2208 Project Manager

We have just recently purchased a house in need of full restoration in the Arezzo area of Tuscany.

We are actually looking for someone/company who would manage the restoration project for us. We are based in London and are unable to be in Italy on a full time basis just at this time so it would be difficult for us to manage.

Does anyone know of such a person or company who deal in the managing of restorations in Tuscany???

Thank you

Category
Building/Renovation

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed, 12/28/2005 - 08:00

We are in a similar situation to you, having purchased a property near Arezzo earlier this year. It needs a fair bit of work doing on it though not, I think and hope, total restoration. We are using an achitect to project manage for us with builders from Sansepolcro. The architect was recommended to us and whilst some people say use a geometra rather than an architect as the latter are more expensive, from our research this does not appear to be the case. An architect does seem to be more concerned with the aesthetics however and less with the practicalities whilst I suspect that a geometra is the other way round.

However, work is literally only just starting on our house and till we see how it goes I am not sure that I can start recommending our architect and builder or otherwise. We have looked at some properties they have done and the work seemed pretty good - but of course we were just looking at the end result, whether there were trials and tribulations during the rebuild we dont know as we were not able to speak to the owners. We have a couple of names of other builders/people you could consider but you would have to check them out yourselves and see if you can get comfortable with them.

We are going out there tomorrow to check progress etc., back early next week. If you like I could give you a bit more detail by private email when we get back. You never know we might be near neighbours!

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Mon, 01/02/2006 - 08:39

If I could turn the clock back to when we bought this house March 2004, I would make sure that I was on-site to see that everything was done correctly. Unfortunately we both had full time employment and we had to prepare our home in the UK for sale etc etc... so it was impossible . Therefore had to rely on our architect/project manager.
We moved in June 2005, supposed to be finished but there still remains unfinished work. Because our project manager paid everyone in full, these people just will not even reply to our calls , letters faxes ....
The latest thing is the very bad smell in the bathroom.. we finally got in a plumber ( not the one who was paid 20,000 Euro ) and he discovered that the drains were blocked because they have not been installed correctly. He said to recall the builder as it was his fault. The new plumber has left the drains clear but tells us that this will happen again because of the bad workmanship. The builder ( who has also been paid in full ) , has not yet replied to us either. If only we had been there, we would have checked on every single thing they did. Left alone they just do not appear to be able to do a decent job.I also would have kept a percentage of the money back until I was fully satisfied... Good luck....