Progress report: The Notaires House

Hello? Anyone there? I suspect you've all abandoned me by now. For someone who thinks blogging should be a weekly affair then this is a pretty poor show! I have no excuse, Mortimer has not eaten the wifi cable, floods and tempests have not swept through Corrèze, it's just life really. And deadlines. Now I know that a practitioner of slow living shouldn't really be concerned about such things as deadlines but sometimes we have no choice.

Our focus over the past few months has been twofold, for Andrew the house rewire and for me the pointing. I understand that these don't sound too bad but trust me they are. How Andrew has remained focussed I have no idea, he is blessed with dogged determination and the ability to think in 3D. A rewire is a big job anyway but a huge undertaking when nearly every room has at least changed shape and quite often form and function too. What do I mean? Well take guest room three a.k.a. the Artist's Room. This has been created through the merging of a corridor, the old kitchen and a loo, with the ensuite being half of the original bathroom (see image below)

The birth of a new bedroom

Mainly for the kitchen - about 11 circuits

There are hundreds of decisions to be made, I have to know where furniture is going and preferably specific pieces. Why? If we take a bedside cabinet for example then the height could effect the placing of sockets and switches.  What will guests want in a room? heated towel rails? underfloor heating? Do we have a range or two ovens? How many sockets do I want in the kitchen and where are they going? T.V. internet, wifi, hubs and ethernet!!!!! And so it continues. On one day alone over 250 metres of cable was laid and that was mainly for the kitchen.

More hacking

It's not just where sockets/switches are placed, it's where they switch from. Is it a two or even a three way? Do I put a dressing table socket on the left or right? Andrew can't wire if he hasn't got walls in place so they've been built too but of course some of these will have plumbing in them... Fortunately Andrew's graphic design skills have been invaluable as he can get all this down 'on paper' with accurate measurements (although there are times that I still insist on chalk marks on floors.) Before anyone comments the dotted lines show the switching links and not the actual cable runs.

Downstairs

Upstairs

I know he is my husband and I'm biased but Andrew's skills and abilities amaze me - how he does all this, how he knows what to do, how he thinks so many steps ahead I really can't comprehend. I am involved in the planning particularly with furniture placing and functionality but it's not that hard to say 'oh yes I need a dressing table here with a socket for a hairdryer' is it? Or to choose some paint and wallpaper.

The kitchen layout bugged us for almost a year and we've finally put that one to bed. We then moved on to our suite. We've kept the sitting room on the first floor with the three chambre d'hôte rooms and separated ourselves downstairs, creating servants quarters behind the kitchen! I know this sounds a little odd but it means that we can keep some personal space if we feel that we need some time apart from guests. Our area is a bedroom, ensuite and dressing room as well as a pair of comfortable chairs and small table in the kitchen. Breakfast à deux in the dining room, table for 12, under the chandelier would seem a little odd!

Kitchen colour scheme (not necessary at this point in time I grant you!)

Just trying it for size!

My focus has been the stone walls in the dining room and entrance hall. Originally plastered with the addition of concrete and wall carpet, these two rooms suffered from damp (they were originally stables). Stripping everything off and exposing the stone gives the walls a chance to breath. I'm not the fastest pointer in the world, although I've definitely sped up, but it is a time consuming job. I do enjoy it though and it's nice to think that once it's finished we will never have to redecorate.

Three metre high walls take a lot of work!

There has been life outside of work though. The summer season is in full swing with night markets, concerts and vide-greniers all back. We've enjoyed socially distanced apéros with friends and the occasional coffee out.

Egletons vide-grenier

It's been very warm and with only about 3mm of rain in the last month which has meant a re-ordering of our day. Mortimer's evening walk has become quite late, rarely before 9 p.m. but we love walking through town at this time. Many of the houses are filled with families on holiday, windows are flung open to let the cooler evening air in and you can hear the chatter and laughter. Sometimes music is playing and I take sideways glances into houses that are usually shuttered up.

Mortimer's summer river walk

This week I'm downing tools though as my oldest (not in age but we have know each other for nearly 50 years) is coming to stay. We share August as our birthday month and her husband surprised her with a trip so we can celebrate together. So apart from some fairly major housework tomorrow the rest of the week will be spent enjoying summer in Corrèze.

