ennui de grenouille

Sorry for the delay!

2011-04-28T10:12:00.000-07:00

I just got back from the house and a lot got done. I'll be posting my first experiences with Chaux de Fleur, as well as what to do when a beam moves on you (!) and also, pix from the charming villes of Marcillac and Salles La Source.

A lot was learned on this trip.

The story of Madame de Feu

2009-09-04T17:48:00.000-07:00

The last time I was over in France to work on the house I had the extreme fortune to meet the local town historian who I will refer to as Mme. L. She was most gracious, offering to me the use of power via an extension chord, showing me the place she had just restored across the street, and even invited my and my compatriot into her house (work filth and all) to sit down, have a glass of tea and pick her brain about the town (and my house's in particular) history. I will delve into that in greater detail later, but as we were going back to my place a strange thing occurred.
I had always noticed that no matter what time of year it was, a single lone smokestack always belched out a thin-whispy line of smoke. It was a small smokestack among many others on top of a row of houses, and it always struck me as odd that only this one smoked. Even in the dead-air heat of summer it puffed away. I thought it a curiosity and nothing more. But as we walked down the street, just before we turned from her street onto mine, an ancient wooden back door opened and an old, dirty, wrinkled hand emerged. It reached down to a little seau bois wooden bucket, and retrieved scraps of what looked to be extra crown moulding and bits of angled wood. Things you usually see piled next to a table saw. I noticed that some of the angled pieces looked like ones I myself had cut and left out front of my house not that morning.
Mme. L greeted the phantom hand with a 'Bonjour Madame!'. The door closed quickly, but I did catch a return 'Bonjour' from the disembodied hand, and more importantly a brief glimpse of the madame. She had the shapeless form that comes with extreme old age. her hair, if she still had any, was wrapped up tightly in a scarf. She wore a long faded black dress, but if the streaks of soot on her face were any indication it could've been white originally. Mme L and I walked on. When we arrived at my place and Mme L was sure we were out of earshot she pulled me aside and told me very politely that I mustn't leave any more wood outside even for just an hour.
"But why, Madame?" I asked.
"Because she will take it. All of it. She is old now, and her eyesight is not so good. She cannot see nails on the wood anymore. We leave her wood in that basket, but only if it is safe, do you understand?" I nodded.
"Why does she take wood, surely she can't be cold." I asked.
In typical gallic acceptance, she responded "why does anybody do anything? Why does a man cheat?" I had no answer. Sensing perhaps that this was an unacceptable answer to an American used to answers she tried to fill in the details.
"We call her 'Madame de Feu' (The Fire lady). I am not young- no, no it is no insult to admit the truth- but I am not old, either; but she, she is old. I was born here and grew up here, and as long as i can remember, she has lived in there, burning wood. All night, all day, do you understand? And she has always been old. I was told that once she was the most beautiful woman in the village. Perhaps the most beautiful woman in the whole area. She had many beaus, but it is told she loved one and they were to be married. They never did."
"What happened? Was it the war?"
"This is possible, but I am afraid she is so old, nobody knows. She has outlived all who knew."
"Is this why she burns things?"
Mme L just shrugged her shoulders. "Some things we will never know. It is better this way, n'est pas? We just let her burn." She looked down the street to the little chimney, a black puff of smoke burst forth from it and quickly dissipated against the backdrop of the hills. She sighed and looking back at me with an earnest gaze spoke. "I know one day I shall wake up and open my windows to take in the morning air and there will be no scent of smoke in it. One day the chimney will cease. I know this must happen, but i have never lived in a world without it. Wherever I have gone i have returned here, to my home, yes? And her flame has always been there. I do not know what I will do when it is gone."
We stood in silence, staring for a while at the smoke, enjoying its constancy, the way it put 'clothes on the wind' until she took a few pieces of scrap from my pile that she deemed safe, bid me good day and made her way to madame's bucket.

