D&G Design - Renovating in Italy

Casa
Italia
Ascoli Piceno
D&G Design - Renovating in Italy

We’re Davide and Gary, a reno team with a passion for breathing new life into Italy’s historic buildings.

We take on everything from client vacation home renovations to restoring our own Italian home.

05/09/2026

🇮🇹 Dreaming of buying a home in Italy?

Finding the house is the exciting part. But knowing what to check before you buy it could save you a lot of stress, time and money later.

After almost 10 years renovating homes in Italy, running our business here and helping clients with their own Italian properties, we’ve learned that some of the most expensive mistakes can happen before the renovation even begins.

That’s why, this month we’re hosting a FREE live webinar:

The Biggest Mistakes People Make When Buying in Italy 🇮🇹

We’ll be talking about:

✓ What to check before you make an offer
✓ Common mistakes that can cost you money
✓ The professionals you should have on your side
✓ Why a bargain property isn’t always a bargain
✓ What you need to think about if you actually want to live in Italy

And we’ll be sharing what we’ve learned from working on real renovation projects alongside qualified Italian professionals.

Thinking of buying in Italy?

Comment WEBINAR below and we’ll send you the link to register for free. 🇮🇹

Know someone else dreaming of an Italian home? Send this to them too.

04/09/2026

Thinking about moving to Italy? 🇮🇹

As renovators in Italy, there are a few things we wish more people knew before they started planning the move.

🏠 Cheap houses aren’t always cheap.
That €50,000 house might be a bargain, or it might need €150,000 of work.

🇮🇹 Buying property doesn’t give you the right to live in Italy.
Property ownership and residency are two completely separate things.

🔨 Renovating isn’t necessarily cheap.
Permissions, professionals, structural work, new systems and unexpected problems can quickly change the budget.

☀️ Living in Italy isn’t a permanent holiday.
There’s still work, bills, bureaucracy, bad weather and all the ordinary bits of everyday life.

📋 “I’ll figure it out when I get there” isn’t always a great plan.
Understanding visas, residency, healthcare, property costs and renovation BEFORE you move can save an enormous amount of stress, and money.

None of this means you shouldn’t move to Italy, quite the opposite.

✅ We did, and we love living here.

But Italy is even better when you arrive with realistic expectations rather than an Instagram version of what life here will be.

📌 Thinking seriously about moving to Italy? Save this post or send it to a friend who dreams about moving to Italy.

28/08/2026

🇮🇹 Every renovation tells a story, and this bedroom is no exception.

✅ Comment RENO and we'll send you a behind the scenes video of the renovation!

26/08/2026

Living in Italy comes with a few rules we definitely weren’t expecting… 🇮🇹😂

From driving to heating your home, some of them really surprised us.

Here are 5 Italian laws we had no idea about before living here.

👉 Swipe for No. 1…

🚗 There are rules around what foreign car you can drive

Once you become resident in Italy, the rules around foreign-registered cars change.

If you own the vehicle, it generally needs to be registered in Italy within 3 months of becoming resident.

If the vehicle is owned by someone who lives abroad, you may still be able to drive it, but you must carry a dated document from the owner showing why you have use of the car and for how long. If you have use of it for more than 30 days in a year, it may also need to be registered on Italy’s REVE foreign vehicle register.

There are exceptions, including when the foreign-resident owner is actually in the car with you.

The rule: Art. 93-bis, Codice della Strada 🇮🇹

Source: ACI / Italian Highway Code

👉 Swipe for No. 2...

Italy is divided into six climate zones, A - F, and where you live determines the normal dates when heating can be used and the maximum number of hours per day.

For example, in Zone D the normal period is 1 November - 15 April, for up to 12 hours a day. In colder Zone E it’s 15 October - 15 April, up to 14 hours a day. Zone F has no such time limit.

There are exceptions, including provisions for unusual weather and certain types of heating systems.

🇮🇹 The rule: D.P.R. 74/2013, Art. 4

👉 Swipe for No. 3...

In Italy, the Canone RAI (TV licence) is normally charged automatically through the electricity bill when someone in the household has a qualifying domestic residential electricity contract.

The current annual charge is €90, usually collected in instalments through the electricity bill.

Don’t own a television? You can apply for exemption, but you need to make the appropriate declaration, it isn’t enough simply not to watch RAI.

🇮🇹 The rule: Law 208/2015, Art. 1, paragraphs 152–159
Rules checked: August 2026

👉 Swipe for No. 4...

Most Italian homes traditionally have an electricity supply contracted at just 3 kW, shared between everything you’re us

23/08/2026

🇮🇹 Ten years ago today, our life in Italy changed.

At 3.36am on 24 August 2016, a powerful earthquake struck Central Italy.

