I Renovated a 12th Century Fortress in Italy (FULL TOUR)

I know you’ve all been bugging me to see the cantina in my 12th Century fortress in Tuscany. It’s the final renovation of my beautiful home and it draws on everything I’ve learned from living in Italy for 25 years.

To celebrate, I’m releasing this full house tour of La Fortezza. You’ll get to see my own private quarters, as well as all the guest accommodation, work areas such as the studio and commercial kitchen, and stunning grounds (including a working vineyard!)

Make sure you’re subscribed for more great real estate and interior design content from my in Italy…

Oh, and if you want a Lacanche stove, you can find them here: https://www.lacanche.com

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Check out my 📖 Books!

NEW!!! 🔪 The Killer Menu – A Delicious Tale of Food, Family and Murder: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CFX6N2M4/

🍽️ At the Table of La Fortezza: https://www.amazon.com/At-Table-Fortezza-Enchantment-Lunigiana/dp/0847869482/

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🍸 Cocktail Italiano: The Definitive Guide to Aperitivo: Drinks, Nibbles, and Tales of the Italian
Riviera: https://www.amazon.com/Cocktail-Italiano-Definitive-Aperitivo-Nibbles/dp/1510764534/

🎈Picture Perfect Parties: https://www.amazon.com/Picture-Perfect-Parties-Solutions-Entertaining/dp/0847841030/

💏 Italy is my Boyfriend: https://www.amazon.com/Italy-My-Boyfriend-Annette-Joseph/dp/1642935093

🇮🇹My Italian Guestbook: https://www.amazon.com/Italian-Guestbook-Delicious-Limoncello-Countryside/dp/1637584113/

✈️🏰 Find out more about Retreats at La Fortezza here: https://annettejosephstyleworkshops.squarespace.com

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Chapters:

00:00 – Introduction
00:54 – Main House – The Foyer
01:31 – Main House – Guest Room
03:11 – History of La Fortezza
03:54 – Main House – Living Room
06:11 – Main House – Kitchen
09:35 – Main House – Upstairs
10:19 – Main House – Primary Bedroom
11:49 – Main House – Primary Terrace
13:57 – Main House – Primary Bathroom
14:46 – The Grounds
15:01 – The Grounds – Pizza Oven
15:56 – The Grounds – Vineyard Terrace
16:21 – The Grounds – The Vineyard
18:38 – The Grounds – Night-time Terrace
19:30 – The Grounds – Pergola Terrace
19:47 – The Grounds – The Rose Garden
20:26 – The Grounds – Vegetable Garden
21:08 – The Grounds – The Pool
23:12 – The Grounds – Bocce Ball Court
23:53 – Guest Rooms
24:32 – Guest Rooms – The Dépendance Room 1
26:24 – Guest Rooms – The Dépendance Bath Tub Room
27:37 – Guest Rooms – Guest Quarters
27:55 – The Guestbook
28:45 – Guest Rooms – The Cozy Room
29:23 – Guest Rooms – The Fireplace Room
30:50 – Guest Rooms – The Baby Saint Room
31:54 – Guest Rooms – Kitchenette
33:12 – The Studio
39:21 – Lower Level
40:21 – Lower Level – Guest Lounge
43:11 – Lower Level – Commercial Kitchen
46:34 – The Cantina (my final renovation)
47:02 – The Cantina 6 months earlier
47:55 – The Cantina now
48:18 – The Cantina – Bathroom
49:42 – The Cantina – The Living Area
51:48 – The Cantina – Storage and cool features
52:55 – The Cantina – The Kitchen
55:36 – The Cantina – Seating Area
56:43 – Thanks for joining me!

#hometour #housetour #renovation

I’m Annette and this is La fortessa our 12th century Fortress that we renovated and bought 6 years ago we have a guest quarters which I’ll be taking you through we have a studio where we do all of our creative Retreats we have the main Terrace that has the beautiful view

Of the appan mountains and then downstairs we have a student lounge and we have our commercial kitchen where we do all of our cooking all of our cooking classes let me take you on a tour This is where I live and my husband lives when he’s here and I roll but this is this is the main house come on In we were all about making this modern but yet a nod to some of the older things that were in place many years ago all the flea markets that I go to we would search for lighting and this is one of the lights that we repurposed it’s this

Beautiful sort of medieval light you’ll see something that’s very unusual we have exposed electrical which I’m very into we bought these very old fixtures these are modern but they’re made to look oldfashioned so this is the guest room I do use a lot of Zara home it’s a

Nice sort of very organic line so it’s nice to pair with the really old things it’s not particularly expensive and very chic so I love that all the paintings were bought at flea markets this bedroom we actually built this wall so that we would have a bathroom so it would be an

On Suite bedroom this was in the original house I just moved it ly it fit right into this arched indentation that was already here and then we purchased sort of a lot of very oldfashioned looking lighting but it’s from a modern company that happens to also believe

Like we do that repurposing things is very important so the whole um idea behind this Fortress Is that we wanted to make sure we reuse and repurpose as many old things as we possibly could so we weren’t buying a lot of new things so there’s a very nice mix of new and old