A Primer on French Music

2009-09-01T12:21:00.001-07:00

French music is often maligned as being all accordions and berets, Maurice Chevalier circa Gigi, or 30 years behind us, but that's a bit unfair. While it's true that alot of French music can be comical in its gallicness (the aforementioned Chevalier) or well behind the times (see Mylene Farmer), there's a lot that is good. Here's just a few I have in heavy rotation.

For old school stuff, nothing beats Serge Gainsbourg's 'Ballad of Melody Nelson', which sounds a lot like an old lusty frenchman doing spoken word while eating moules and drinking wine, if that Frenchman happened to have P-funk as his dinner companions.

Serge Gainsbourg - "Melody".

For slightly more modern faire, try the following three one-man bands, who run the gamut from 80's new wave retro sounds (m83), to rave music (Anoraak) to flat-out cool techno-pop with a hint of gallic humor and real sexuality (Sebastien Tellier).

Anoraak - “The Wizzard”

M83 – Skin of The Night

Sebastian Tellier - La Ritournelle (Mr. Dan magic wand mix)

two weeks to go!

2009-08-31T11:52:00.000-07:00

Two weeks to go before I'm at the house with mes amis!

After checking to make sure the weather/termites/biblical conflagrations haven't taken my home down to the foundation, this is the (Highly ambitious) plan of attack. I will provide great before and after pictures when I return, of course.

Wednesday night
1. overnight flight arriving in Barcelona at 8:45 am Thursday.

Thursday 17

1. Pick up car and hit the road by 10am.
2. 5 hours on the road, gathering supplies along the way.
3. unpack, run by the house to show it, take stock of what we need to buy and
discuss the order of work.

Friday 18

1. go to Mr. Bricolage. get gloves, etc.
2. pull back boards in attic.
3. take down ceiling tiles in 3f back room.
4. clean up 3f.
6. make runs to dechetterie.

Saturday 19
1. mason work on the crack on the 3rd floor.
2. disassemble 2f poele.
3. reassemble poele on 1f.
4. dechetterie.

Sunday 20
1. Fix attic flooring. Make it stable
2. fix attic hole.
3. dechetterie.

monday 21

1. Shut down house for winter.
4. take the last of the junk to the dechetterie

Tuesday 22

Check out and head for Barcelona.
Big celebration dinner in Barcelona!

It's the little things...

2009-08-28T13:03:00.000-07:00

I love history. I love anything older than me, especially if it's exceptionally well-made. For me, there will never be a better design than the self-winding watch. Granted, quartz watches are far more accurate, but something about a watch that will simply work for a very long time and can be fixed by human hands when it doesn't is appealing to me. I love the old and well-crafted so much that I can't just have these things, I must know their history. This makes me quite useful at trivial pursuit and quite boring the rest of the time.

That's why I love the key to my house. It's a giant skeleton key. It's efficient, effective, very durable (more so than modern pin locks which suffer from spring compression and snapped key necks). Sure, it's not as safe as a modern lock, but for the purposes of rural France, it's safe enough. A heavy warded lock (warded because it has blocks or 'wards' that only the special cut of your key can slide past) is not very easy to pick and quite frankly, if someone wants into your house, they'll kick in the door or window. They'll do this no matter what key your door has. So why bother with a new lock? Especially when it denies you the satisfying sound and feel of tumbling a lock with a 4-inch long brass key. It's simply a cherry on the antique sundae that is your little maison.

The key, or en français, le Clé.

Victor of Aveyron

2009-08-18T13:03:00.000-07:00

The region I bought in France is so rustic even the average Frenchman doesn't know where it is. The two things it's famous for are excellent knives and cheese matured in caves full of mold. But the crowning proof of how rustic the Aveyron is is the true story of Victor of Aveyron, a boy who lived completely alone in the wild until he was captured at the assumed age of 10.

A Bit of Regional History - Pt 1

2009-07-15T07:25:00.001-07:00

In honor of my upcoming trip to France, I thought I'd give some interesting regional history.

