So It Begins
After months of planning, putting together Pinterest boards and late night family discussions, we’ve finally started a major home renovation on our Greek island home!
We thought it would be fun to document the transformation - possibly to pique people’s interest, hopefully to make you laugh while you join us in our crazy journey, or maybe just to bash our thoughts out on a keyboard to stop ourselves going mad with all the inevitable twists and turns.
But before we start telling you everything about this crazy project, let us offer some background.
The property was built by our great grandfather, Yianni (John) Diamantis Pateras, in 1897. It’s on a beautiful, remote Greek island called Oinousses, which is right on the eastern precipice of the Aegean Sea and sits across the water from the Turkish coastline.
Only about 700 people live here year round, meaning there’s a heavy reliance on its nearest neighbouring island, Chios, for many specialty trades. Chios is one hour away on a ferry that does a daily round trip (except for Sundays) with different returning times each weekday. As an example, there’s no resident plumber or electrician on Oinousses. Even buying a lightbulb can be a process, often necessitating a call to a Chios shop which delivers to the ferry. That seclusion - part of what makes Oinousses so charming - adds a challenging dynamic to trying to get work done.
The house has gone through various transformations in its time, most recently by our entrepreneurial mother. Her relentless energy over the past two decades has seen:
Bathrooms renovated
Ceramic tiled roof and top floor wood beamed ceiling replaced
Smallest flat gutted and renovated to include a platform bed and marble-clad bathroom (hence its name the Marble Flat)
Massive patio entirely re-tiled
Technically, the home has three distinct properties, which we call the Captain’s House, the Patio Flat and the Marble Flat. When we’re not here, we rent the properties out to friends, acquaintances or anyone who books through our website or our AirBnB listings. It’s been extremely gratifying to see how much interest we’ve had over the last few years as past guests recommend us to their networks, or discover Oinousses organically on their travels, so elevating the stay of our guests became a must.
This hugely ambitious project will be focused on renovating the Captain’s House and the Patio Flat. We’ll be sharing lots of pictures and maybe even soliciting input from readers along the way.