Despite being registered with the city for two bedrooms (due camere), we plan instead to use the second floor for our future lounge and kitchen. The valley views from second floor are only slightly blocked by the buildings across the street and are quite spectacular. We also envision enjoying aperitivi and light meals on the rooftop terrace and it’ll be much easier with the kitchen more adjacent to the mezzanine and terrace stairs.
Access to the second floor is from the staircase shown on the top right of the floor plan above (such as it is). You’ll come up the stairs along the back wall and then turn toward the front of the apartment to enter our future lounge. In symmetry with the first floor, there are two decent sized windows, with the added benefit of lovely valley views to the south.
The other staircase shown in the floor plan is one of the options being proposed for accessing the mezzanine. A second option (and one we’re starting to prefer) is to have the staircase start along the left wall heading up toward the back, then turning for a few steps to arrive at the mezzanine level along the back wall.
The mezzanine is a little hard to describe but think of it as a third floor (or floor 2.5) floating above the back third of the apartment, overlooking the future lounge and kitchen below. Because of the slope of the townhouse roof, there’s not quite enough headroom for the city to allow the space to be designated as living space, but it’s only just short of the requirement and is really quite comfortable. The most important function of the mezzanine is to get you halfway to the rooftop terrace!
Again, the blue lines along the edges and down the middle of the drawing indicate the structural stone walls of the apartment and cannot be moved, although we do plan to create a fairly large opening between the future lounge and kitchen.
Lounge (to be)
This picture is a view of the future lounge (soggiorno) from the top of the stairs that come up from the first floor. Again, the sellers did us big favor by stripping everything back to the walls and exposing loads of lovely bricks and stonework. We will close up (or a least narrow) the current passageway from the lounge to the kitchen and create a larger one more centered in the space. Since the center wall is loadbearing, we will need to get engineering approval and install a steel lintel or arched stonework.
The darker stained beam and planks in the foreground (top right) are the underside of the mezzanine. The orangey/yellow tiles and lighter colored beam in the background (and somewhat obscured by scaffolding) is the sloped roof of the townhouse.
It’s hard to see in the picture, but there is a new flue installed above the corner to the right of the window which we will definitely take advantage of! Perhaps a double fireplace to be shared with the kitchen? And a pizza oven? Dreams…
Kitchen (to be)
Our future kitchen, as seen from the back left corner of the second floor. Once again, the flooring will be updated! We will most likely create a wall just under the front edge of the mezzanine to create space for a pantry, storage, and a small bathroom.
Mezzanine View
This picture is taken from the front wall of the future kitchen and shows the left “half” of the mezzanine. The stairs to the mezzanine will be located somewhere in the rear of this space, with the rest being walled off for the above-mentioned pantry, storage, and WC. We’ll also replace the temporary railing system, most likely with tempered glass to allow light to filter down from the skylight and terrace above.
And then there’s the view from the future lounge and kitchen windows, looking south over the Val d’Orcia, lake Trasimeno, and Montepulciano lake…
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