It can get dark and scary some nights in rural France. Even worse are the nights eerily lit up by a full mistral moon. Valley pathways are illuminated, while the thick underbrush is not. The tall plateau prairies glow white and black under the moon, and you can swear you see shadows darting in the distance from scrub-brush to scrub-brush. Careful, you might just be right. For it was only a scant 240 years ago that something roamed the hills and valleys around here, picking off villager after villager. Was it a lion escaped from a zoo? A pack of wolves? What haunted the Abbeys and farms for years before it was killed? Some still swear it was the Loup-garou, better known as werewolf. Read about it here.

2nd floor work

2009-07-13T14:16:00.000-07:00

So when the house was purchased, the second and third floors were partitioned out into several small, dark rooms. On the second floor in particular, the partitions were terribly laid out and cut the floor into a small kitchen a small dining room and a small bedroom. Space was poorly used and worse, the wallpaper was hideous. Let's review:

The kitchen:

That's the cantou on the right, a partition wall on the left. That's the only window for the room. And yes, that's a linoleum floor.

The dining room:

Only the wall on the right is a load bearing wall. That's clapboard attached to the beams for the ceiling. That wallpaper!

The other view:

Again, the only window in the room.

So this floor was a mess. The big front balcony with floor to ceiling windows felt removed and detached from the rooms because it spanned the kitchen and the dining room. No breezes coud get through because there were walls everywhere. The staircases seemed isolated and a colossal waste of space. And the back room was a place you would go to die. Dark, one window, dank, and cold all day long. There was only one answer. Total destruction.

Luckily the walls were just plank board and wallpaper. The ceilings capboard and paint. I took a crowbar and sledgehammer to them all. Well, first I disconnected the power and ripped out all of the old wiring and fixtures. The house would have to be rewired anyway and the old cloth-wrapped wiring was an enourmous fire hazard. The hardest part was the freaking linoleum. But I got it too, and when I removed all of the detritus, this is what I had:

this is the kitchen by the front window. look at all the light and gorgeous space! Light streamed into the place now. The cantou looked like the rightful centerpiece of the room, and a wonderful breeze flowed right through the place. I wish I had better pictures but the 2nd floor is wide open. It's one big room, and that's how it will stay. It'll be a wonderful place to cook, dine, relax and hopefully cuddle around a raging fire in the winter.
I still have to remove the wooden backing from the cantou. I also have to disassemble the cast iron stove and reassemble itdownstairs, where it will provide heat for the guest bedroom eventually going in there. Just a reminder of how big the cantou is, that's a full-sized iron stove inside the cantou.

the cantou:

Video of the destruction

2009-07-13T13:20:00.000-07:00

this is the third floor after we'd taken down all the plaster, horsehay and junk. Al that dirt, pollen and hay gave my house the nickname 'Chez Claritin'.

Enjoy!

The September Work Trip!

2009-07-09T09:39:00.000-07:00

I'm starting to get very excited about the work trip. It's only 70 days away and everything is arranged! 4 guys for one whole week! Even working just 4-5 hours a day stil winds up being over 100 man-hours of work put in, which is a lot.

Some details.

1. We're in the south of France, so Barcelona is actually the closest single-stop airport, Not Paris-CDG or Geneva-Cointrin. I use Kayak for my ticket needs. It allows you to better plan for the lowest rate. this time I got round trip, non-stop flights NYC-BAR for 282 dollars. That's total, not each way. By going mid-September I an still travelling in summer, but off peak.

2. I rented a car through Sixt, which seems to be trying to break into the US market and offered the best rates by far.

3. I rented a gite rural, which is essentially a standalone holiday home. This one comes with bbq grill, coffee machine, 4 beds, washer/dryer, full kitchen and petanque court. Its view is spectacular and it cost me a grand total of 50 euros a day. I found it through clevacances.

4. if you have an iphone get a translator app, there are a lot of good free ones, they all have french, and it could save your bacon if you have to say something like 'No, Officer, my friends are all blind drunk but I have stayed sober because your French country roads scare the shit out of me'*.

