Erin Lewis likes to describe herself as “American by blood, Italian by heart.” She felt called to Italy for many years before finally deciding to make the move six years ago. She settled in Florence, where she had already lived before. There, she rented an apartment; as time went by, she gravitated more and more towards the countryside, until she decided she wanted to own real estate in Italy.

But not just any real estate; it had to be her own project. And so the project turned out to be, “building a house, from scratch, in an empty field, on the border of Tuscany and Umbria,” as she herself writes on Agra Dolce, the blog she set up to document her house-building journey in Italy. In the interview below, Erin shares useful insights into her experience as she still works through it, and provides some great points to ponder for anyone interested in doing something similar.