Here which is sort of My Philosophy see how we did this really groovy shower we have all exposed Plumbing which is very unusual we had this extremely talented Italian plumber and he decided he’s sort of an artist and so he decided to do all of our plumbing I’ve never seen it any

Place else it’s really cool it’s very oneof a kind this was here but it’s a builtin Amir so they just sunk it into the wall which I love in America we don’t really like wardrobes and I feel like in America you could buy a wardrobe and you could just sink it into your

Wall and then it would be a really cool design element so I’m I I have this in my home actually in Atlanta as well I just really love it so this was a fortress so the Fortress is not a really big building it literally was a defensive Tower which means that there

Were soldiers living here and it wasn’t the kind you’re thinking of where they pour like hot oil outside it essentially was a point where you could see people coming approaching our town of vivito so this Fortress would communicate with the Fortress above us eventually The Fortress was bought by the Vatican we

Think that the Vatican owned hundreds and hundreds maybe thousands of acres in this area and they moved their precept here to farm the land we think in our property they grew wheat and they grew grapes this originally was two rooms they made this a bedroom I was like we

Don’t need that bedroom we’re going to put a bedroom upstairs stair so we opened this up now I love ju’s deposing things so we have this beautiful Morano glass chandelier that I bought new sun sets in that window and so it just casts this orange light so when the Sun is

Setting this Morano glass chandelier is orange so it’s it’s extremely cool the ceiling was here and it is from a ship these two brothers that owned this property one of them was an architect and one of them was sort of the worker be so the architect would find all the

Cool stuff and and his brother would install everything if you want to sell me something you know show me an old ceiling and an old floor and I’ll take it wrap it up so this thing is just full of glasses and serving pieces obviously I’m a prop stylist so I collect lots of

Things so I’m always thinking about where I’m going to put everything which by the way you should do oops oh God I almost killed myself with this thing I got a picture one day from our contractor that he had collected all these things and did I want them or

Should he throw them away so what do you think I said like please don’t throw them away and this one has a practical use because this door kind of comes over so I just sort of do that so I bought this guy at the Parma Market I put it

Here and about 2 weeks after I put it here I realized it looks like my dad it literally looks like my father it was and I I took a picture of it and I said it to Frank my husband and I said does this look like my dad and he goes it

Does so how weird is that I mean so so I talked to him when I’m here by myself sometimes I’m like what do you think Dad do you like that and then this is another one of my really prized possessions cuz I found this at the flea

Market so this is sort of like Italian art but what they do is they use shells from the beach I saw it I had to have it so this house is very collected I’m a very much of a I like to say collector I mean you know I like junkie

Stuff too but these I found at a flea market there’s so many treasures at the flea market it’s amazing all right so then let’s go into the kitchen we made this like super giant Galley kitchen the kitchen really came up to here and then there was a closet that was here and

Then this giant bathroom which we couldn’t quite figure out this was their bathroom by the kitchen I don’t think that’s an Italian thing I think it it’s something that they did because I don’t know why it was very weird so we knocked this all out and the vanity that we have

In the guest room is the same vanity that was here so we we we repurposed it which I’m all about doing we used a lot of really old sinks so these were all everything was recovered this washboard this sink that sink over there and then we used carara marble from the area

Which is what these are and I’m just like rambling on like this is super easy easy to do so this was a very daunting project I write about it in my book Italy is my boyfriend I know that when you look at this you go oh my God I want

To do this and you can but understand that I come from a design background and a styling background and the most important thing I had is I had someone here on the ground a project like this is so huge that instead of taking three years like it did it would it you know

It would take somebody that did know the area a lifetime to do I’m here to tell you the truth about renovating in Italy um I think anybody can do it but it really does help to have a person on the ground and someone that understands the language and someone that has really

Good resources so those are my tips and read my book it Lees my boyfriend if it doesn’t scare you you should do a project in Italy we did this Amazing Plumbing in here all of these these were handmade the other thing I suggest is that if you’re not going to be in Italy

All the time that you have a caretaker and my suggestion this is the million dooll suggestion is that you have the plumber if you can be the person that’s your caretaker when you’re not here because the issues you’re going to have for the most part I have found is going

To be water something’s going to burst something’s going to leak so a plumber as your caretaker cuz you’re always going to have problems and then I want to show you my most prized possession and that is my Lon range which I always say I love more than my husband and he’s

Okay with it this is a French stove and it is amazing I am married to an inanimate object it’s true this is really an amazing piece of equipment we have a gas and we have an electric oven these are all recycled tile so in Italy

You can go to a salvage yard and buy Rec CED tiles and I just fell in love with this sort of very matte glaze and you don’t have to buy a lot of them and you put them behind your stove and it looks really groovy I’m a high low person so I

Like buying things for a dollar and then of course I like you know something that costs as much as a car so that’s sort of my MMO in life it’s like Cheapo shoes fabulous designer bag you know so this is my kitchen upstairs I love it so much

