Different Views

Today, for a change, I don't want to 'torture' anybody with too beautiful pictures from colourful magazines or websites. So I post two other pictures that show a bit more the real situation. I hope you still can dream of visiting Italy.


This is the basement or so called 'semi-interrato'. I call it Garden Floor, because of it's tiny green space. Nobody has lived here before. It was a storage for olive oil and handmade soap (probably not at the same time).
I like this floor best. But it also needs the most of the work to make it liveable.

And the next picture show you, why I had second thoughts...


The house hangs on the edge of a cliff, about 54 meter over the sea level...
The rock itself has been renovated and reinforced with European Community money. So I hope they did the right job. Maybe you can see from the photo that they insert a concrete plate under the house... The vulcano Stromboli and Vesuvio (Naples) are sourrounding us. It is an earthquake region, yes. Okay, the house is up there since more than 200 years. So, hopefully another 100 years would be fine for us (and our son's family).

Now, you can see what I mean by considering us crazy getting involved in this.
And this is one of the better pictures. I did not want to scare you off completely. Maybe you pass by one day and want to spend a night or two...

Mood Board for our Project

Thanks to Holly Becker's 'Mood Board' contest on Decor8 I finally pushed myself to create a board for our palazzo project. It should help to define the right style for the house.

Here is what inspires me:



Here some more details from the board:


Shells in shells. That's how I could place our shell collection somewhere.


Sea view from the garden floor with iron gate.


Fresko over a door, painted by reputated painter 'Carioti', who has last lived in the house until he died in 1997.


Bouganvilla and cactus plants at the Restaurant Go, near Pizzo Calabro. That is how I picture my tiny garden on the rock.

Actually, the renovation has not started yet. Architects were supposed to make proposal, but nothing has happened in the last six month. Of course the main problem is that at the moment we are based on the other side of the world. However, my father-in-law will be on site in the next days and kick-off the thing. He will be there until we arrive in mid-July for a three weeks summer holiday.

Bathrooms Boudoir Style

Would you split a big room into a tiny bedroom and an even tinier bathroom with no window? Assuming you have enough space, eh a palazzo? I rather opt to sacrifice one entire room to be a nice bathroom, 'boudoir'-style. Le boudoir (french) = the lady's room or "bower", means a room separated from the bedroom where you / ladies can bath and dress.

Here is my inspiring collection of bathrooms boudoir style:







For more inspiration see also my post about bathrooms with wallpaper. Only use tiles until half hight (like in the photo above). Then use color or wallpaper to turn the bathroom into a more cosy space.

My only remaining question: which of the five rooms (below) should be our bathroom?

My favorite at the moment is the top left, with one window facing the sea. That would make a boudoir with sea view! We could install the sink in front of the window with a little round mirror, like in two of the pictures.

Photo source: different blogs, and flickr - Sorry I kept not track who posted it first and from which original source (internet or magazines).

Wallpaper for the Bathroom

I think, wallpaper in the batroom or guest toilet would be kind of chic. If you do not agree, maybe just one wall? Imagine sea-theme wallpaper, blue and white ... this might be something special. Again, it is wallpaper from Thibaut.



Pictures: 'Nautilus' from the 'Resource II' collection and 'Chairs' from the 'Barbados' collection.

All pictures are from Thibaut.

Wallpaper Chinese Style

Although wallpapers are not really used often in Italian houses, I got interested into wallpapers through blogs like Absolutely Beautiful Things (ABT) and an article in AD about Villa Polisena in Rome that has a Chinese room (see my post). I can picture to have a Chinese-theme room in our Italian house. This would always remind us of our exotic life we had (and still have) in Asia.





... and maybe even wallpaper in the bathroom:



Pictures from:
Thibaut thanks to ABT (no. 3,5)
Lehman & Qian in Shanghai (no. 1,2)
Wallpapers and digital murals ... from flickr.com (no. 4)

And one more link I just found via Designamour:
Fromental in the UK