*Mais non, Monsieur Gendarme, mes amis sont tout des abat-jour ivres mais je suis resté sobre parce que vos routes de campagne françaises effrayent la merde hors de moi!

Now, some pix from the area we'll be travelling:

Conques

Estaing

Belcastel

Why friends and old homes are good

2009-07-09T09:03:00.000-07:00

the Bastide gate leading into my town.

Fixing a house is no easy task, and you'd think the older the home, the more difficult. But, there are advantages to a really old house.

1. if it's still sturdy after 300 years and you've had it checked out, with a little common maintenance, you've got another 300 easy. You won't be there for that, but neither will any of the prefab Acme brick homes you grew up in in the US.

2. Apart from plumbing and electrics, there's nothing you can't do to repair it. You may think you're unskilled but everything built in your house was put in there by unskilled labor. The 17th century stonemason knew a few more things than you about mortar and rock, but his tools were simple, and luckily, he's left you instructions: when you repair his work, just use the layout of the rocks as a example. And the plasterer is only better than you because he's done it before. There's nothing tricky about plaster.

3. Your friends can rampage through the destruction phase with minimal guidance and not risk bringing the house down around you. Leave beams, stairs, wires, pipes and load-bearing walls alone. Everything else is fair game. Everything critical/important in an old house is build to last and your pal the lawyer does no have the strengh, experise or cunning to take it out. Friends are great, too, because they will work like dogs for 4 or 5 hours a day and be happy to do it. They're invested in your investment. They know that as long as you have it, they can come to France. It's win-win. They're cheaper than paying for itinerant labor, they speak your native tongue, and the locals will not be mad you didn't hire them to do the work when you do it with friends. Trust me, fixing up a place with cheap labor that aren't friends is the quickest way to alienate your new french neighbors.

News!

2009-06-22T14:14:00.000-07:00

Three of my dearest friends (who also happen to have strong backs) have all agreed and purchased tix (the true sign of commitment) and are coming with me for a week in September to do some serious work! More details to follow, like where we'll stay (A 'gite', I have lots of useful info on that which can save you money and get you a great place) and what we hope to accomplish (mortar and mason work, using traditional materials). Details to follow.

House insurance

2009-01-09T11:03:00.001-08:00

It's important to insure your little treasure against all sorts of things, because in France, you never know what might happen.

I chose these guys, but there are many choices. Many of them speak English.

The Dechetterie

2008-12-19T12:26:00.000-08:00

The Dechetterie is the local dump. Almost every town has one, and they are very, very useful. They have good hours (especially for France) and they take anything. A good run-down on them can be found here. They are usually just on the outskirts of town and as long as you are a resident, they should be free to use. Here are some important things to note:

1. They are usually not open on Sundays, but if yours is like mine, they aren't actually closed either, so you can go and dump your stuff anyway.
2. They take most anything but it must be sorted. Wood gets burnt, metal and plastic recycled, mattresses and such hauled away. If you put everything unsorted into a bag, you will have to sort it there. So do yourself a favor and put it into the bag sorted. If you violate this rule they WILL FIND AND FINE YOU.
3. They really do take most anything. Plaster, wooden doors, paint cans, Antennae, horsehair mattresses, bags upon bags of linoleum flooring, I have brought this all and they have taken it all.
4. There are usually brown roadsigns that point the way to the dechetterie. They're usually found just outside the town line on the main road.

3f - Clearing out Plaster

2008-12-19T09:47:00.000-08:00

So, the third floor has pretty bad floors, as well as a crack in the interior wall. All in all, it needs a lot of work. Like the 4th floor, there is no plumbing, no sewer downpipe and certainly no electricity. But the single most annoying factor of it is the plaster that covers the ceiling.

the crack in the wall.

It is slightly bigger now since I am removing bad chaux and plaster to repair it.