It’s just fun it served us well and um yeah it was it was a labor of love for Sure if you’ve read my book you know upstairs was like uh we just called it the dark hole of Kolkata there was uh plastic on the floor the ceiling was black there were bats living there all the windows were bricked up so when we went up there we literally went up there

With our phones turned on all of us including the guy that helped me with my space and we look to see like what would happen so come on upstairs and I’ll show you what became of the black hole of Kolkata come on so the first black hole was in this

Bedroom all the windows were bricked so it was black everything was black and there were bats flying around and so once we opened up the window so we could get some light in here we realized that we didn’t have much of a ceiling we redid the entire

Ceiling all the roofs are new we repurposed as much as we could this was one of the logs that was re we left we did another Morano glass chandelier in here we did a beautiful mirror that we bought from Naples I mean a lot of the stuff is

Thrifted the the bed was made in Geneva by a company that makes beds it’s quite cool it opens up so there’s tons of storage this is the high low we just repurposed Ikea and this is a closet so it’s very inexpensive clever and works like a charm then we did this door which

Is like my favorite medieval door that we bought it weighs 9,000 lb again with Italian Craftsman you’re like I have this 800 lb medieval door and I want it to go in my bedroom and they’re like okay cool let’s do it but they know how

To put in the hinges and make it work so it’s very medieval and very groovy and then we always have to have a coffee bar so we always have an espresso machine so of course we had to have one in our bedroom so this is the Terrace and it’s

Off the master bedroom upstairs so this is the view for my bedroom we can see our pool from here and our bot ball court and our our incredible Rose Garden we have two modern chairs out here it’s a great place to have an apparao so these mountains they hook up to the

Carara mountains carara marble is probably about 30 minutes from here so I always advise people in this area if they’re doing a space to use car marble it’s much less expensive here it comes literally from over there and then why not again use the materials that are

Here that people know how to work with you know why fight Hall and get some sort of weird Stone I mean carara fits into this space beautifully when we uh found this place the Terrace was here but none of the railings I mean none of the columns nothing was here it was

Actually stacked with um Building Supplies so we couldn’t even really get out here the door wasn’t here in fact the door this was where the door was so you had to like climb in so we had to extend it make a real door here so we

Could get in and out so it was quite uh an undertaking as was everything else at The Fortress it’s crazy La fortessa was uh it was a challenge for me because I am very good with floor plans and figuring things out and this was a bit

Of a puzzle for me which honestly for me it was great I mean it was part of the reason I liked it because I couldn’t really quite figure it out but we ended up figuring it out we used a lot of terracotta pavers all over we did all

New roofs roofs in Italy are usually tacota they’ve come a long way so now they make them look like AG tacota but they’re actually more of a a material that wears better doesn’t break as easily so we opted to use that sort of um old-fashioned looking but very um

Functional um tiling for the roof there was a lot of scaffolding around because all this Stone had to be repointed we had a whole lot of repointing to do but of course you know Italians are great at this stuff so it was a no-brainer so this is our very group Ruby bathroom our

Plumber is just fantastic this I had made again you know if you have the right resources and good Craftsman we drew this up we had it made it works like a charm I love it and then this bathtub I have a really good resource for things in marash so I had this made

In marash and then this groovy shower it’s like a box I always feel like you know I’m a movie star in a box or something or a dancer in a box I mean this is all original stuff and like I said the resources here they’re it’s so

Amazing they like oh no problem we’ll just put your door in for you it’s such a beautiful little piece of hardware on the door so all these little tiny things make this very very Special welcome to my pizza oven so this pizza oven was here and we renovated it it really costs very little to renovate you’ll never hear me say that and of all the things in the house that I did and when I say it was hundreds of things

This was the thing that my husband was like my God the pizza oven I mean that’s the best you had me at Pizza I was like really really I spent like 300 year on this is what you’re going on and on about so we do pizza night here it’s

Super fun we make our own pizza dough we have our guest Retreats make their own pizza so they learn how to be a pizzola and they’re really excited about it this is my happy place I always play The Rolling Stones because the pizza dough likes it and we end up with great pizza

If I don’t play The Rolling Stones the pizza’s not as good I’m just telling you all right so this is the Vineyard Terrace follow me God bless you cameraman’s like you know I know allergy season welcome to the beautiful Vineyard Terrace the reason we call it the

Vineyard Terrace is yes we have a view of our Vineyard so it’s really nice to sit out here having an ativo this is where we have pizza night all the lights are shining when you stay in the Deon Don rooms you get to come and enjoy sitting here reading a book

Having a cocktail drinking some of our wine okay let’s go to the vineyard I can’t believe that you guys like climbed over these fences because they’re electrified they like a 5 six 700 lb boore oops okay this is Manola and this is his brother alesandro and their family Works our

Vineyard so around 10 years and I’ve been here for five or six years and when we bought the property it was very very difficult to buy this property so when we finally closed and we finally had our celebration they brought out all of this wine and we were drinking it there was a

