A PLACE WITH MEANING

Bettina Pace Ricci and Paul Sapienza talk Sarah Muscat Azzopardi through their impressive home renovation – splitting a traditional townhouse dating back to the early 1900s into two contemporary apartments brimming with their distinctly eclectic style and character.

PHOTOS BY ALAN CARVILLE

Despite being in their 20s, enthusiastic young couple Bettina Pace Ricci and Paul Sapienza are not new to the property game. Having purchased – and flipped – their first property together in 2014, the couple caught the renovation bug, and haven’t been without a project since.

“Once we got onto the property ladder, it’s been one project after another,” reveals Bettina, who works in marketing – so much so that fiancé Paul has turned it into a career.

After studying accounting, Paul admits that he quickly realised it wasn’t for him, going on to get a job with a local architecture firm, where he fell into a project management role. After a few years of working on project management and property valuations, he’s now turned his attention to real estate. “I’ve found my niche, and it is definitely property!”

The couple’s first property, a maisonette in Sliema, was what Bettina describes as “a real diamond in the rough” and while many questioned their decision to buy it, they saw its potential, and went on to successfully flip it and sell it on within a year.

At the time, Paul says, the property market was experiencing a boom, and the couple’s original intention was to move out of Sliema and buy a place in the countryside. But, as luck would have it, an unconverted townhouse dating back to the early 1900s proved too good to miss.

“As soon as we sold it, this property came up for sale at a bargain price. We couldn’t turn it down,” he recalls, explaining that the house which they now call home was three times the size of their previous place, so proved a serious upgrade.

Still, as the pair would discover, you can have too much of a good thing. “As we started working on the house, we realised that it was just too much space for what we need,” explains Paul – a realisation that would spur the young couple to change their plans. “Paul originally designed it as a full house, before we decided to split it up into two apartments,” Bettina reveals, describing the process as one that was constantly developing.

“Paul originally designed it as a full house, before we decided to split it up into two apartments.”

“We had so much fun working on it together, eating loads of pizza in the process.”

Now, as you enter the house at ground floor, you’re greeted by an entryway opening up to a grand staircase which is original to the house. This leads up to a twobedroom apartment on the first floor, while upstairs, where the roof and a small washroom used to be, is a one-bedroom studio apartment which the couple calls home.

The pair also reveal that they’re in the process of purchasing the three shops along the front of the house, which is set on a corner. “That will be our next project,” they laugh, with Paul revealing that he looks forward to having a garage within the property to house his other passion: classic cars.

Looking back on the property’s interesting history, Paul explains, “it was originally one house, until it eventually got split up into four – incorporating three shops along the front of the property,” revealing that one of them was quite a famous bar, owing to a special association with World War II air raid warden Mary Ellul, popularly known as ‘Mary the Man’.

During the war, Mary was celebrated for rescuing people from under the rubble of collapsed buildings, and after it, became known for her unique way of dealing with rowdy sailors – by chucking them into the Sliema sea when she worked as a bouncer – from bars like this very one downstairs, Paul explains.

Nowadays a lot more peaceful, this particular area in Sliema is also a plus for the couple, who admit their preference for a quiet locality. “It really feels like a village

“We have a real mixture of things because we’ve both developed a particular eye – we know that whatever it is, is going to influence the entire space.”

here. All sorts of hawkers, including a fishmonger and the bigilla van, come around regularly,” they say, and the neighbours all know each other. “The area is UCA, and we love it – it’s convenient and while it’s not countryside, it’s close to the sea,” adds Paul.

The studio apartment, in which the couple currently live, features an open-plan layout which makes everything easily visible – from the living area, you can see the bedroom on the left, and the kitchen and dining space on the right. Further on the left, the bathroom is concealed within a partition separating the space from the stairwell, and on the right, a terrace wraps around the apartment.

Their approach to the conversion of the property had a lot to do with respecting the building’s heritage, being careful to retain as much of the Maltese character as they could while making the property energy efficient.

For a corner house with lots of apertures, it involved a lot of sanding, they laugh, revealing, “it seemed like doors and windows were just coming out of everywhere!”

This is where Paul’s dad stepped in to lend a hand. “We couldn’t have done it without my dad,” Paul says, smiling, “he did the stuff we didn’t want to!” Nodding in agreement, Bettina adds, “he took it on as his own project, and he’s very detail-oriented, so he went to a level of detail which we wouldn’t have managed ourselves!”

