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87not worth arguing about and so we had to buy a new one ourselves. The stairs had had carpet sample squares nailed on to the treads and in a fit of pique over the cooker they ripped them out just leaving the nails and jacket corners of carpet. We rapidly found a problem with the house. It had at one stage been divided into 2 and so had 2 hot water systems using immersion heaters. The bathroom upstairs water was tied into a very small galley kitchen downstairs while a bathroom and toilet directly off the main kitchen was tied to that kitchen. Thus, we could cook in the big kitchen but had to wash up in the tiny one. In fact, we could not both get into that kitchen together. We made an immediate decision to bring the cottage back as one and started knocking walls down. In the end I redid all the plumbing and rewired the electrics. The bathroom off the proper kitchen became a utility room and we kept a freezer in it. The electrics were interesting. The original wiring was 2 core with an outer sheath of lead that acted as the earth wire. To connect the new wiring to the electricity box should have meant pulling out the main fuse but that would mean an electrician would have to put it back in and check everything I had done. Consequently, I connected the wires in with a steady hand. We revisited Buffavento over 40 years later and all was well so I must have done it right. In fact, the owner, who is the daughter of the people we sold it to does B & B so anyone can visit it. When we visited, we were amazed how small it was. All the work was done with the aid of a Readers Digest Book and that book became my bible many more times in the future. There was much more work to do than I envisaged when we began. We put in night storage heaters and a new fireplace. When we bought the brick kit for that, it came with no instructions. The dealer just said, %u201cIf you do it right you will have 2 half bricks left over%u201d And we did. The floor in the main room was large wooden planks that sloped down in a corner. When I pulled them out, I found that they were laid on pine tree trunks split in half just resting on the sand. In the corner, these had rot-