Red there was a white and we were like oh these are really good and they said oh it’s from our Vineyard and I was like wait a minute we have a Vineyard like we bought a property with a Vine like we have a w like wine is grown on our like

We’re having so I turned to my friend and I said do we own a Vineyard now and he’s like yes you do and he was concerned that we would tell him to go away and we were like no no no no no stay stay stay so and we had the same

Thing with you’re going to meet our gardener we had the same thing with him he thought we were gonna fire them but we were like no no no we’re gonna give you more work they’re both very cute I mean come on all right so for all of you that are

Very aspirational you’re looking at me and you’re going I want her life in this case I agree with you 12th century Fortress for sale 27 Acres with a working Vineyard I mean sold like where do I sign the check like I couldn’t run inside the check fast

Enough but it was all surprise and if you read about it in my book it as my boyfriend you’ll you’ll know exactly what happened here and how I got to adopt these two [Laughter] Brothers I call this our nighttime Terrace cuz this is where we see the sunset and of course it has a beautiful view of the aini mountains and this is where we do our evening appara OS and then we do lovely dinners here the sun sets while you’re drinking your drink we

Have music sometimes we have dance parties here so those lemons we’re gonna make some lemon cello with lighter I love making lemon cello every year I make it God it’s sunny out here today holy cow I think I’m just going to go to the pool do I have to keep doing this

Yeah go down okay us the other ter all Terrace come with me do you want to go to the pool I want to go to the pool I want to get yep yep you’re not doing it with the camera though you’re doing it with your head this guy’s not going to

Get it ever ever this is our pergola lunches are great here watching the sunset is great here barbecues all right come with me to my rose garden this is all these are all grapes too by the way no need for a PA ofo just climb up there and eat some

Grapes this is my rose garden very proud of my rose garden I love doing arrangements so it’s lovely to just come out and clip flowers from here This is my vegetable garden this is John Luca I would say he’s our grounds keeper because he does a lot more than just work on the garden I mean he takes care of our pool he takes care of me if I have a problem I call John Luca

Everything you see here this man planted soodi or no mhm so we’re going to do more of the celery that I door here in Italy and that’s our gardener and this is our garden okay so this is our pool the view is you know so and so as they say in

Italy this was a very hard project I wouldn’t recommend anybody ever do this again I would never do this again like if they paid me would I pay for this pool I wouldn’t do it again that’s how bad this was so that’s saying a lot so I

Bought this bar at this Market at this super secret Market this was a fish vendor kiosk which is what it looks like but I just thought it’s it makes for a really fun bar and when we have yoga retreats and stuff we you know can do fruit

Juices and fruit and you know healthy things here for all the healthy people that do yoga but I like a cocktail at this bar personally yeah we decided to do an infinity pull really because if you do have well there’s a couple things one John Luca thought it would be a good

Idea it is so bright out here um and two it cleans itself and so it’s very clean and you know I like clean things I’m very clean and then this is the lounge area we have a shower I have to get in the shade oh my God I was like going

Blind so bright out there anyway do I have to keep doing this or can I just put my bathing suit on and lay out oh I signed up for this a little bit of detail a lot less detail today the perola was built actually by John Luca

He’s very clever and you always have to have some sort of shade because we’re you know as I’m complaining we’re it’s so sunny here you know we wanted a lounge area the lamps are not very expensive so they can be easily exchanged this is not lined up it’s driv

Me crazy so this is what I’m like it’s like this is not right please hold perfect yeah everything like I see everything which drives my family insane oh yes then we did we did a bot ball court which I’m really really good at bot ball and I let everybody win M goal

This is really fun it’s so it’s AstroTurf and sand so there’s sand underneath it the scoreboard is cool it’s vintage so that’s really fun my producer wanted me to show you the scoreboard because his score was still up and he won and because he’s a man you

Know he it’s like very important for him to show everybody that he won but anyway it’s a super fun thing we enjoy it so that’s our recreational pool Area Welcome to our guest rooms this is called the deons it was a storage sort of Shack it was a shack it was a rubble actually it was a pile of stones and we decided that we wanted to put three guest rooms somewhere and this was here there was a

Tree like sort of growing through it so we had to take the tree down that was a big fight because Italians don’t like cutting trees down and we were trying to explain that you know people can’t sleep with a tree growing in the middle of

Their bed but anyway come on in and let me show you this is a room that has a very old bed 300y old bed I found this bed and I said can I buy this bed and my dealer said well it’s my brother’s bed I

Don’t know if he really wants to sell it and then I said well this is how much I’ll give him for it he said I don’t know I’ll have to ask him this is how you deal with people when you’re trying to buy something here cuz people have like an

Emotional attachment to something so no matter how much money you offer them they’re not going to sell it to you so about four months later I got a text from him saying my brother’s ready to sell the bed so I was very excited and then he threw in the Madonna so I

Thought it was appropriate to throw her over this bed our rooms are cozy but they’re comfortable we um have lots of antiques in here but we also have high low you know I love that it’s like this fixture for example is from like a local what sort of like a Craton Barrel it’s

