The thought of renovating a 300 year old apartment in Venice had even me, who had renovated three houses in New Zealand, feeling slightly overwhelmed. Mind you, 100 year old wooden, single story villas are rather more manageable than a handmade brick apartment in a five story building, on a canal, built on top of timber posts from the Balkans at the time when Antonio Vivaldi was composing his magnificent music and Casanova was drinking in Cafe Florian, on the Piazza San Marco.

However, we flew in to this crazy thing full of enthusiasm.

Painters were employed to sand the whole place and seal the walls where the rising damp was taking over.

We decided against knocking walls down or trying to modernise the bathroom. It was a typical working class apartment, probably renovated about 30 years ago, and of course although crumbly on the outside the interior was solid – too solid to screw anything into it seemed.

The light fittings were too much to bear, there was no oven – as is the norm. Italians cook on the stove top. We were lucky there was a kitchen at all. Most people take their kitchens with them when they move.

A heat pump and air conditioner was desperately needed as Venice in the summer gets up into the 30’s Celsius and it’s always dead still.

You start to lose your sense of humour if you can’t cool down.

Well, it all seemed pretty straight forward. Except the drill bit needed to get through an exterior wall was about a metre long – it was like something out of Star Wars.

On top of that, the external workings for the air conditioner were not allowed to be seen from anywhere. At all.

Also the Sky dish was not allowed to be seen from anywhere. At all.

By this stage we had men working all over the place, no English and my Italian lessons had only just begun, but it all started coming together.

The shutters had come off all the french doors to have a lovely fresh coat of the Venetian green seen everywhere.

The thing is, for one set of french doors there were four shutters, all hinged to go different ways. Eight shutters, each one slightly different. Plus two windows in the main bedroom, so another four.

I decided to go and have an Aperol Spritz at the little bar down the road.

Two weeks later, the works for the air con were installed in our magazzino (storage room on the ground floor), I never did see where the Sky dish went, the shutter jigsaw puzzle was solved and they were now all glossy and glamorous and a new oven had been installed.

The next job was furnishing, curtains and light fittings. Easy!