If you can't wait another 4 weeks for the next update(!) then feel free to join us on Facebook or for sometimes very random photographs of daily life in Corrèze then we're here on Instagram

A wet weekend's activities

It's been a wet and windy weekend in Corrèze, motivation to go into a cold, dark house and start stripping wallpaper has been low. Andrew has had a busy week and so we decided to take the weekend off. Well I say off, yesterday afternoon was spent in a ressourcerie looking for a wardrobe and some decorative items for the barn. Due to a husband and wife communication misunderstanding we came away with nothing much at all, if you discount a rather nice pottery bowl and a 1950's Jaz alarm clock!

Vintage French Jaz clock from the 1950's

Today has been particularly murky, following on from a very stormy night, so we have hunkered down. I started some festive shopping and Andrew is steaming the Christmas pudding as I write. Guilt got the better of me and I decided that working on the concept boards for the guest rooms would be a productive way to spend an afternoon.

The Old Notaire's House will have three en-suite guest rooms, we've already drawn up the plans for those and I've done my furniture and lighting spreadsheet but I hadn't really given much thought to the decoration. We tend to give rooms names, mainly because it's easier when we're talking about them, and if we just number them we disagree over which order this should be in! I usually get raised eyebrows when I name them though...

• The Garden Room
• The Watercolour Room
• The Gentleman's Room

The Garden Room will be made from two of the original bedrooms and, you're ahead of me aren't you? has a double aspect over the garden as well as views of the medieval town. A light floral & country motif was the obvious choice for this room.

The Watercolour Room will be made from the old kitchen, a corridor and loo (sounds enticing doesn't it!) Not an obvious theme from that lot. However when we bought the house we found quite a few Parisian gallery posters from the 1970's & 1980's in the garage so I thought it would be nice to base the room around those.

Finally we have the Gentleman's Room. It's easy to go overboard in the brocantes with the whole shabby château chic look which is not really our style, so I thought a room with a more masculine vibe would be fun. Gentleman's club meets country pursuits.

So I'm happy now I have a plan, there will probably be some tweaking along the way but at least when I'm out shopping I won't be tempted with any impulse purchases. She says.

As always feel free to follow or friend me here on Facebook if you want to know more about our life in Corrèze.

Design time

OK I'll confess my time management isn't what it should be! I start each day with a list and a lot gets done but the one thing that always gets moved to the following day, and then the next day and then... is blogging. The last barn update was in April when we had just finished laying the upstairs parquet flooring. A lot has happened since then, it had to as we had friends and family arriving and the village campsite wasn't an option. We've been working hard and are pleased with the results but I need time to sort out photographs.

Meanwhile I'll share the design style for one of the bedrooms. While we don't want the rooms to become Disneyfied, it's nice to have a bit of fun in guest bedrooms. Looking for a French link without going down the château chic route we settled on French novelist Jules Verne and his tale of Phileas Fogg.

As usual I created a concept or mood board...

Phileas Fogg concept board

It was quite fun to do and I've already found some items. The wallpaper is the same as the other bedroom but in navy, the mirror I picked up in a local brocante and the globe in an interiors shop that is closing down. I've already got some items that will work but I need to find the cardboard boxes that they're in!

Style items

If you would like to follow our progress, and find out more about life in Corrèze then you can follow us on Facebook here

An autumn walk

Autumn in Corrèze 

This past week has been glorious with warm temperatures, blue skies and beautiful autumn colours. Next week looks completely different with night time temperatures dipping to minus five and the threat of snow so we though we'd take advantage of the last of the fine days and take Mortimer out to Château de Sédières. This 15th century château is only 20 minutes from us and a great place to visit. Owned by the department of Corrèze the grounds are free to enjoy. As well as marked walking trails there are 96 km of bike trails (including some quite extreme cross country ones) and fishing lakes.

Château Sédières, Corrèze

We decided on the lakes walk, an easy ramble of 5 kilometres. The leaves have been dropping fast so we missed the peak of the autumn colours but it was beautiful nonetheless. Mortimer enjoyed the walk and had a little lake dip.