Plaster o' the Damned

Ostensibly for insulation, this plaster has hung on the ceiling for 100 years. It's heavy, unsightly, drops the visuals of the ceiling and is just a lot of unnecessary weight. So my friend and I decided to take it out.

Look how low the ceiling is.

Thispart was tiring, but I admit, a lot of fun. We took crowbars, hammers, chisels and everything available to it. Nothing comes down quite as satisfying as plaster. The person who put the plaster up decided that plaster itself wasn't warm enough so he insulated in the space between with horsehay and chesnuts. It's amazing this place didn't burn to the ground. As an added bonus, I sneezed like crazy.
When it was all said and done we had 40 garbage bags of useless weight on the floor. We also had early evening light pouring through the dust, so we took the oppurtunity to recreate a famous Hollywood scene. Slowly but surely we got the bags down from the third floor to the first. When it was all said and done we removed an estimated 2500-3000 lbs of plaster, chesnuts and horsehay from the house. 2500 lbs of useless weight hanging from the timber beams.

Where did it all go? That's the next and most useful post yet: The Dechetterie.

Sorry for the delays!

2008-10-06T12:25:00.001-07:00

I've been very busy as of late but I will be catching up on what I've done in the two houseworking trips. Walls come down, vehicles are rented and overused, and trash, 2500-3000 pounds of trash gets removed.

Oh, and there's treasure from the attic, too.

Now, because I can...

2008-06-18T12:01:00.001-07:00

...Some village porn.

Every time I think it's too hard, or time-consuming, or forget why I'm doing it, I just look at a picture of my village and think of all the people ready to lend a hand and share a beer (both here in the States and in the village) and I'm ready to start again.

-L'H

The Value of an Inspection

2008-06-18T11:41:00.000-07:00

Buying a house on your own is always a gamble. Buying a house that could be anywhere up to 600 years old without expert help is no better than a crap shoot. In fact it's probably closest to Russian Roulette. Any number of problems found in a modern house are merely amplified in an old home. And certain problems exist in an old home that don't exist in a modern one: Asbestos, dry rot, and lead pipes to name a few. Certainly any potential homebuyer who has studied a little bit can find things like dry rot, but it really takes an expert to spot serious problems.
So, to help us out, before we bought the house, we actually paid an English surveyor and engineer to both survey the house for damage and come up with a comprehensive plan to refurbish it. This cost us around 1,800 dollars. Below is an example of what the blueprints he gave us looked like:

Now at first glance, this might not seem like a good return for the investment, but for piece of mind, it was well worth it. He surveyed the walls, foundation, roof and wood joists. All came through solid, with only minor maintenance needed. He found real issues (asbestos in the fireplace for one, though it was neutralized, meaning it cannot get airborne), managed our expectations about how we could restore the building (Plumbing has to go on this wall, that staircase cannot be moved, this is a load-bearing wall), and continues to be a resource of knowledge (This can be removed, that cannot, don't fix that until spring, etc.).

We did this before we bought, and becasue he would get paid either way and had no loyalty to the Realtor or selling party, we got unbiased truth. We decided beforehand what level of problems we would tolerate and still buy, so when it came back well above that level, we went into the negociations to buy even more pleased with our results. That's all well and good, but perhaps the value would've been better seen if he had discovered a fatal flaw like a shifting foundation, bad termite infestation or sever wall degradation. Luckily for us that didn't exist here, but had it, we would've saved ourselves lots of money and years or heartache.

On a different note, if I am forced to sell or abandon the project because of rising costs vs. the Euro or other reasons, the survey plus detailed floorplans/details greatly increases the interest and value of the place. It gives the seller leverage.

First Look - First Floor

2008-06-17T13:17:00.000-07:00

Unlike most old French houses, this one does not have a basement, or 'Cave'. What it does have is a large open-plan first floor. Some point in the last 60 years, the previous owners removed the front wall, added a steel I-beam for support and converted it to a garage. You can see this in the sliding doors to the right.

The doors need a good sanding and possibly some runners at the bottom, but they are thick and in good condition overall.

