Prior to our purchase

I wanted to show a couple more before we bought pics, so you can get a good idea as to what we were buying! As I stated, a beautifully shaped pile of rocks! When I went house hunting with my inlaws all those years ago, this was the last house we looked at.





After experiencing the view and the serenity of the place I felt we had to have it! Silly me............. nine years later we have the house back on it's feet but not much else! The experience I had on that weekend all those years ago to find a house was truly a wild ride.
I flew into Florence on a Saturday morning, was picked up by my in laws from the airport and immediately we drove to Perugia to look at homes. I believe we looked at 7 houses that day, returning to Strada in the late evening well after dinner. As we ate a late supper my father in law told me about this house that had been for sale. He had sent us pictures of it and we had told him no we weren't interested. He thought the house had been sold but if I would like we could stop to look at it on the way to the airport in the morning. That's right, I flew in on Saturday and was flying back out the next day! Crazy youth! I told him it would be fun to have a look.
The next morning we left at 6:00 am to check out the house.
The access road was in such poor shape that we left the car several miles away and walked to the property. As we approached I was transfixed. The early morning light was filtering through a thin haze, coloring all in a rainbow of hues. The greenery around us was a deep vivid green, luscious would be an apt word to describe it. For an abandoned property it felt like home.
As I walked up next to the building several thoughts and feelings rushed through me, was the building going to collapse right before my eyes? and Look at that front yard! The view from the front is spectacular! I knew at that moment that this was the house for us. It spoke to me that morning in a way I'd never experienced before.
I told my father in law that we needed to find out whether or not we could buy the place and if we couldn't we needed to figure out a way to!
I got on the plane later that morning as excited as I'd ever been in my life. Needless to say my father in law found out rather circuitously that the property had become available again having been under agreement which fell through. We immediately jumped at the opportunity. Maybe it was fate?
Nine years later it is still a beautiful place, made even more so by the craftsmanship that has gone into building the house.