Palazzo San Benedetto

15/06/2026

Toiling and Tiling at Palazzo San Benedetto. The condensed version. For the full video check out our YT channel and remember to please subscribe. Grazie.

13/06/2026

Toiling and Tiling; My trying and time consuming tiling task. Check out our latest video - link in comments below.

Unfortunately so many of our beautiful tiles are covered in cement blobs from all the building work over the years. Before we can move in there is the tough job of restoring our antique terracotta tiles at our ancient Italian palazzo in Abruzzo.

The tiles need to be cleaned and then varnished to protect them. Once this is done we can move in our furniture but that's still a long way off as you will see from this video. I'm tackling one of the smaller rooms; Reception, in which there are nearly 500 tiles of which a huge percentage require more than just an acid rinse.

As the floors/tiles are uneven an industrial machine won't do the job as it may only clean parts of the tiles.

10/06/2026

Still cleaning and varnishing the tiles 😴 I will count them all up at some point after I've finished. If I do it now, it may just put me off 😅. Look who joined me today.

08/06/2026

It is now 18 years since we bought the palazzo! But this is the year we move in! 💪

18 years: That is how old our daughter is this year but she has cost us less in financial terms and levels of stress 😆

Channel 4 spoke to Andrew Miles and Katja von Schweitzer - who first fell in love with the southern region of Abruzzo in 2005, after going on holiday there.

06/06/2026

Endless days of cleaning and varnishing tiles and clearing the garden means we like to get distracted. Andrew showed me a fantastic door on a little break we took from our chores today which he wants to use for our little chapel...

02/06/2026

Our little lunch break today. Note my socks and sandals 😀
Andrew has been very busy in the garden landscaping and I've been prepping terracotta tiled floors covered in builders' dirt, dust and cement ready for varnishing. 2 have been varnished, 3 are ready to varnish. Only another 6 rooms to do now! The rest don't have terracotta tiles or have no flooring and are not yet ready for living in.

01/06/2026

Only testing but our antique new doorbell works! 🔔 😊