It’s been twelve months since we were last at the house, although it seems like yesterday. The garden has slowly taken over, and we arrived on Monday to find the front steps almost entirely enveloped in ivy. We’re here to clear the contents ahead of demolition later this year, and our mandatory five days of isolation have given us a chance to make good progress.
Since buying Casa Zefferino six years ago, we’ve rarely ventured into the corners of the cantina. Decades of junk – boxes with uncertain contents, ancient tools, pots of forgotten paint and the skeleton of a long-dead rat – have given us little reason to do so, and we’ve used this space ourselves as a repository for unwanted boxes we’ve not managed to throw away.
In the end, the task took less time than we expected. Sorting everything into a couple of piles – one to keep and the other to throw – didn’t use quite as much of our five-day quarantine as we expected.
With the space finally empty, and the house above it largely devoid of possessions too (with the exception of bulky furniture too heavy for us to haul down the stairs), the plan is for our builders to make a start on demolition this side of Christmas, albeit pending the formal approval of works from the Office for Reconstruction.