The rest of the first floor (separate of the front door and staircase that leads straight to the second floor) is built at a slight angle to allow drainage. There is already a toilet in here and a sewer line, so this will make converting this in to a single-occupancy guest house a lot more easy. And with a wide open space like this, I have many, many ideas.

You can see in the corner one of the flaws with the house. I am getting a bit of seepage from the back area where literally 100s of years of leaves, dust and debris have raised the soil 4 feet above the foundation line!

The engineer we hired to survey it (always a good idea) told me that with proper waterseal this will not be a problem. I intend to sandblast the stone and brick in here to remove any and all lead paint, and afterwards I will re-tick the mortar, then seal the whole thing with a stone and masonry sealing paint. Below is the niche created by the need to reinforce the immense cantou above. Ince the years of paint and flake have been blasted off of the surface, I intend to do something creative and fun with this area. I don't know what yet, but it will be cool.

The nook:

-L'H

Attic First Look

2008-06-10T13:38:00.000-07:00

So, behind the giant cantou, the attic is what really attracted me to this place. It has old, hand wrought rafters, a high, vaulted ceiling and stone walls on either side. It also has a horsehair mattress, boxes upon boxes of slate, junk, trash and rocks. Also, the floor is terrible and will have to go, but even in this terrible state you can see the potential.

First, take a look at these rafters!

As you can see they are rough-hewn, and held together with peg and joist. I thoroughly key-tested the pegs and rafters and the wood is dry, strong and not spongy. A key test is imperative in an old house. Simply pull out your keys and push them against the wood. If they sink in anywhere with ease, you have woodworms, dry rot or worse yet: termites. Don't buy the place.

The only problem with the attic that cannot be easily remedied is the lack of natural light. In this picture you see both the lack of natrual light and the types of junk everywhere. Broken glass in boxes, broken picture frames, matresses, bedframes, old shingles, old timber, and for some reason, lots and lots of stones. I'll keep those for masonry repointing.

The First Demolition! Coming Soon!

2008-05-19T10:38:00.001-07:00

Coming soon:
I'll be posting the first floor first look as well as the attic first look, then pictures from the first bit of work. There' s lots and lots of demolition! Basically if it's a non-load bearing wall, it's gone. Ceiling clapboard, linoleum and miles and miles of junk from the attic! An old Horsehair mattress and hidden treasure to boot.

For now, a picture from the town:

Meeting the Mayor

2008-05-13T13:38:00.000-07:00

In most of France, nothing gets done without a permit. You can't build a fence, put in new windows or re-rout your plumbing without an official seal of approval. If you happen to live in a pretty town, then the powers that be may even want to see detailed plans for your renovation to make sure you don't intend to change your rustic maison into a bombastic bauhaus monstrosity or open a *gasp* MacDonalds.
None of this happens with the approval of Monsieur le Maire. This man (or woman) literally has the power of life or death over your project so it's important to make a good first impression on him. Be sure to show him the respect his office brings him. Call him Monsieur le Maire (or Madame le Maire) until they say otherwise. They may not. Bring a nice gift. We brought a bottle of fine Tennessee sippin' whiskey to meet the Maire. He was much pleased by this. All went well.
I have had the opportunity to have drinks with him twice. He is a genial, efficient, direct man, which is good, because his accent is so thick that what little French I can claim to understand is useless with him. He is very good-natured however, and that's a necessity. For though I only know him as 'Mr. Le Maire', most everybody else in town has known him for many, many years, so most times he's not really the mayor to them as much as he is a brother, friend, boss, etc. So when they hear an etrange like me call him Monsieur le Maire in the bar, they all raise their voices high and with all mock courtesy bow and kowtow in unison proclaiming 'Monsier le Maire!!! Monsieur le Maire!!!' Then everybody falls over in fits of laughter, Mr. Mayor included.

