We weren't really planning to start demolition that evening.
It was August in San Donato Val di Comino, and the village was in the middle of one of its summer festas. The streets were heaving. Cars were squeezed into every conceivable space, sometimes two or three deep, a 40-piece marching band was making its way through the village and there were people everywhere. Even in the evening, it was still over 30 degrees.
August is festa season in villages across this part of Italy. Families return from Rome, Naples and further afield, patron saints are celebrated, streets fill with music, processions, food and long communal evenings, and villages that can feel wonderfully sleepy at other times of year suddenly burst into life.
We were passing The Nook, our tiny old house in the historic centre of San Donato, and decided we would just pop in and lift a tile or two.
Madness and excitement, determination and curiosity.
It was also the evening we once again found ourselves appreciating the little patch of space directly outside the house. In a village where parking suddenly becomes a competitive sport during a festa, being able to pull up outside our own front door felt like an extraordinary luxury.
As anyone following our Italian renovation journey will know, we spend almost as much time thinking about how to seize the parking spot outside The Nook as we do the renovation itself.
But we have a plan to make it ours. Watch this space. There is a reason Machiavelli was Italian.
Anyway, that evening we were spectacularly ill-equipped for what followed.
We had one large builder's hammer, a metal chisel, no rubble bags, no bucket and a dustpan and brush that was already falling apart. We were both dressed in linen. One of us was wearing flip-flops. There wasn't a builder's glove in sight.
What we did have was enormous enthusiasm and a burning desire to know what was underneath the floor.
We had been talking about what to do next, and one thing we are discovering about renovating an old house is that physically being in the space makes everything less abstract. You can draw plans and discuss floor levels for hours. Sometimes you just need to lift a tile.
What Lies Beneath an Old Italian House
We started breaking up and lifting one tile. Then another. Underneath we found layers of old concrete, broken bricks, tiles and rubble. Lots of rubble. What had looked like a relatively straightforward floor suddenly revealed itself as a substantial excavation job.
Then came the fireplace. We had wondered whether an old marble or tiled hearth might survive underneath the existing concrete base. We had already discovered that the fireplace surround, blackened by decades of soot, was actually original stone underneath. The hearth presented us with a dilemma. We want to remove the raised fireplace base completely to create a clean, flush floor line through the room. But if an original marble or tiled hearth had survived underneath it, neither of us could have brought ourselves to destroy it. So we chipped away rather nervously. Concrete. More concrete. And eventually, relief. There was no beautiful piece of marble waiting accusingly beneath our hammer. For once, not discovering an original feature was exactly what we wanted.
Higher up the chimney, however, we did make another discovery. After pulling out what felt like several decades' worth of newspaper stuffed up the flue, we found an old iron hook and the original bar that would once have been used for cooking over the fire. That we hope to keep. It is exactly the sort of small trace of the house's history that we want to preserve wherever we can.
And Then There Was the Rubble
Back to the floor.
One of us was hammering and digging while the other attempted to sweep up decades of dust using possibly the world's least effective dustpan and brush, while simultaneously providing encouragement, nervous supervision and general clearing duties. Obviously, the one wielding the hammer was sweating considerably more than the one providing encouragement.
Bricks began making their way downstairs to the cantina simply because we had nowhere else to put them. This, we are learning, is demolition. The satisfying bit is wonderfully immediate. Hit something, lift something, remove something and suddenly the room looks different. The less satisfying part is that everything you remove has to go somewhere.
We found ourselves yet again incredibly grateful that the opportunity had arisen to buy the cantina next door to The Nook. What initially felt like useful extra space is rapidly becoming essential: somewhere to work, store materials and, currently, create an increasingly impressive collection of old bricks and rubble.
For a tiny house, The Nook is producing an astonishing amount of debris.
