Kuča Broj 5 - House Number 5

After the renovation our home had the mark of three generations of love.

Text by Carmen Baričević Papić
Photos by Peter Baričević

She was built somewhere around 130 years ago, in the late 1800’s, by our baba and nono. Baba Ivanka, also known as Ivanica, was gifted this particular piece of land – of her choice – by her father. She liked this spot by the water because the house was going to have a lot of light and fresh air. Ivanica and her husband, Mate, built the house with the money he had earned during his first trip to the United States.

They did not have enough funds to make it fancy and cement the outside or add on a second floor. However, they were most content to have a home of their own for what would become their large family of 7 children. It was their starter house.

a pastel rendering of the house done by artist Marta Markanec, a frequent visitor to the island of Ilovik.

As the children grew, one by one they were getting married and were moving in with their spouses. The youngest one, our father, was left with Baba and Nono and would stay in the house to take care of them. This was often done, and it made sense.

When our father, Anton, Antonić(!) to his friends, decided to get married, the first remodeling of the inside of the house took place.

The right side of the house was divided into two bedrooms, with the waterfront bedroom becoming Baba and Nono’s and the other one for our parents. The left side remained one open area, to be used as the kitchen and family space. The upstairs was used to store potatoes, onions and garlic for the winter. No one was sleeping upstairs at that time, so it served as additional storage.

The view as the remodeling took place in 2017, with our cousin’s garden abundant with greens.

After a while, my father decided that they would also divide the kitchen area to create a separate room we call “konoba”. It was used as storage for oil, cheese and other food goods. Since the house is right on the water, the winds would blow especially hard on the water side. The separation created by the konoba helped to keep the kitchen warmer in the winter. Today we hear of a konoba and we think of a restaurant but a konoba is traditionally about food storage. In the konoba were valuable items.

What we would lose in not keeping the konoba, we would gain in converting another small building on the property into a proper baraka. In a baraka, sounds like barracks, you can cook and store food without disturbing the actual house. Another time I will explain why that is so important.

As our little family grew to four children we were again in need of additional bedrooms. Since the upstairs had high ceilings my father decided to take up part of the open space and make a formal bedroom. We could then move up as needed.

Baba was still alive when the room was finished, and I remember her walking upstairs on all her fours to see it, since upright would have required assistance. She was very happy that the house was getting updated, and to express that she wanted to go up on her own power.

What Baba saw when she made it upstairs was a new bedroom window, one that opened up on the outside of the house, facing the garden. Another window was on the wall facing the water and it opened up to the rest of the open space. Both windows of the room lined up perfectly, permitting maximum airflow.

Baba has been concerned that maybe we would not have enough fresh air up there and we could suffocate. She would remind our parents to make sure one of the windows was always a little open for us. Homes in those days had windows that were not so tight compared to today’s standards. When the wind blew fresh air would seep in. A little extra fresh air, but not enough for a draft, was considered the norm.

In the meantime my father was happy that he constructed a bedroom that was quiet. You could not hear the wind whistling in this room like in the rest of the house. “Kako da je va pećici!” my father announced! Meaning it was as quiet and warm inside as in a brick oven. It was a saying back then, one that made you think of baking loaves of bread. It reminds me how even then, different generations had different perspectives.

Looking out the window, reflecting on family. We added another meter in height to the structure.

The new room was constructed mostly with materials from one of our other parcels of land, popularly known as “Dida”. The property had been appropriated by the Italian military, during their occupation during WWII. It was an ideal lookout, an “izviđački pogled” (a lookout point) for monitoring any sea activity from the Italian side of the Adriatic. After they left the land was ours again.

We poured a foundation for the remodel in 2017, since homes like ours did not have them originally.

On Dida, during occupation, the Italian military had built a two-story house and underneath a tunnel. The end of the tunnel had stairs going up to the metal covering with windows facing the sea armed with guns. Later, when that land was open to us, we could go down and around to the bunker. We kids thought it was cool. The house at Dida had fallen into disrepair. Other people started to collect bricks and reuse them for their needs.

The work was exacting and our team was dedicated.

My father would bring some home too, a few at a time to be discreet. He would also collect lumber that was foraged from the shores. Lumber would sometimes come our way as it would wash up on shore due to passing cargo ships. Some materials would fall off from the ships especially during storms. My father would gather those driftwood pieces and salvage them into planks and other parts we needed for the house.

For our renovation we were able to purchase wood and other supplies. The builder provided us with artisans who meticulously crafted our house with us.

The original house was built by Baba and Nono using local stone. They would take their small boat to the nearby island across the water. There, on the island we call Priko, they were cutting stones from the shore rocks. In the sections where they cut, the rock was naturally layered and relatively easy to chisel. Baba would say, “Ja i Nono smo, kamik, po kamik…” that means, I and your grandfather (built this house) stone by stone. The implication, which needed no explanation, was that piece by piece, they built this home.

The bricks from the konoba and other materials from inside were all taken out so we could start fresh.

We lost our Nono in 1956 and Baba died in 1959. Being the only girl in the family I was honored to get their bedroom, to see the water side with a magnificent view of the water and Velebit mountain every morning. It didn’t last long.

In 1962 we left our home headed for the refugee camp in Italy. I remember that the evening we left my father opened both front and back doors. He wasn’t going to leave and close it up, maybe because it felt too final. Leaving our home was hard. I can only imagine how hard it was for the adults. We the children were more confused than anything else.

A view from the side, as the house came back to life.

Our Uncle Mate and Teta Marta took care of the house, until they also left. At this point our Teta Ivanica used the house by renting it to Italian friends. Eventually our one summer tenant fell in love with the house. Roberto would come often from Trieste, He began maintaining the house and enjoyed it as his own. He kept patching things up and kept it in living condition. He was having a great time on the island, fishing, gardening etc. When my father retired, he started coming back every summer. Roberto was there helping and keeping him very good company. Additional friends would join them and the house was once again full of life, friendship and also song. They would gather outside, or in colder months by the hearth where we had once cooked.

The hearth as it was before the remodel.

When my father was getting older, occasionally he would say that he thought the house would probably fall down since he couldn’t take care of it any longer. We promised him that we would fix it up and it would never be abandoned. He however did not think that anything needed to be changed while he was alive. He would say it was fine just as it is.

For a while the stairs had to go, we put the new ones back in the same place.

He would say, “When I’m gone, do what you want”.

And we did. It started with making plans for the remodel. There were things we would want to preserve and things that simply had to go. Our Mama’s orange tree for example, had to stay, but the grape vines, well those we would have to replant. We would use new materials, although we would also save some of the original bricks, and we would have our own adventure, not quite “Kamik po kamik”, but close.

The doors are new but they still make a perfect corridor to the sea.

Times change, and generations pass, but every good project can find a way to live on. It takes effort and care, but it’s worth it. The house has now lived through different political regimes, and has even switched countries without moving an inch. Watching your family care for a place inspires and shapes you. It made us want to protect what our parents, and our grandparents created. House number five will always be our tie to our history, and in that way, it is always our home.