Ready For Our First Guests!


It has been a long 7 months but I am very pleased to share that Il Casale di Mele is now ready to accept it’s first guests! Like many new projects you begin, things seemed to take much longer to complete than we first anticipated back in December when we first acquired the farmhouses, but I am thrilled to be able to say that everything is now finished. The house is decorated, the kitchen stocked, and all the house needs are the first guests scheduled to arrive next week. What we initially planned as minor restoration to repair cracks in the upper level bedroom turned out to be anything but minor, resulting in basically a completely brand new bedroom and en-suite bathroom upstairs. During the renovation, we lost a tiny balcony off the back of the room but now with the room extended, it is much more spacious and the larger balcony off the front is by far better suited to watch the glorious Umbrian sunsets from. Although we hadn’t expected to be doing such a major renovation upstairs, we are really pleased with the results and much prefer the way it looks now.

We have been back in Umbria two months, and time has flown by so quickly that it actually surprises me to realize that we are already into July. Setting up one Umbrian farmhouse is challenging enough, but attempting to set up two at the same time has required much more effort than we expected. We finally simply stopped focusing on our own house for a while so we could put all of our energies into the rental property. Now that it is now complete, I can finally take the time to better organize the house we live in and finish decorating it as well. Some folks who couldn’t imagine living in the Umbrian countryside ask if we ever regret buying the two farmhouses now that we realize how much work is involved, and I have to say that we certainly do not. If anything, living here the past few months has solidified for us that the location we are living in, as well as the property itself are a perfect fit for us. Now that the major work is finished and we can step back and take a breath, we are looking forward to spending more time really exploring our new home here in Umbria and the community around us. One thing we both love best about our property are the gardens. Although our vegetable garden is new this year, and was in fact planted a little late in the season, we are thoroughly enjoying picking fresh vegetables daily for our kitchen. Our rose gardens are glorious, and I love going and picking fresh flowers every other morning, thoroughly enjoying the lush scent that floats through the house from the vases of roses. We have large lavender bushes across the front of both properties that I trim and tie into bunches, setting them on our window sills to scent the bedrooms with the incoming breeze. Although new this year, the grapes we planted along the back of our property are thriving and if we can keep the birds away long enough for them to ripen, we will have an abundance of plump grapes to enjoy soon. Since we arrived in May, we have also watched the olives on our trees emerge, and it certainly looks by the sheer number of them that we should have a very good first olive harvest at the end of this year.

Do we regret jumping into this experience here in Umbria? Not for a second despite the daily challenges and occasional frustrations we encounter. We still walk on to the back of the pool terrace which overlooks the glorious green rolling hills beyond our property almost on a daily basis and have “pinch me” moments, not quite believing that we actually have accomplished finding our perfect property here in Umbria. We are very pleased that we already have a good number of confirmed bookings for this vacation season already, and I am getting more inquiries on a daily basis with folks asking questions about the property. I think our location, gorgeous views, and of course the farmhouse itself, are very attractive to folks wanting to explore Umbria. We are thoroughly looking forward to meeting the guests that have booked Il Casale di Mele, and hope to help them fall in love with Umbria even a little bit as much as we have!


Large Country Kitchen

 


Outdoor Dining Area With View Of Countryside

 


View From Pool Terrace At Sunset

 


View From Pool Towards House At Sunset

 


Master Bedroom En-suite Bathroom

 


Master Bedroom

 


The Front Of The House

 


Pool & Terrace at Night

 
Deborah Mele
July 2009
 

4 Comments

  1. what a glorious home…could I possibly trouble you for some pricing on renting one of your homes??

    1. Amy, we are presently not renting out our vacation home in Umbria. We hope to get back to Italy in the fall and will reassess then.

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