Called Maison deont and I just like the basket I thought it was cool and it was rustic so we put it up there this is a double loft you’ll see the other side this is usually mother daughter or two friends because upstairs there’s a full bed and a full bathroom upstairs as well

And then we have these cool bathrooms I put this door in so that you’d have privacy but yet light would come in and then of course there’s a light these are wet rooms so everything can get wet I actually found this to be a great solution for a very small bathroom is

You just put a drain in the floor you have everything slanted to the drain and if you’ve read my book it leaves my boyfriend you know about the story about these bathrooms and the dipon DTs don’t forget to like And subscribe down below this is room number two we call

This the bathtub room because the first floor is actually the bathroom and the second floor we have a loft and a bed it’s very cool I actually bought this tub in France and it’s super fun to take a shower in here let me get in just kidding you

Have an amazing view of the vineyard so while you’re standing here naked you can look out and see what’s happening in the vineyard it’s a really cool space it’s not for everybody because we have a repurposed staircase that we bought and it’s sort of a some things here are a little bit

Jiggy joggy so this is really fun we needed to have a wardrobe so we built this one and it actually it folds up so clever under the stairs so that’s where the closet is so this is something it was a just a very clever way to get a

Lot and there’s a lot of storage it goes all the way under the stairs I guess it could be another guest room too huh in a pinch you’re in here Today hi this is the guest quarters come on In three bedrooms three bathrooms and a kitchenet it’s a cute little landing spot for our guests when they get here so this is the famous guest book my new book is called my Italian guest book some of the people that are in the book are actually in this book so you can

Find them these benches traditionally were in foyers foyers of let’s say the kitchen staff area so they would literally sit on them and this is where they would rest which seems pretty uncomfortable to me but I guess in the oldie tyes that’s this is what it was

Like this light I bought at a flea market and it was from out side of a fish store and it was €65 and it’s all brass and heavy glass it’s so cool and when I saw the price I was yet like I’ll find a place for it

And I think when I go fleeing especially if I’m doing a renovation I just buy stuff because I know I’m going to find a place for it so let me show you the Cozy room it’s a smaller room but with a amazing view and then we put in

Resin bathrooms they’re also wet rooms and the resin PR process is very long and expensive it’s the very last thing you put in this is what it looks like this is a tiny little wet room people love this room it’s really cozy all the beds were um found they’re all antiques

They’re very classic Italian like if you if you speak to Italian they they walk in here they go oh my grandmother and grandpa had this set so we we enjoy that I’m not going to say this is my favorite room but this is my favorite room it’s

Called the fireplace Place room and I mean not that I like to have favorite children but this is probably I put my favorite people in this room let’s just say that so if you end up with this room you know how we stand the fireplace is

Original it was here on the mantle it says the family name that lived here the farmers SL priest family and this is all sort of in Latin and it was 1672 so this mantle is from 167 to so it’s pretty cool to sleep in a room

Where you’re with a mantle that is like uh very very old you can see this is what the walls originally looked like when I walked in next to the fireplace they were very crunchy but I like that I like the whole idea of the texture and I

Really like this blue color so what we ended up doing is where it was really falling apart we added some stucco to it and then my friend Betty soldi Who you’ll meet is a calligrapher and an artist she came in and Drew on the wall she’s a magical creature from Florence

She’s truly a magical creature I like the modern the J position of the modern with the sort of Noni which means grandparents bed and then I always like having above the bed some sort of religious Angel all these prints came from books and they were framed and

They’re quite wonderful this is the baby Saint room and it’s named for the baby Saint we have this little Bab baby Saint we think she was probably in a school I bought her at the flea market I just couldn’t resist her you know I walked by

Her and I thought oh I really like her where could I put her again we have a bathroom that is a wet room and it’s quite large and it’s quite bright this is a beautiful room that looks out onto the vineyard so every room has its own unique particular view that is quite

Beautiful most of the artwork you see like this out in the marketplace they’re actually from books and one of the things about the Lun Jana that’s so interesting is it is a place where the first editions of books were printed and the reason is is that people from vivito

Were very into books they were very into handwriting so they would handw write books so part of the reason I like having these prints framed here is it is sort of a nod to vivito so the history of the printing press here we have a print Museum

We call this the kitchenet and it’s for our guests in the guest quarters we have this made this unit made it has a little refrigerator that fits right into it oh there’s a Coke in there also this I always like to put on what is the date today the 20 where we we’re really bu in the plot here I’m sorry all right so anyway we have everything for our guests here that they might need another Nespresso machine again shout out to them we have our wine we have our white wine in the fridge

Rosé in the fridge and yeah it’s just a cute place to land we have snacks and umbrellas all the things sun block all the things that you may have forgotten we have in here and of course copies of my book ital is my boyfriend and my new book my Italian guest Book this is an old barn and I decided to turn it into my studio this is where we do lessons for our attendees if you read my book Italy is my boyfriend you know that this was filled to the RM it was so fill that I couldn’t see inside

