian really. I have a love hate relationship with the place to be honest. I miss my life and my friends in the UK but living here has meant that we have been able to save quite a bit of money so we're still hopeful that house prices will fall further in the UK so we can actually buy ourselves a house in the South East without crippling ourselves.... not sure if it will really work though as I get itchy feet about every 3yrs or so....

"Wow
Its a small world
Yes we have been to Pizza Napoli and your'e right they are good. we normally get a taxi to the train station and the train takes about an hour and it's straight through it costs about 5/6 euros and we find it easy enough.
The house we bought was about 6/7 years ago now and it hadn't been lived in for around 30yrs so hence the reason we took a caravan down. We have been living in the house now for about 5ys but theres still work to be done on it. We have found materials and such as bathrooms and kitchens to be expensive in Italy so every now and again my O/H will take a van down filled with materials and things that we need. By the way the house was in need of a big renovation project when we first bought it, but we now have 1 finished kitchen, 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms completed. So if you are in need of things like scaffolding cement mixer etc you know where we are.
My O/H is taking the van down on the 20th April loaded with more equipment but I will not be going to much work on at home at the moment.
I will be there for a 4/5 weeks come July/August and even then I still won't want to come home it gets harder all the time we both hate coming back to the U.K but due to work we have to.
"
Hi Pauline

We too have found almost everything building related out there to be significantly more expensive. I am doing the same as you, taking materials out from England. I have an old CR-V (4x4) with a towbar and a trailer which is out there at the moment- you may see it driving around as her FIL has been using for the past few months. I'll be using that to take out kitchen/tools etc again next time down.

I've stripped all the walls back to bare stone and will be repointing soon, so was going to take out a mixer etc. If you've finished your works and want to sell a mixer etc then let me know! It'll save me driving them down. Unfortunately compared with here tools are such a killer as there is no competition between shops. There is a small B&Q style store near Ovada and a few small builders merchants, but I've become spoilt in the uk with such a choice of builders merchants and DIY shops, let alone ebay! No-one I've met in Italy seems to use or even trust e-bay...

I've a builder friend in France and the choice there is a lot larger with prices for stuff like windows/shutters being a lot lower than Italy but for the same casement window styles.

Where did you buy all your sand/cement etc in Acqui? Have you used any lime products for your render & brick laying or have you just used sand/cement?

As for Casa Wallace, the wife is American and they have family over often. They have a holiday home in my FIL's village perched up on a hill. Small world.

Cheers

cdm

Hi
O.K my O/H has taken himself of to the play badminton so I can't ask about building materials I can tell you though that he has become friendly with the local builders merchants and knows where to go so I will come back to you on that one. As for D/G windows and doors we found it cheaper to order in the U/K and take them down there as well as G/H equipment and even the wood stove was cheaper here than in Italy.
And like you we found it cheaper to take a kitchen down rather than buy over their.
If you are like my O/H then you won't mind driving form here to Italy but I hate it so I suppose it depends on how you want to do it, does your O/H mind the drive?
Just come to me but one of the places my O/H goes, is when you go onto the slip road as though you was going to Bennet from the Swimming pool you carry on that road and over a bridge then on the left hand side there is a builders merchants that I know my O/H uses if this make any sence, let me check this out.
The next time we are in contact I will make sure my O/H is here to answer your questions.
So you know of Casa Wallace I have to say when we drive past I do feel envious it looks a beautiful place to live.
Cheers
Pauline

Hi Pauline

I was amazed at how much cheaper so many things are over in uk. As for the driving, I used to take 2 days and stop off on the way with my OH for the night. It was great fun and we loved the trips. Now however we have a 15 month old, so I'll be doing it on my own (or leaving little one with Zia for night). Last time I did it on my own in 1 day (5am -midnight) which was a bit of a mammoth trip at 70mph. I don't feel very comfortable with a trailer filled with bits and bobs stopping for a nap so did it in one stint....

I know the buikders merchant you are talking about having driven past it- on the way to the hospital/bennet. At the moment I haven't started building works with vengance. I was warned by the local geomatra not to be seen doing too much work without a permit as we are in a national park and the forest patrol (forestale?) have quite sweeping powers to report and enforce this kind of stuff.

Until we've finished all our house in the uk I won't be allowed to start out there. Managed to buy a house in uk with no central heating or wiring needing full renovation the day before OH found out she was pregnant Can't wait to get stuck into our little project over there.

Did you replace the windows with UPVC or wood. I took out and fitted a glazed UPVC front door for my FIL which was a fraction of the price, but can't find matching double glazed in wood in uk that open inwards to fit the shutters/bars.... I've found these in France for approx 200Euros each.

Can't wait as we're flying out tomorrow am

Hi there
O.K so rub it in you are flying out tomorrow lucky devils
Right first of all we replaced the windows with UPVC that look like pine from the outside but are white on the inside which we ordered from the U.K and took over. But since then which was a couple of years back now, I have become more upto to date with E.Bay and have got some fantastic bargains so you might want to look at this.
As fot the geomatra when we started work he came out to visit a few times and then left us to it. We have by no means finished our house but as I've said before we do it as and when we can afford, but I would recommend that you look on E-Bay. Just last week we were able to but some UPVC windows for as little as £30.00 per window.
As for driving in one stint that most have been hard don't know where you are in the U.K but it's exactly a thousand mile from here to the house in Visone.
Hope you get this message before you set off tomorrow and if you do have a FAB time and GET SOME WORK DONE before the hot weather comes, bring it on.
Cheers
Pauline

Just a quick message my O/H has just said he uses a mix of 2/3 part sand 1 cement and 1 calce bianco this makes it workable the calce works as an adhevice as well hope this helps.
Cheers
Pauline

[QUOTE=TestaRossa;8422094] Hi and thanks for the info
The U.K has nothing going for it at the moment while we have that idiot Brown destroying the place. Because we only use the house at the moment as a holiday home we don't find the utilities to bad in fact last years council tax was about £125.00 (for the year) and we pay more than that per month here.
Thats good that you little one has picked up Italian so well.
I can understand why you don't bother coming back to the U.K often unless its to see family. We have to work a few more years before we retire but we will eventually move to Italy but probably keep a small place in the U.K because of family. Maybe because we have only used the house as a holiday home to press we do find we can live out there cheaper than here, is it because we only ever stay for 4/5 weeks at the most and thats through the summer months and then we tend to live outdoors. Maybe if we were to live there we would find it different.
(Is life greener on the other side who knows)
When we first bought the house we were told that we connected to water, but it turned out that we weren't so we had to pay about £2000.00 then at a later date we discovered that we had also paid for our neighbours to have new water pipes replaced at our expense. The day the guy came from the water board for me to sign that we were satisfied with the work my O/H happened to be out at the time and I went into a real panic but I was adamant that I wasn't going to be bullied into signing becasue I was on my own. In the end the guy went away without my signiture this must have been about 5yrs ago now and nobody has got back to us.
What we have found really really expensive is buying material and equipment to do the house, so every now and then my O/H has taken a van load down with things like G/C/H, bathrooms, kitchen, stove and furniture which even with fuel and ferry crossing was cheaper than there.
What is the weather like now? here its rained all day and is forecast to do so for the next 2 days. We have also had snow this year and the whole country came to a standstill in January which was O.K as I got an extra to days off work.
Time to go take care
Pauline