A House Worth Slowing Down For
People often ask us how the renovation is going.
The honest answer is that it doesn't really feel like a renovation anymore.
A few evenings ago we found ourselves back at The Nook. One of us was sitting on the bottom step of the stairs, while the other was leaning against a chalky wall. On the floor we'd placed a broom to mark out where a glass interior door might sit, and in the corner was a pile of dust and bricks where, in a moment of curiosity, one of us had knocked out the floor of the modern hearth to reveal the original stone fireplace behind it. Using a key, we scratched through the soot to reveal white limestone.
What joy!
We'd spent the afternoon designing a bespoke cabinet for the kitchenette, debating where the bin should go and whether a shelf needed to move by a few centimetres.
Neither of us wanted to leave.
Although, if we're honest, we spent most of our time downstairs in the cool of the cantina, escaping the summer heat.
From Renovation Project to Sanctuary
Somewhere along the way, this little Italian stone house stopped being a renovation project and became somewhere we simply enjoy being.
We always wave at the house as we drive past. It somehow has a personality of its own.
On our last visit we bumped into one of our neighbours. She pointed out each of the surrounding houses in our little courtyard, telling us who lived where, whose car is always parked outside our cantina and who tripped over the cobblestones last winter. She said our house had stood empty for decades.
We're restoring an old stone house in San Donato Val di Comino, but it has become about something much bigger than choosing tiles or deciding where a kitchen should go. It's teaching us patience, curiosity and the value of sitting with an idea rather than rushing to the first solution. Renovating a house this small has also changed how we work together. There isn't room to guess. Every cupboard, every shelf, every socket and every light has to earn its place, so we've learnt to slow down, understand what the other person is imagining, and work through it together.
The Art of Slow Design
Sometimes we completely disagree.
Usually one of us says, "Let's leave it until tomorrow. I need to think about it." We've learnt not to dismiss ideas too quickly. Giving them time often changes how we see them.
More often than not, one of us walks back into the house and says exactly what the other person had quietly been thinking all along. There is something surprisingly enjoyable about designing like that.
Uncovering the Cantina
One of the biggest conversations (once we'd moved on from how to squeeze a shower into the house!) has been about the cantina.
When we first saw it, we loved it immediately. We didn't really know why, only that it felt special. Later, we showed some photographs to an architect friend who pointed out the quality of the groin vault and the craftsmanship of the masonry. It was one of those wonderful moments when somebody lends you their expertise and you see your own house differently. We realised we hadn't simply fallen in love with a beautiful ceiling. We'd stumbled across something genuinely extraordinary.
The cantina was almost certainly a working space. It may have stored food and wine, or perhaps even sheltered animals during the winter. Yet someone chose to build a beautifully crafted stone groin vault, the sort of feature you would normally expect to find in a church, monastery or grand palazzo rather than beneath an ordinary village home. Today, very few houses would be built this way. The craftsmanship alone would make it prohibitively expensive. Yet here it is, tucked beneath one of the smallest houses in the village, quietly waiting for someone to appreciate it.
After more than a month of waiting, the electricity was finally connected. We may have turned the lights on and off twenty times, something so ordinary suddenly felt like such a huge milestone. In Italy, even getting the utilities connected can require patience. But the biggest surprise wasn't the light itself. It was what the light revealed. Instead of looking at the bulb, we both looked up. The vault came alive.
The cantina will eventually become a kitchen and dining space with bespoke shelving and a handmade table and benches. We also want to preserve the old metal hooks fixed into the ceiling, a small reminder of the building's original purpose. Suddenly, every lighting decision mattered. The wrong light would flatten the stone. The right light would quietly celebrate it.
The Stonemasons of San Donato
As we've spent more time wandering around San Donato Val di Comino, we've begun to notice the same quality everywhere. Beautiful arches above front doors, carefully dressed stone around windows and tiny details that most people probably walk straight past. The village has a long tradition of skilled stonemasons, and once you start looking, it's impossible to stop.
The more we look, the more questions we have about our own house. Who built it? Who carved the vault? Did the mason ever imagine that, centuries later, two people would spend an entire evening discussing how best to light his work? We'll never know.
What we do know is that the house has already waited hundreds of years. It doesn't need us to rush now.
Custodians of History
We're incredibly lucky to have the opportunity to bring The Nook back to life, and we never lose sight of that. If we've learnt anything from this little house, it's that the best part of restoring an old building isn't getting to the finish line. It's learning to appreciate the craftsmanship, the history and the conversations that happen along the way.
Perhaps that's why The Nook already feels like much more than a renovation project.
It feels as though we're becoming temporary custodians of a small piece of San Donato's history, taking the time to understand its story before we write the next chapter ourselves.
Project Details
Location: San Donato Val di Comino, Lazio, Italy
Property: Historic stone village house
Project: The Nook
Key architectural feature: Traditional stone groin vault (cantina)
Focus: Slow restoration, thoughtful design and preserving traditional craftsmanship
The Nook Journal
The Nook Journal follows our restoration of a tiny historic stone house in San Donato Val di Comino, Italy. Through these journal entries we share the design decisions, craftsmanship, village life and small discoveries that come with bringing an old building back to life, one step at a time.