The Second Thing You Need

2008-05-12T16:24:00.000-07:00

Once you've committed to buying a place, even if you speak French you could really use help. There are companies whose whole raison d'etre is to help you with everything you need. Even the most self-motivated person would find it damned near impossible to deal with everything they need to do for their project from 3,000 miles away. It's nice to have someone to find plumbers and electricians who won't tack on a 'foreigner tax' on your quotations, but it's really useful for small things. It's the minutae that kills you. There are taxes to be paid, forms to be filled out, power and water to be turned on and off, inpectors and city workers to be let in, meters to be checked, all of which can be a real pain in the ass to make happen from a distance.

This site is useful for many reasons, and it can help you find the right assistance group for your area.

I use a company called CIBA. Spencer and Marie are very friendly, quick to respond and very helpful.

-L'H

Mr. Bricolage

2008-05-12T11:59:00.001-07:00

If you want something for your home repair in France, odds are you'll find it at Mr. Bricolage. French for 'Mr. Do-It-Yourself', this gallic Home Depot has more things in one place than just about any other business around. The French have a frustrating history of artisans and fine craftmanship, which is great if you're buying a stained glass window or vanity cheese, frustrating as all hell if you're buying filters, nails, industrial paper towels and plastic buckets. But now, every town of moderate size will have one of these in their 'industrial zone' (usually just outside of town. follow the white signs to 'zone industrielle'):

This is how they all look and they work pretty much like a home depot in that you shop and grab and basically wander aimlessly from lighting to hardware to gardening to plumbing looking at a number of shiny things you have no use for. But if you need a shovel, chaux, masonry, trowels, big garbage bags and power tools, this is your place. But bear in mind this is still France, so this place is closed from 12-2 for 'lunch'. Another way that they differ markedly from American big box hardware shops is in the service: They are very helpful. Take this exchange, where yours truly tries to buy a pair of work gloves:

Me: (In broken French): Hello sir. I would like... no, no... I have need of... things.

Mr. Bricolage: (In French, so I didn't understand but I bet it was this:)Lucky for you then, this place is full of things.

Me: My French is terrible.

Mr. Bricolage: Yes it is.

Me: I need, for my house, things to work with. You put them around your hands.

Mr. Bricolage: Around your hands? Or ON?

Me: On.

Mr. Bricolage: (In English) Then why didn't you just say 'gloves'?

The word for gloves is 'gants', by the way.

-L'H

First Look - 3rd Floor

2008-05-12T09:56:00.001-07:00

The third floor is interesting because it doesn't use space very well. This is more or less how it looked upon purchase. It should be noted that the vertical wall and the horizontal wall on the left side are the only two 'load bearing' walls in the whole place. The rest of the load is held up on 4x8 oak beams that run north south. These beams are supported on each floor by one massive 6x12 rough-hewn beam that runs down the middle. On this floor all of those ar obscured not only by the walls, but by probably 3,000 pounds of ceiling plaster. That will come out.

In this picture, which would be the bottom right corner on the map above, you can see not only a crack in the plaster exposing the cross-hatch wood and horsehair mortar insulation (most commonly called Tudor-style here in the US), but also the rough hewn wood planks of the flooring, which is in fairly good condition, at least on this floor. I intend to retain the flooring, which is in thick one-foot planking, and sand and gap it. I will probably use tung oil for staining, if I stain at all. This flooring has worked exceptionally well for 300 years, and it would be retarded to tear it up now.

This room is top right on the map. The wall on the right is NOT load bearing and it will come out. Eventually a bathroom may go here, but for the time being I'm hoping to maximize light in this room. I also need to get all that plaster out. It's useless weight on the house and all it does by essentially lowering the ceiling a foot, is give the feeling of a choked space bending under its own weight, which is what it's actually kind of done over the past 200 years.

The plaster ceiling:

-L'H

My Cantou

2008-05-09T14:55:00.000-07:00

A cantou is a very large fireplace, traditional in older homes. It is not meant, contrary to popular belief, to have a fire so big you could spit roast an entire deer in it. No, actually the reason cantous are so big and deep is so the on very cold nights one could get in the cantou with the fire and the stone walls' radiant heat would keep you warm while you knitted or darned or whatever the hell people did back before the industrial age*. This will not stop me from attempting to spit roast a deer in it when it's all said and done.