Of it I could step in but I couldn’t walk around in the very back there was some very beautiful light and so I had a feeling that this would be great for photography and I was right okay so this is the most photogenic part of all of La

Fessa I think because the light in here is spectacular and I shot um my cookbook at the table of La fessa here um because there’s the most beautiful little window over there that has the most gorgeous sidelight ever it just it’s golden light in here because everything shines off

These rock walls this was a barn and we turned it into a studio and when people say oh do you live an aspirational life when I walk in here I feel like I do I must say cuz I’ve always sort of wanted like a barn studio and honestly

Sometimes I think oh this is not reality so we reinforced all of the beams they were original beams these are the reinforcements and then you’ll see again you know we did earthquake chains so this can shake a laaka laaka during an earthquake and it’ll be fine um I I’ve bought these

Amazing pieces from one of my sources so if you do a shopping retreat with me you get to go here um and it is pretty spectacular and this was a flea market find this is from one of my very favorite stores and Frank and I fight over this light fixture cuz he really

Hates it it was a hat rack and it’s it’s really fun he hates this he just hates it he just thinks it’s the worst thing ever I just think it’s fabulous so this is he said he wouldn’t move here unless I got rid of this so he’s not moving

Here this is where I keep all of our Linens for our workshops we do a lot of workshops you know I obviously love to set a table uh so we have lots of choices because I’m all about the choices I mean full disclosure I have a little problem these chairs around this

Table I got a call from my plumber and his um uncle was a principal at a school that was being torn down so he said I know you love to pick through things and Salvage things how would you like to um go through the school so here’s a really

Funny story so see and on the back there are things written and they’re signed so when I have Carpenters here they’ll look and they’ll go oh my gosh that’s my cousin he wrote that because they all went to school here so it’s it’s very I I do treasure these and the best thing

Is that they were free all I had to do was haul them away it was really it was a magical day for me it it was magical so then we have all of our candles here for setting our table and then these are a lot of things that we use to style we

Have a bevy of things and then if we do styling or photography workshops I will come up here and help people style and show them how to do the composition and anyway that looks so pretty over there like that is a feast for the eyes over

There with my collection and all that I mean that just like makes me happy like I’m so happy when I look at that it’s so sick all right so then we have this great view of outside this um space does not have air conditioning it does have underfloor heating cuz sometimes if we

Shoot here like for my cookbook we shot here in March it was freezing so and it really heats up everything nicely CU all the stone absorbs everything so this was upcycles you know my amazing plumber did the um Plumbing but this was again these are these hand painted very matte tiles

That I like so much and you don’t have to buy a lot of them you know and and you can really make a a splash this was just sitting in here so it must have been the one of the original Farm lights and so we just had this made this arm

And then you know the electricians are so clever here they just attach the whole thing we have a cute little bathroom in here this is uh everything in here is fleed so it’s all nothing’s precious and our students can go in here and you know go potty or wash their

Hands all of the lighting is from the Parma Market I just you know saw it and just bought all of it it’s all industrial lighting so here’s a downside so I was sitting here one day and I kept hearing this crunching noise noise like crunch crunch crunch crunch and I

Literally thought I was losing my mind and um and then I started noticing if you look on the floor over here there’s dust and I was like hm I wonder what that is I have no idea so of course I went to my trusty friend Google and I

Googled old wood what kind of bugs make a crunching noise and we have medieval wood beetles which which is a thing so they’re very hard to get rid of they’re obviously very slow moving because the dust is very fine so the same guy that did my door comes here

Once a year and he injects the wood and slowly they’re going away very slowly um but we had it we were infested and then you know every year he you know I’ll text him and say time to bring the needle and he literally uses a needle

And he injects the wood so I think one of the best spaces at La for Tessa says here all of our attendees love it it’s a it’s actually a place we teach it’s a place we tell people to come and work it is it it’s just got such a great Vibe it

Really does and I can’t believe this is my studio and I work here and I think that everybody that comes here feels the same way that I do about this particular space our Studio Run in and we’ll tour the lower level of La fora so this lower level is the very bottom of the Fortress it was actually an earlier addition so we think this was a mechanical room where they kept like tractors and Machinery basically it had

A dirt floor it was dark I mean the only thing that’s original is the ceiling although we painted it white it was concrete so it was a it was very gray and then it had like a level up so you can see that there’s like a slanted

Walkway up so that you know you could drive the Machinery easily up and out so there were no stairs there so we just left it cuz you know it’s part of the original charm of the place I think that these were from a factory I don’t know

What kind of factory but the drawers are sort of sectioned off these are from really good vendor of mine if you’re doing a shopping Retreat you’re going to take a field trip here he’s a great guy he’s got amazing pieces I bought these pieces before I knew where they were

Going actually I go between you know sort of Bohemian and I like things that are industrial and I like things that are fancy you know I have a very I have a very particular uh style I will say and then this is meet myy the

Bor and I love him he’s our mascot our B’s head I bought him at auction which I thought was fun I had to bid on Mory to come live with us this piece is for cheese and salami because it has a screen so that the mice and the bugs