I can't resist the Limousin cattle!

Lest you think it's all fun & games here

Looking back at the last few posts you would be forgiven in thinking that we're living the high life at the Old Notaire's House. We have been having fun but we've been hard at work as well.

We have some deadlines for work in the barn, the electrician is arriving at the beginning of September to connect everything up for us, but he does need the cabling in place. Andrew, with some assistance from a very capable friend, has been pulling cables like crazy, I think we're up to about 600 metres and they're still in there. They have plaster boarded the ground floor ceilings and the walls have started to be insulated.

Barn update

We were fortunate that the previous owners left approximately 70 metres of chestnut parquet flooring which we are going to use on the first floor. It has been in the barn for at least 20 years, possibly longer, and was filthy and in the wrong place. As unskilled labour my job was to give the bundles a quick clean and then move them upstairs. This involved moving them to a scaffold trestle at the bottom of the ladder, hoik them through the stairwell entrance to the first floor and then shift them into a new position. I certainly earned my pizza that day!

Barn flooring

Inspired by our neighbour's recent tree felling, Andrew tackled an overgrown hedge in the garden. This had been planted about three metres from the summer kitchen door and was really overgrown. As it was a conifer we would never have been able to get it back into shape and so we decided it had to go. We still have to remove the stumps and landscape that area, but already it had made a huge difference.

Garden improvement

We had a couple of leaks in the roof, one of which was in the bathroom. We haven't been using the shower as it wasn't tiled and the leak was over it. Andrew was happy to do a quick re-tile but not until the slipped roof slate was replaced. We had a roofer in who solved our issues and we now no longer have to have buckets in the sitting room and Andrew got the shower operational. The difference in being able to have a daily shower instead of a bath is wonderful, particularly in this hot weather.

Inspired by the improvement in the bathroom I decided to tackle the loo. This room was wallpapered but impossible to clean as the hand blocked paper just smeared ink everywhere. Conscious that visitors may have higher standards than us, I did a really quick paint job to clean the room up. Twenty four hours later, it's not a fine design statement and don't look at the edges, but it's so much better than before.

Another really quick job was the second guest room. We had spent quite a lot of time on the primary guest room but with Andrew's adult god daughter arriving with her mother I needed to create another bedroom. The only option was one of the notaire's rooms that we're using as storage. It goes without saying that the nicer was the one with the most boxes which I had to move. Wallpapered with early woodchip, now an unattractive tobacco colour I needed a quick solution. I washed it down with sugar soap and applied three coats of white emulsion (there is still discolouration but it's much better than it was). The ceiling wasn't too bad so I just cleaned it. I already had some accessories in the same shade of green, bought a lamp, installed a hanging rail for clothes and a couple of posters on the wall and we're there. Again it doesn't bear close inspection but it's a much nicer space.

We've also started building the wall in the barn so that we can order the new windows-another deadline to meet. But we're taking a few days off as guests arrive, which is just as well as I think we need a break. Andrew has strained his thumbs, probably as building a wall from granite stones is not easy work. I managed to fall backwards over a stack of concrete blocks at the builders merchants and have lovely grazes on my arm and leg. A few days of playing tourist will be lovely!

Gorgeous Corrèze town

My first French wedding

Last Saturday was a big day in the Corrèze calendar - the first wedding in the village of an English couple, and we were fortunate enough to be invited.

I first met Sue and John after only a few days of moving in to the Old Notaire's House. Andrew had returned to London so it was just Mortimer and me. We were on our evening dog walk when a chap, also dog walking, stopped and asked what breed of dog Mortimer was. As this is a fairly common question I had my little French speech prepared " I don't know what he is in French but in English he is..." I didn't get any further as he looked relieved and switched to English. After a short chat he invited me back home to meet Sue. Poor woman, I still blush as the first she knew was a big, black hairy dog came rushing into her spotlessly clean kitchen! But she made me really welcome, let me warm up and enjoy a glass of red wine.

Seven months on and we were delighted to be involved in their wedding. It was such a great occasion with so many people helping to make it special. The day before the event I was part of the team of helpers who transform the village hall. Last decorated about 40 years ago, when as the mayor's wife told me it was ' a la mode', it is not quite the decoration one would want for a wedding reception, red and orange felted walls, but an afternoon's work with LED curtain lights, metres of organza, balloons, bunting and greenery it looked great.

