The Banana Bread Project

How sweet it is

Living in Sicily and being New Yorkers permits us to do two things we like to do: share our love of Sicily with family and friends back home and share our culture with our friends here. We spent the last month hosting friends, showing them what we love here. For those that cannot come, we hope this blog and our Instagram posts gives a good sense of our love for this land and the people.

One example of sharing our culture was grilling hamburgers for the restoration team on the 4th of July. The title of this post is another example. I like to bake, Luz likes me to bake, and she likes to offer my baking creations to friends. We found out early on that the crew LOVES bananas. Luz suggested I make my banana bread. When we mentioned this to the team, they looked skeptical. Bread? Sicilians are master bakers of sweets and pastries, but banana bread is unfamiliar to them. They took the first bread with some hesitation. Now, months in, I bake it every few weeks for them. We enjoy seeing their eyes light up when the banana bread arrives. It is a simple way to show our appreciation for their work. So the project has taken on the nickname of The Banana Bread Project.

Sneak peek

Ready for a peek behind the curtains? Curious to see what the end product will look like? Okay, let’s take a look. Of course we will start with the floors. In the first post, I mentioned we fell in love with the antique tiles of the floors, but not every room had them. Some had been replaced with material current at the time (e.g. 1990s marble in the salon).

Initially, we were only going to do the ingress, corridor, and our bedroom (what had been the kitchen for the previous owner) with replicated antique tiles. We selected the patterns and colors we wanted in the initial visit at Romano (a video in an earlier post). Subsequently, we decided to replace the marble in the two rooms that will become the kitchen and salon; no worries, that marble has been recycled and put to good use. Where possible, we reuse.

I mentioned Romani Pavimenti before. They are a 100 year old family run antique-tile making business. It has been an absolute joy working with them (each of the three brothers has a unique and fun personality). Here is a video and picture of Romano Pavimenti making one of the tile designs for us (in the final post, you will see which room it is for, as will I 🤣!)

What is a restoration project without a few discoveries along the way? Given the apartment is in a palace built I think in the 1850s by a patriarch for his family (need to do my research), it has been through several iterations as evidenced by the little gems we found along the way (a long time resident said our floor was a primary school at one time). So, as plaster was removed to build the trenches for the electrical wiring, we discovered holes in the walls. To construct upper floors, holes were put in the walls to insert wooden planks for the builders to climb to build above. Sometimes they were filled in, others not. When you walk around Catania, you can see exterior walls with holes in them. (These were used for scaffolding and as the myth goes, were intentionally not covered so that the builder could claim that the structure was incomplete and avoid paying full taxes. Similar to the myth of southern homes in the U.S. using pocket doors to avoid paying room taxes).

In the last post on our construction, I included a picture of me putting my arm in one such hole. Here is another one in an interior wall that we will keep open.

We also discovered where old doors existed to connect rooms. The framing of the doors has given us the possibility to include some elements in the final design. Here’s an example:

The Dynamic Duo - Serena & Franco

Play Time

“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”. I will assume most readers are familiar with this quote. (Finally saw the movie during the pandemic. Good movie but I have a bone to pick with it. Why is the one character to be killed the only black person with a speaking part??? But I digress.)

The restoration work is challenging and strenuous but who says you can’t have fun? The team’s positive attitude makes the atmosphere light and enjoyable. Like making designs with the plaster:

Wait. I hope this isn’t their idea of my head! Hmmm 🤨

Or little hearts left around:

We think we know who did this.

Or highlighting hidden subfloor tiles in Serena-style:

Or shadow puppets:

T-Rex is in the house

Enough fun and games. Next up: Franco’s major worry.