The pair finally moved in in December 2018, originally living in the first-floor apartment, while the top floor remained unfinished, simply tiled and plastered. “We had decided mid-way through construction that we would split the house into apartments, and eventually live on the top floor,” says Paul, as Bettina qualifies, “the key word being eventually, because we needed a break by then!”

And after taking some time off from their home project, the onset of the pandemic last year proved to be the perfect opportunity for the couple to dedicate themselves to it once more.

“We had started working on the studio pre-pandemic, but COVID gave us the push we needed to really get going,” says Paul, explaining that they had ordered the kitchen in November for delivery in April, to coincide with their first tenant moving into the downstairs apartment. As it turns out however, the kitchen ended up being delivered a couple of months late, forcing the two to, once again, get creative.

“People would call us up and say, ‘my nanna is moving out of her house, would you like to come and see if there’s anything you need?’”

“We had to wash the dishes in the bathroom sink which was a bit of a nightmare,” laughs Bettina, adding that all was well in the end, true to the couple’s laidback nature.

“When the pandemic forced us to lock ourselves in, we worked on it together – we built the wardrobe, which serves as a partition between the bedroom and kitchen, and that really motivated us to get started again. We had so much fun working on it together, eating loads of pizza in the process,” she continues affectionately.

And now that the couple have taken the plunge to downsize, they admit to having fallen in love with tiny living. “There’s not a day that goes by in which I’m not thankful for having a tiny space. We both grew up in houses, so we weren’t sure how we would adjust, but we really love it,” says Bettina, who admits that it also makes you more selective when you’re choosing things for the house.

“You want everything to be a nice object that you like, because one bad choice can spoil the entire space. We have a real mixture of things because we’ve both developed a particular eye – we know that whatever it is, is going to influence the entire space,” she maintains.

When it comes to décor, Bettina has no qualms admitting that it’s majorly second hand. “We spent most of our savings on the conversion, so when it came to furnish,

we just went with what came our way. People would call us up and say, ‘my nanna is moving out of her house, would you like to come and see if there’s anything you need?’” she smiles, laughing, “everyone was really generous, including our parents and grandparents.”

“The quirks are what make the house so special,” she continues, highlighting particular pieces that the couple have collected and adapted over the years, including a deskturned-vanity in the bathroom, and a pair of mismatched bedside tables. “One is homemade, that I made for Paul for his birthday, and the other one came with the house,” Bettina says, admitting, “I’m sure some people must walk in and think something looks a bit funny, but I just love each and every item.”

“You can’t be afraid of colour, either!” adds Paul, which immediately elicits a laugh from Bettina. Exchanging a conspiratorial glance, they share another of their many stories. “When we chose the green for the door, the carpenter actually called us to make sure we’d given him the right shade,” they share, recalling that he wouldn’t proceed until Paul went to his workshop in person to give him the go ahead.

Ultimately, the couple describe the finished effect as eclectic but, more importantly, meaningful, and are at pains to pick particular items that stand out more than others. Among them, they can’t help but mention the “gigantic fish” in the kitchen which Bettina found on Facebook Marketplace, “George the goose lampshade” which they bought from Paris when they got engaged, as well as posters from Paul’s grandfather’s old bookshop and paintings by friends, including a showstopper by promising young artist Martina Mifsud in the living room.

As for their favourite parts of the house, Bettina chooses the terrace, where she works, exercises and enjoys her morning coffee. “I love seeing the greenery out here. The plants all grew from little sprouts, they’re like our babies!”

For Paul, it’s the staircase. “Looking down from above, you can see all the different patterns – the tiles on the first floor are one pattern, alongside the tiles in the different rooms, which are a different pattern… lots of little details, including the different finish on each level of the stairs themselves.”

And as we reach the end of our chat, I ask, is there anything that the experience has taught them, that they’d share with other couples looking to purchase their own property?

“We’d definitely encourage anyone to respect traditional architecture and see the potential in old Maltese buildings. They’re unique, and resale value is better than an apartment, so it does pay off too,” says Paul, ever the practical one – to which Bettina adds, “nothing compares to the feeling of a place in which you can see remnants of the past. You just have to see the potential to spot a diamond in the rough.”