Godzillavilla:renovating in Liguria while living in Canada

It is a disease! Even though I have one I still look at others and think about what could be done. I just hate to see beautiful places falling into disuse. Thank you for the support!

Even now, with my monster project, I see other ruins and can't resist fantasizing about them. So much potential beauty mouldering away in the Italian hills!

I use Wordpress and it's not difficult to master (compared to something like tumblr) but my learning curve was steep. I had some geek friends help me out. The greater challenge is the writing itself, to come up with relevant posts that people want to read - and to keep them coming. A lot of people start out OK then run out of good content.  Thanks for signing up! 

Whereabouts in Liguria? Wordpress is an easy platform to set up - although I did have some help from a techie friend at the beginning. Tumblr is good if you're planning more of a photo blog rather than words. Lots of people blogging about Italy and renos - check out comments on my blog and you'll find a lot of them. Makes for a lovely community.

Thanks! Was yours already fixed up when you bought? Often I think that would have been MUCH wiser, although this is a heck of an adventure.

What knowledge??? Really were making this up as we go along - but are fortunate to have a great bunch of local people to rely on. Mostly we just try to have a very flexible view of our expectations on everything.   Thanks for your support.

That's a great site, thanks for bringing it to my attention. It's true this blogging thing is a lot of work, but I'm enjoying it. 

That's a very good question! Originally we were living in Italy and thought to create a B&B. But life changes faster than the house progresses...now that we're back in Canada, my first thought is simply to complete the house. I'm thinking of it more as a rental than a B&B at the moment. Theoretically these decisions would affect how we build it, but because all the interior walls are massive stone we can't actually change that much. The bottom level would make a great B&B space but to be 'in code' these days we'd have to dig up the cement floor, excavate, and create a new floor with space under it  - which also means creating a new steel collar all around the base to make sure the place doesn't collapse when we do all that digging around the pitifully shallow foundations.  All this to say - making it livable first, then we'll worry about the rest. Be prepared to spend way more than you intended! But it's a really fun adventure.

Quite honestly italy2012, don't do it. getting an Italian b&b is reminiscent of the Brits that had ill thought out dreams of buying a bar in Spain.Italy at the moment is an economic disaster area along with the likes of Spain and Greece and getting worse by the day. Tourism (foreigners and locals) is way down and has been going down for a while. B&B's here are struggling.Trying to get things done here is a nightmare, workers that don't turn up or take months to do simple things..Very expensive, both for builders, and Bureaucracy,Planning permission has to go through a the local commune that only meets once every few months which is then passed on to another authority which promptly passes it onto another authority.Although last winter was mild in general the winters are not that good, so a B&B is seasonal.Taxes, taxes on businesses and prices are rocketing here and corruption is rampant. There are new property taxes and new taxes across the board to come.