Booking, contact & about
Please use this form to contact me for anything on this site
Hi, I am John Heseltine, joint owner of La Rupina with my wife Ana Maria. We moved to the EU in 2016, splitting our time between Tuscany, Lisbon and London.
This site came about when I thought it was time to start cataloging our experiences as much for myself as anyone else, its very easy too loose track of where you have come from and why you did it all in the first place. Looking back now I see I would describe it as a lot more "Bob the builder" than "La Dolce Vita" than i was expecting.
Deciding to go down this route I can pretty much guarantee that there will be times you wished you hadn't, that there will be days when you climb into bed exhausted knowing you will have to get up the next day and do it all again, but there will be other days when you stand back and look at what you have done and say to yourself "I did that". To keep going you just to make sure the later outweighs the former.
History
Having experience of hands on practical work is a huge advantage, after I left school I went into engineering at GEC Generators in Stafford and later doing contract work on high pressure systems on power station boilers. In the 80's I lived in London and learned about electrics and plumbing and later lived on a Dutch barge which I converted into a houseboat.
By the 90,s I was working in desktop publishing as a freelancer then I moved into CD-ROM design and production. Early 2000's saw me designing websites for Mercedes in the London office of German advertising company Springer & Jacoby.
By mid 2000 I moved into medical education and marketing working in Europe and the USA. On the 26 June 2016 the UK had its Brexit vote and the next day I started planning for my own Jexit.
My advice
There is an expression in building work that there are three elements to every job, speed, price and quality, you can have any two but not all three. Give that a lot of thought before you start. Which one are you willing to give up?
I can't give you specific advice on anything to do with house building and renovation. In Italy rules and regulations are open to wide interpretation its just not possible to apply what I know about my house to yours.
What I can tell you is not to assume you can take on a building and expect to do it all yourself, it's not the wild west. Don't go by what you see on tv or youtube, these videos are made to entertain, they are not to be taken literally. There are strict rules here, make sure you know and understand what is acceptable in your comune and with the people you may be working with before you do anything that may get you into trouble.
If possible I would suggest you find a geometer, builder, electrician and plumber before you buy a house, not after. After may be too late, in rural locations where skilled people are few and far apart, you may sudenly find out that you are not the one that gets to choose. Our decision to buy was very impulsive, but we already knew who we would be working with before we made our offer, the right property just hadn't appeared, when it did we moved fast and we were ready to go.
Pay your invoices promptly, things like this are important in rural areas and people take money seriously. If you are a good customer and you pay your bills, literally everyone in a ten km radius of your house will know this. You may not know them but you can guarantee they know all about you.