The day itself was full of people helping to make it special. Andrew had volunteered to drive the bridal car (he really wanted to tick something off his bucket list - driving through a French town beeping his horn!), there wasn't an official photographer so everyone was snapping away and there have been some gorgeous photographs on Facebook. People opened wine, supervised the catering and made sure that everything went smoothly.

There were friends and family from England, France, Ireland & Belgium, with important moments translated from French to English and vice versa. Entertainment was provided by a local family who sung both traditional and contemporary songs. Singing seems to be a big part of a French social occasion as even the Mayor joined forces with his mother to serenade John and Sue.

We are very lucky in the village to have an award winning traiteur, Bernard Fraysse, and they provided the catering. The presentation was amazing and it was thoroughly enjoyed by all.

It really was a lovely day, even the weather was superb, and we'd like to thank John and Sue for allowing us to share it with them and their friends.

Barn/2 - I need a breather

I don't think I've ever worked on a project that has moved so quickly, the barn has all the joists up, flooring is upstairs and we have a meeting with the 'Architecture et Patrimonie' department in Tulle at the end of the month to discuss our window and door requirements. But I now need some thinking time to design and plan.

Andrew will want to start plumbing and electrical runs soon and we can't do that until the kitchen and bathrooms have been planned, right down to each socket. I'm happy with that but need to advance the design process a bit further, beginning with some concept boards. I'm just starting these and remembered that I had posted the process on our previous blog so am cheating and re-posting that! I promise I'll share the barn concept board once it's done - and apologies to regular readers who saw this back in 2012.

"So what is a concept or mood board?" It's a series of images that sums up the feel that you want to create in a room. These are ones that I did for our previous project in Norfolk a few years ago. For the kitchen we had "Sweden meets Tuscany" (I knew what I meant!)

Kitchen concept board

And the finished kitchen.

Kitchen

So you can see how the colours, textures and feel of the room carry through.

Using a concept board really helps you focus on what you want and keeps you on track when you're shopping for furnishings. How many times have you gone out for say, a yellow shirt, and fallen in love with a purple flowery one. You can't resist the colour and pattern. You just have to have it! But you never wear it because it goes with nothing and it's not really you. You can hide a shirt in the back of the wardrobe but that's more difficult with a pair of curtains, and considerably more expensive.

But the best thing about designing a concept board is that your room will be individual to you and really reflect your personality. It's easy with so many gorgeous magazines and internet images to fall in love with a room style, go out and buy the whole lot. After all if everything has been selected by a designer it must be good? Well yes but is it really you? Does it showcase your individuality? Probably not. This spring everyone I met seemed to be decorating. I was a little perplexed by the amount of people who had chosen stone coloured paint with a feature wall in mulberry. Then I saw the Dulux catalogue which featured a room set with this combination, it's very nice, but not unique to you.

So back to our bathroom. My initial thoughts were for a calm (again) tranquil, spa like zone. But then Andrew pointed out it would be a family bathroom and that harassed mothers will probably not want teenagers loitering there in the morning. The first starting point is to think of some words that really sum up how you want the room to feel. They can be something emotional 'cosy, snug, welcoming'  or you may have a theme in mind 'New England boardwalk',' French chateau' or 'English rose garden'. It's entirely your call.

Initial thoughts

I came up with:

• Refresh
• Indulge
• Invigorate
• Cleanse
• Wake up!
• Spritzy
• Zesty

It's best to have a maximum of three or it can get confusing. From my list I whittled it down to 'Wake up! Zesty & Indulge' which then got stuck in front of me to keep me focused while I sorted through images. During this process 'indulge' became 'fresh'.

Aide memoire

Because I make up quite a few concept boards I have a very fat file of images. They have been cut out of magazines over the years (travel, food and fashion ones are particularly good) and I have them categorised just to make it a bit quicker for me. Themes include urban, calm, cool, rich and one for each of the four seasons. You don't have to use physical images, there are some great online tools. Canva is free and really easy to use.  For beautiful images then Unsplash.com is really good too. I like to use magazine cut outs because I can browse and see what jumps out at me.