Can’t get through but I house my scientific glass collection here which I also collect you know as I go through the house and show you things I realize that I do collect a lot of things my husband’s like you have a lot of stuff but I’m like no I don’t it’s very well

Addited but I clearly have a problem so when our guests come they’re allowed to purchase wine so this is the wine table that they come and they get their wine from there’s this very cool thing that I found on the internet called the host company so if you have an Airbnb go

Check it out they allow you to put your things on your Airbnb on their site and then you just buy what you want and pay pick it up when you’re here brilliant app so this is the student lounge all of our guests can come here hang out this

Weirdly is a piece of Ikea furniture three of them fit perfectly into the space obviously collect pillows have a problem just like shoes for me but I love the you know the collected feeling of this so we have this French poster that I bought at the Luca Market we had

So many bats here that I thought it’d be fun to have like an illustrative bat situ situation very cute the rug is from marash the tea tables are from marash the lighting fixture I actually bought that with my husband these club chairs came from uh the par Affair there’s a

Woman that just sells club chairs she’s really very funny and then um this piece uh it was funny because uh everybody recognizes this a school desk right we found this and I thought it would be a perfect little side table and it really is and we put we have cards and games

And things down here for our guests and we usually have a copy of my books down here and this is where the guests come to lounge and work or enjoy an Apparao so this is the commercial kitchen my favorite place in the house so if you’ve read my book Italy is my boyfriend you know all about this light fixture came to me in a dream that I I bought this tub at the Parma Fair it is a traveling tub from like the probably

18th century go to war you were General they would drag this with you so that you could have a tub on the battlefield and have a bath I just loved it and then I bought this table I think at the par ofair and paired it with my $50 flea

Market find my cow €50 I was like yes Please wrap it up and then this piece I bought we had gone shopping with one of our shopping trips and so one of my clients was looking at it and I walked past I was like oh God that would fit in

That corner that would be fantastic for our bar but you know she’s a guest so I can’t like you know be a b and just say I’m getting that cuz I was like are you looking at that she’s like I’m thinking about it and I was like oh God I want it

I want it I want it so then she came up to me and she was like I don’t think I’m going to get that corner unit I’m like wrap it up they threw it in my truck I brought it home and it was fun because the the guests that had wanted it she

Was like oh no it belongs there it’s great the kitchen the heart of the home this is my favorite kitchen ever we bought the sink there was a small drain in the corner this thing never drained it was like it was a hassle these fish

Tiles I had made by a company I work a lot with called recuperando which is in fora demoty it’s a family-owned business I love love love them to death was inspired by another tile panel like this I sent it to them and then I said this

Is these are the colorations I want this is what I want it to look like then they sent me back a drawing then I approved the drawing and then they arrived and then the pie of resistance and the entire kitchen is my husband let me introduce you to him look honch the

Beast this is the best the best stove in the world granted it costs as much as a car I’ll put the lon link definitely in this video because uh well I’m selling them now and then we did all open shelving below you know we go through so much

Stuff that opening cabinets and it just seemed like too much for me so because I’m a stylist I arrange everything very stylishly and so and I keep on top of it and it’s meditative for me and my favorite thing after the lon is my Culligan w water system we go through so

Much water here so this way people can help themselves and then our coffee bar of course espresso coffee bar and we always are running to dishwashers constantly all we do and then we have our nice little staircase little opening right here that is great because we get fresh air and it’s just a

Nice place to take a break the chef steps out there looks at the view gets refreshed and comes back in and works and that’s our Kitchen it’s very sunny hi everybody Welcome to The Cantina tour uh we’ve taken the lower floor which was originally Cantina and we’ve uh turned it into a beautiful apartment So this is our Cantina we call it the Cantina it’s at the bottom floor of the Fortress and um we think it was also used to defend um the land because we found this cute little hole here and we think this is where the archers would have their

Bows and they would shoot out of that little window there so kind of cool so we’re going to build this out this winter put a kitchen over here on this wall and then we’re going to do a bathroom so where all the pipes are coming out that’s going to be the

Bathroom I know this sounds crazy but we’re going to stucco all the way around the archway but it’s fun you know I love a Project so this was was the Cantina was sort of a working space it looked really rough so we did a lot of stacking in here because with the stone it was very damp in here it was very dark in here and the white on this Barrel volted ceiling really brings the light and

Bounces the light around so we made it much Brighter we built out the bathroom we literally built a box and we put a bathroom in there the bathroom full disclosure is from Ikea so it’s very Ikea is but it’s clever it works really well for the people that stay here we have a walk-in shower these were all

Reclaimed tiles from maresh from Morocco we have a resource but we didn’t have enough green ones and they didn’t have enough white ones and so we decided to do this clever sort of lower portion is the green upper portion is the white and actually turned out quite well the

Lighting in here is from Meri in Paris I think these were shells from I guess Bombshells they’re bombshell lights this light is quite clever it’s a little hat and it makes it a great little makeup lamp I bought that from Amazon I just thought it was really cute and it really