🏔️We had bought our house in a medieval hill town only a few months earlier and had just started renovating it. Then, in the middle of the night, we woke to the house shaking violently around us.

🏡 We fled the house and joined our neighbours in the street, where we spent the rest of the night as the aftershocks continued.

🥲 When daylight came, we began to understand the scale of what had happened. Towns and villages across Central Italy had been devastated and 299 people had lost their lives.

🙏 We were incredibly fortunate. We were safe, our neighbours were safe and, although damaged, our house was still standing.

What we didn’t know that morning was that it wasn’t over.

More powerful earthquakes followed in October, including the largest to hit Italy in decades. Then came more earthquakes in January, accompanied by deep snow.

Eventually, our house was declared inagibile (unsafe to live in) and the renovation we’d started just two months earlier stopped.

😳 What followed was something we could never have imagined: emergency structural work, engineers, scaffolding, bureaucracy, changing regulations, Covid and years of waiting.

The renovation we thought might take a year has taken ten.

👍 But now, finally, we’re rebuilding our home.

We’ve shared parts of this story over the years, but we’ve never told it properly from beginning to end.

👷So that’s what we’re going to do.

The earthquakes, the damage, the waiting, the things that went wrong, the moments something finally went right, and now the renovation and interiors we dreamed about all those years ago.

Our 10-Year Italian Renovation · Part 1

✅ Save this post so you don't miss the next part. Stay tuned.

22/08/2026

Summer nights in an Italian hill town. 🇮🇹

No traffic. No nightlife. No carefully curated soundtrack.

Just cicadas, a dog barking somewhere in the village, the occasional voice drifting through an open window and centuries-old streets settling down for the night.

It’s one of those little things about living in Italy that you don’t really think about before you move here.

And then, somehow, it becomes one of the things you love most.

Could you picture this being the sound of home? 🇮🇹

21/08/2026

🇮🇹 Every original feature we can save is another piece of the home’s history preserved.

When renovating an old house in Italy, it can be tempting to rip everything out and start again. But sometimes what looks tired, damaged or beyond saving simply needs a little time and attention.

This old floor is a perfect example.

Rather than replacing it, we’re cleaning and repairing it, keeping the marks, variations and imperfections that have built up over the years.

It won’t look brand new when we’re finished, and that’s exactly the point.

For us, renovating an old Italian home isn’t about making everything new. It’s about deciding what really needs replacing and what deserves another chapter.

What would you do - keep the character and imperfections of the original floor, or replace it with something new? 👇

19/08/2026

🇮🇹 Italy isn't an escape hatch, it's a different way of living and a different sets of benefits and challenges to your home country.

You have to love it to truly be able to embrace all of it.

What was the biggest surprise you found about living in or moving to Italy?

14/08/2026

🇮🇹 Every finished kitchen starts with days of preparation, painting, tiling, and plenty of attention to detail.

👍 If you’d like to see the complete transformation from start to finish, comment KITCHEN below and we’ll send you the full project video.

👋 If you’re new here, we’re Gary & Davide from D&G Design. We help people buy, renovate and create homes here in Italy, from smaller updates like kitchens and bathrooms to much larger renovation projects.

And not every Italian renovation needs an enormous budget.

We work with our clients to understand what they want to achieve, what their property actually needs and where their budget is best spent. Sometimes that means restoring original features, sometimes replacing what’s no longer practical, and sometimes finding a clever, affordable solution that completely transforms a space.

🇮🇹 Follow for real Italian renovations, property advice and everything we’ve learned about buying, renovating and living in Italy.

👇 Comment KITCHEN below and we’ll send you the full video.

12/08/2026

Why you should NOT move to Italy… 🇮🇹

We see lots of reasons given for moving to Italy.

🇮🇹 Houses are cheaper. The weather is better. Life is slower. Food is better. You’re tired of the cost of living back home. You want a change.

And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with any of those things.

But after living here, we don’t think they’re enough on their own.

🇮🇹 Because Italy isn’t always easier.

There is bureaucracy. There are frustrations. Things can take longer. You’ll encounter cultural differences you weren’t expecting. You’ll probably have moments when you wonder why something that should be incredibly simple has somehow required three appointments, four documents and a trip to the Comune.

And eventually, the feeling of being on holiday disappears.

You’re just… living here.

That’s why we think there’s one thing that matters more than everything else:

✅ You have to love Italy.

Not an idealised version of it.

The real Italy.

Its culture, traditions, language, people, food, history, rhythms, quirks, and yes, even some of the things that occasionally drive you completely mad.

Move because you want to build a life in Italy, not simply because Italy looks like an easier alternative to the life you already have.

For us, that’s the difference between wanting an escape and wanting a home. 🇮🇹❤️

Indirizzo

Force
Ascoli Piceno

Telefono

+393921374770

Sito Web

http://www.dandgdesign.com/

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