Stall Diving

La Stalla

 We recently acquired a space next to our apartment that had been owned by our upstairs neighbor. This was in reality little more than transferring the ownership from him to us, not a bad deal for some added real estate. Suffice it to say that this space can increase our living area by about 60%...at some time in the future.

Our first view of la stalla

The new space we call la stalla as it had been a stall for animals. Not uncommon for older for homes at one time to have kept animals in a lower level of the house…the original central heating. There is a stone and wood trough for feeding, a stall gate and various animal implements. The problem is that this is all buried under decades of debris as Fabrizio had used this as a collection point for everything he didn’t want, but for some reason didn’t throw away. This includes hundreds of glass bottles and a lot of lumber.

My new hobby since we have taken procession of la stalla is “stall diving”. Originally there was not much more than a narrow path from the front door to the only window. Slowly I have hauled some trash up to the dumpsters in the piazza above us. There is an abundance of lumber and various wood crates, much of which has insect damage. The worst of this I am breaking down for our fireplace while I sort through the rest to see what may be salvageable for some future project.

I have found a few interesting items like old wood feed buckets, some wood harnesses, wood boxes, copper kettles, unique bottles, etc. I am developing quite a collection in our magazino. Some of this may be junk but for this suburban American they are unique and interesting.

Riciclare

I have hauled out bags, boxes, bags and more boxes of glass bottles and cardboard. Fortunately our town has an active recycling program and I arranged with the guys that do the pick-up to recently do a big load. I spent a morning hauling glass, cardboard, lots of metal and a couple tires up the stairs that lead from our house to the nearest location where they can get to with a motorized vehicle. The next day it was all gone, thankfully.

Some progress

 This will be a long term project as adding this area to our living space is a future project. However, it is something to keep me occupied on some of the current cold winter days.