Abruzzo project: Villa Eventhyr
The story of how easy it is, during a renovation, to confuse trust with professionalism.In other words: save yourself from an "&"
Part V
Everything can be saved. Except trust...
When we finally arrived at our house in Manoppello, we realized the situation was worse than we had imagined. The contractor hadn’t created a single right angle in the entire structure. The staircase descending from the terrace narrows as it rises, while the structure built around the olive tree, instead of being rectangular, resembles a trapezoid. Moreover, the drainage was done using a regular perforated pipe in some places, rather than a proper drainage pipe. There was not even a trace of geotextile fabric or a layer of gravel. Everything suggested that the pipe was simply meant to be covered with soil.
The incomplete and poorly built wall, however, does not represent a real problem, because we will know how to remedy that. Today we look at this affair differently. We didn’t lose six months. We saved several subsequent months of stress and, probably, huge and difficult-to-manage expenses.
The worst-case scenario, in fact, was not a crooked wall or poorly executed drainage. The worst-case scenario would have been spending hundreds of thousands of euros progressively losing control of the project and finding ourselves, at some point, with no way to turn back.
Paradoxically, the symbol “&” present in the company name became for us a symbol of something completely different. It did not represent the union between contractor and client. It became the moment we had to choose between continuing to proceed towards ever-greater risks or stopping and saying:
"Enough. Let’s start verifying everything from the beginning."
Today we continue to love our Eventyr. We keep planning its renovation and believe that soon it will become exactly the place we imagined.
However, we know something we initially ignored. In the renovation of an old house, the most important material is not cement, brick, or installations. It is trust. And when trust is lacking, no amount of cement can repair the structure of a collaboration.
We will find trustworthy professionals, but we will also carry out many jobs ourselves. This project does not end with the renovation of the house. In a sense, it is just beginning now.
Abruzzo has enormous potential that we are just beginning to discover. We still have a lot of work ahead of us, not just physical. It also means meeting new people, building new relationships, and gradually finding our place in a world that, until a few years ago, was completely foreign to us.
Despite all the experiences we've had, we continue to believe that people are not inherently bad. Sometimes they are simply disoriented, sometimes they follow different values, and other times they do not realize the impact they can have on the lives of the people they meet along their path.
If this story has taught us anything, it is that a detailed cost estimate should be available before the work begins, that friendliness does not replace references, and that the larger the investment, the more important it becomes to rely on clear documents and precise agreements. And perhaps it has also taught us another thing: if something continues to seem strange for too long, it usually isn’t a coincidence.
Our Eventyr story in Abruzzo does not end here.
This is just the first chapter...
A website created in the WebWavewebsite builder.
Via
Manoppello, 65024