Does throw off a lot of good light and then the accessories are all from all over from my from you know my favorite soap vendors I put a little light in here so that when I turn off the light there is a little light in here you can put it on in the

Middle of the night cuz if you get up and go potty then you have a little light um yeah so this is our cool little Bathroom so this is a really cool item right here this was the door it can also be a little stage you can do a little shows but this was the door that was the original door so I didn’t want to get rid of it cuz I

Just loved it so we made this really cool coffee table full disclosure it breaks apart so my vision was like oh you could do parties and take this outside and put stuff on there or people can sit on it so it’s very convertible we left sort of the original

Nooks and um my VH head is in there V tree is a client of ours and sometimes they leave us really fabulous things and that was one of the fabulous things full disclosure she follows you wherever you go so if you don’t like getting naked in

Front of people this is you know this is a little scary and then this is all a bed a sofa a hangout spot it’s groovy I love it super comfortable and then it converts into a bed and we put a big feather bed on this and we

Make a bed and you can sleep on it um yeah I just love this space it’s super cool story about the head in there so I didn’t know where I wanted to put her so I put her in there and then when I put her in there I realized I couldn’t get

Her out of there she’s stuck so that’s her home forever like we’ll leave this place will go on and she will be there forever that is what I think oh and then we bought that little amoire from Ikea and it works great for people that are

Staying here or hey if you want to rent this apartment it can be yours so um thanks for visiting the Cantina I’m going to take a little nap now good night we’re not even Clos to done okay this is a ladder that we had it was in the Cantina

So I was like well I don’t want to throw it out cuz it’s cool cool so we just kind of attached it here uh full disclosure it’s kind of funky to walk up so I’m not going to walk up it but I can walk up at bare foot and you can do

Storage up above cool little crates I think they were like €1 each yeah so you can kind of throw your things in it full you know it’s full storage which I really really love all right let’s go to oh one thing I want to show you before we go to the kitchen

This is this cool sliding door and I literally sent my Carpenter a picture and then I didn’t hear from him and then this came back it’s perfect Artisan’s in Italy amazing like if you find a good Carpenter it’s just and it fits per like it’s perfect wish I had more projects

For him all right and then this piece I bought from my friend Paulo If you’ve gone on shopping on retreat with us you’ve gone to his Warehouse you know I store some things on it but I just think it’s cool architecturally and it divided the room which was great This is fashioned after an old refrigerator but it was something I bought from maon demand I just and I bought it online which was cool my microphone’s coming out hang on did you see that when I walk past like it’s like hanging out you’ll see it it’s hanging

Like looks like a poo hanging out of my butt it’s storage which you always need and we put our pots and pants and things things in there um but yeah I I literally ordered it online and it arrived it weighs 825 lb it was like super heavy and then

Um I did this little another little shelving unit in here so it’s a kitchen but I wanted to be like an artist kitchen and I bought this at my flea market and it was €30 and I was very excited it’s in perfect condition and it fit here perfectly and then I bought

This cute little what I call like kind of a Wes Anderson looking painting at the same flea market and it was like I think 30 bucks so I love I mean I just love I love buying things on a budget it just makes me so happy and then um of

Course we have a have to have an espresso machine I think this is our 25th one on the property love those I bought this groovy refrigerator which I think was just like this monolith and looked really Neato the sink we bought at a salvage yard yeah so that’s our kitchen and uh it’s

Really quite cute the tile we put in it’s got all underfloor heating it’s very affordable terracotta tile since people most likely will be here in the winter cuz our caretaker will live here or our manager house manager or Chef might be living here during the winter our contractor it was really funny our

Contractor when he was finished I said oh you know I need to find somebody to live here in the winter time to you look after our property um I was thinking about having Leo come do it Leo our chef and he said oh no I’ll move in which I

Thought was so funny goes it’s such a cool space and you know it’s funny when I was going to do the space I always get pushed back you know people are like oh n that’s crazy don’t do it but I will say that when they were finished as per

Usual they were like you were right this is a really cool space so we have this extra room as well which is great when we do Retreats we have some of our Retreat attendees want to stay in this space and so we have an extra space now

We have a seventh bedroom which is is very cool um for our property at la pessa oh and there’s a really cute seating area outside too come see the seating area this is our seating area so um it’s just a really nice place to come out and

Chill it’s actually really close to the kitchen too so we can sit out here this was a bench that I bought that I saw online and I just had to have it I had no idea where it was going to going to go and of course I found the perfect

Home and then um that’s my € 10ur find you know I always like things for €1 Euro and then this is just this really cool um metal it looks it almost looks like a giant tart pan and then I just put it on a good old

Stool and it made a cute little coffee table and we have an olive tree a lemon tree some succulents and voila it’s really cute Bowl disclosure I did run over the corner with my car cuz I was going down to the vineyard so that’s why that pot’s there

Because I ran right over it and crack the heck out of it so but it’s been fixed and the Olive Tree loves it there it’s really happy so yeah thanks for joining me thanks for subscribing and liking and if you got this far we love you guys peace N