Renovating a House in an Italian Village Means Meeting the Neighbours
As we worked, the neighbourhood began to take an interest. In truth, there has barely been a visit to the house when someone hasn't stopped to see us. The Nook had been empty for more than three decades, so naturally people are curious about who has bought it, what we are doing to it and why the two of us keep appearing at odd times with tools, sweeping steps, pulling things apart and looking disproportionately excited about old stone.
The local teacher who lives opposite chatted to us from her step with her daughter, both delighted and curious about what we were doing. The conversation soon moved from our floor to something apparently much more exciting: fibre-optic broadband. When we arranged the new electricity connection, we were offered the opportunity to have fibre brought to The Nook. Reliable high-speed internet is essential for us, so naturally we said yes. The neighbours had encountered the engineer during one of his visits and were fascinated. Fibre is not yet something everyone in these small Italian villages can take for granted, and suddenly there was considerable interest in whether our connection might mean that other houses in the street could get it too.
Then we met the uncle of the owner of the red car. Anyone who has been following our parking saga will understand the significance of the red car. It turns out that the uncle owns the house immediately next door to The Nook, a property that sits empty for much of the year. This information produced two very different reactions. One of us immediately began mentally knocking through walls, acquiring the neighbouring property and imagining what exquisite things might be done with the extra space. The other, rather more accustomed to the rhythms of Italian village life, understood instinctively that when there is something you might one day want to buy, the correct strategy is to express virtually no interest whatsoever. Apparently this is a long game. We will keep you posted. Possibly in several years' time.
Why We're Stripping the House Back
There is a more serious reason for all this destruction.
With an old Italian house that has been altered and patched over many decades, we think there is value in resisting the temptation to start making it beautiful too quickly. Before we build anything back up, we want to understand what we actually have.
That means working out what is original, what is sound and what has simply been added over the years. Only then can we make sensible decisions about floor levels, drainage, electrics, plumbing, insulation and heating.
The floor is a perfect example. Until we lifted those first tiles, we couldn't know what was underneath or how much depth we had to work with. That matters when deciding how the new floor should be constructed and whether we can incorporate underfloor heating without creating awkward changes in level.
And then there is the clearance.
A surprisingly small area of floor can produce a surprisingly large mountain of rubble. Every piece has to be carried down our narrow stairs, stored and eventually taken away.
For anyone contemplating an old-house renovation in Italy, don't underestimate demolition or waste removal. Taking something apart can be remarkably quick. Getting several hundred kilos of what used to be your floor out of a tiny old village house is rather less so.
The Italian Terracotta Floor We Hope to Put Back
Once we have stripped everything back and understand the levels properly, we can start rebuilding. For the main floors, we are leaning towards handmade Italian terracotta tiles, laid traditionally and waxed rather than highly sealed. We want something warm, imperfect and tactile that feels as though it belongs in the house rather than something trying too hard to look old.
We are also investigating underfloor heating. In a house this small, every centimetre matters, and not having radiators occupying precious wall space would be a huge advantage. Whether it is possible will depend partly on what we discover as we continue digging.
And then there is the top floor. Up there, we want to do something completely different: a bespoke mosaic floor designed specifically for The Nook. It is a small area, which gives us the freedom to make it special. We are already playing with ideas for the pattern and ways it might reference the house, San Donato and this beautiful corner of Lazio.
But first, more rubble.
The Pleasure of Renovating a Very Small House
By the end of the evening we were filthy, dripping with sweat and staring at a floor that had revealed considerably more work than we had imagined. Strangely, it made us feel better about buying such a small house. Every time we uncover another job, we think about what it would mean if The Nook were three or four times the size. Every floor lifted, every wall stripped, every piece of rubble carried out would multiply with it. Here, nothing yet feels insurmountable. Everything is a learning curve. Almost everything reveals another job underneath it. But the scale means we can learn as we go. We arrived that evening intending to lift a couple of tiles. A few sweaty hours later, surrounded by broken bricks and rubble, with the sounds of the festa carrying on through the streets of San Donato outside, we were beginning to see the bones of our little house. And that, really, was exactly what we'd come for.
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.
