Changes in our Montecarlo home hard to notice, but still important

Each of the last four times we left our house in Montecarlo, we made arrangements with our downstairs neighbor, Juri, for improvements to be made. The first time, to repair the roof and add three skylights; next, to add a staircase to the attic; the third time, to install walls and flooring in the attic and paint and treat the roof beams for insects. Each time, we returned to Montecarlo to see dramatic and pleasing changes.

When we left the last time, in November, we made more arrangements for improvements, but the changes this time are much subtler, even if no less costly. We asked Juri, who is an electrician by trade, to completely rewire the house, adding more circuits, more outlets and a circuit breaker panel with separate circuits for lighting, kitchen appliances, the washer, the dryer, the water heater and the furnace. We had been operating with wiring that had been installed in the 1960s, and we could only operate one appliance at a time without tripping the main circuit breaker and plunging the whole house into darkness. To turn it back on, I had to go down two flights of stairs. In addition, the house suffered from a severe lack of outlets, forcing us to run extension cords in numerous places.

Our new electrical panel, now with multiple circuits, installed in our attic.

If the lack of circuits and outlets weren’t enough reason to order the work, Juri had informed us that our old outlets had not been grounded. We had wondered about this, as we occasionally received mild electrical shocks when loading the dishwasher or using the range.

We arrived back in Montecarlo last week to find the wiring all complete, with an abundance of electrical receptacles. Last fall we had purchased a used clothes dryer, and now we actually have adequate power to use it. This should come in quite handy, especially next week, when Dan and Sandy and their kids come to visit, along with their au pair Milagros. We’ll have nine people in the house in the middle of a rainy winter, when it can take several days for clothes to dry by hanging on racks or on the radiators.  So while the house doesn’t look much different than it did when we left, we realize that it would have looked quite a mess with wet clothes constantly hanging in every room.

There is still one hurdle to overcome, as Lucy and I have both been shocked when touching the dishwasher and range, so something is wrong with the grounding system. We don’t expect this to be a major issue, because we are confident that Juri can find the problem and fix it as soon as he has the time. I should also mention that during our last absence, the plumber finally got around to correcting the drain on our kitchen sink so that the waste water goes to the city sewer instead of the neighbor’s garden.

We’re hopeful that this will be the last major expense for some time, because frankly we’ve spent way more money fixing the house in the last three years than we ever expected. It turns out we were lucky our business didn’t sell, because we needed the earnings from the past two summers to pay for all our home repairs. Hopefully, this will be our last summer working full time so in the future we can have the option to come to Montecarlo in May, June and September (but still not during the insufferably hot days of July and August), when most of the sagre and feste are held, not just in Montecarlo but also in the surrounding Tuscan towns.