So this is my cantou. The fireplace area is 7 feet across, 3 feet deep and 5 and a half feet tall. I am in love with this thing. The top is made up of three big, rough masoned plinth stones, like some sort of home dolmen. It's so massive that the first floor wall comes out to support it. For sizing that is a massive grandma iron stove inside the cantou. When I have finished removing that stove (called a poele) and removing the wood walls the previous owner installed inside, I will use chaux (a primitive lime masonry, much more on this later) and restore the inside. I will re-mortar the outside, but I am going to leave the stone exposed.

Then I am going to sleep inside it and dream of meat.

*Answer: Toil endlessly.

First look - 2nd floor

2008-05-09T14:40:00.000-07:00

The 2nd floor is the heart of this house. It has the kitchen and the ginormous cantou (fireplace), as well as the balcony. As soon as the hideous walls are gone, it won't be so dark and gloomy either. Some pre-demolition shots:

A view from the second floor balcony. This is looking to the right.

This is the 2nd floor den. to the right of the armoire is a wall that is the wall on the left in the next shot. Notice the fugly ubiquitous wallpaper applied DIRECTLY to the plaster that covers the stone. Those walls are about 3 feet thick. You can see it by how deep the window doors are recessed into the walls.

This is the kitchen. to the right of the picture (but not visible) is the cantou. I may have agreed to buy this place just for that. The wall on the left is the shared wall. It is NOT load bearing.

In the Beginning.

2008-05-09T14:17:00.000-07:00

The ironic thing, of course, is that it was her idea and dream. I was not particularly gung ho on buying an old house in France. But we were literally bleeding away all the money we made from restoring and selling a house in DC, and if this locked it up, at least that kept it from going into a new domain couch every year and super expensive toys. But there we were, one day, landing in Bordeaux and driving east. We met several immobiliers along the way, shopping houses in Tarn, Garonne, Aquitaine. None of them really worked for us, but at least the price was encouraging. Houses in parts of France not called Provence or Paris are actually reasonable, if you're willing to put the work in yourself. We originally perused several sites online to find immobiliers, pricing and an general plan of attack. Eventually, in the Aveyron, we struck paydirt.

It should be noted that this house was not listed on any website, and the only reason we found it was because we spent more than a day with our very sweet immobilier (realtor) Nick. He came to understand what we wanted (rustic, something that would reward 'sweat equity' (in other words, not what the average Frenchman wanted in a French home). He took us to see a few that just might do the trick.

Like all houses under 50,000 Euros, it needed work on the inside, and lots of it. But it had charm and as an American, the most solid walls I had ever seen in the home. Being inside the bastide (a city wall made essentially of houses) and supposedly from the late 18th century just made it even more of a steal. But we didn't jump right away, French realty does not work like the American market used to. Houses can and will sit for months, even years. So we felt no pressure to buy without having it thoroughly inspected.

We paid an English engineer 1,800 euro to inspect it, which he did and pronounced it sound (with a few nagging issues to be discussed later). After that, it was pretty simple. I wired the money through Customhouse.com to the immobilier, we paid the yearly taxes (based on the square yardage of the place and very affordable, in our case 190 euros a year) my ex-wife (not ex back then) went to sign the papers and we took possession of two skeleton keys and one old house. Now all we had to do a little light work (demolition of soft partitions, cleaning of attic, new electrics, new plumbing, rebuild the attic, new windows, staircase reconficuration, repointing of brick, replastering and new bathrooms). And from that moment on, my ex started to lose interest in the house at a rate that would terrify bankers. What had started out as her idea, then morphed into our house in France, had finally turned into my 10-year project. Along the way, plans were shed, timetables missed, and eventually a marriage ended (luckily not because of the house). I was going to go it alone. How hard could it be?

-L'homme du maison