I took a few relevant sections out (this time I had cool, spring and vibrant)  and then just started looking to see what appealed to me. It's easier if they're not in magazines as you can get distracted by reading. You could also use photographs that you've taken. The only rule is that there are no images of furniture, fabrics or accessories (they're on the follow up sample board where you choose the paints, fabrics and furniture you want) you're looking for inspirational images. Keep referring back to your key words.

My big fat file

My initial images numbered 21.

First haul

Can you see Wake up! Zesty & Fresh?

I prefer to only have three or four images on the final board, any more and it becomes either confusing or you're repeating images. Sometimes you find the one perfect shot that sums up everything you imagine living in that room will be and that's absolutely fine.

Twenty one went to eight that went to four.

Getting there

Concept boards are not necessarily a quick process, up to the last shot I'd taken three hours but they are backbone of your design. I wasn't entirely happy with the last four. They hit the brief but it was all a bit green. This wouldn't normally be a problem but we already have two rooms in shades of green and I wanted to break from this. But sometimes that's how houses, or you, are. I'm fond of blue but in our last house it just wasn't happening.

At this point I left the images on my desk overnight to see what I felt about them in the morning.

New day

So the morning brought the above selection, which then became these.

So close

And I finally whittled it down to four.

The next stage is cutting and mounting. Don't feel you have to have whole images, you can slice and dice as you wish. How you mount is an important part of the board. If you were doing a board for a child's room you might want it to feel lively and slightly chaotic so your images could be different sizes and placed in a more random way.

Try and avoid cutting with scissors as you rarely get a crisp line. A sharp blade, metal ruler and cutting board are best.

Tools of the trade

The colour of the board is important as well. I had run out of white mountboard but as it was my personal project I knew I could get away with it. White was important though as this is the colour of the bathroom suite and will have a large presence in the room. So I cut white paper to mount my images on first. The easiest way of fixing the images is to use photographic spraymount as you then have a short window to reposition. Finally write your key words on, as a reminder.

So finally, after a couple of days I was happy with the results.

Final board

And the observant out there will notice that the lemon tart didn't make it to the finals.

The bathroom was finished a few months after this was done but if you want to fast forward and have a peek it's here. You can see how the elements played out, the pale lavender walls, citrus green accessories and the terrazzo tiles.

So there we have it, a quick tutorial on a concept or mood board. So set aside an afternoon, a coffee or a glass of wine and get creative!

If you would like to see what we're up to in France as we renovate our barn and house then feel free to follow us here on Instagram or follow/friend us on Facebook


So back to work and my trusty file of images.








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The barn

The barn project has taken up a lot of time and energy over the last few weeks and yet I've hardly mentioned it. Our original plan for France was to buy a house for us to live in and then a small house in the same location to turn into a holiday rental. When we came out to see the Old Notaire's House we knew it had a barn but Carole Cusworth, our estate agent, had kept quiet as to exactly it's potential. It is attached to the main house and the previous owner had already started some work on it. We were sold.

Even before we moved here we had started designing floor plans. Andrew and I rarely argue but when we do it's nearly always over design. Andrew has been a graphic designer for over thirty years, has a keen eye for design and a real attention to detail, plus he is very practical. Me on the other hand have been more flighty! I have spent time in the travel industry, banking, ran an antiques business, trained and worked as a kitchen & bathroom designer as well as a degree course in interior design. So while Andrew is working out the thermal values of insulation I'm saying 'oh! I see this with a Scandi loft style and a touch of Bauhaus' and heading for my colour swatches. You can see why there is sometimes friction. In my defence I am reasonably practical and not afraid to get my hands dirty. Anyway although we came up with various layouts we weren't entirely happy.

There were two internal walls and floor joists in the barn but they had to come down. The walls wobbled and the timber, although oak, had warped and had some evidence of woodworm. The good news was there was about 80 square metres of chestnut parquet flooring which had never been put down. Once everything had been stripped out we could see what a beautiful structure we had and it was then we had our Eureka moment and decided to turn the space upside down. Bedrooms on the ground floor and a huge open plan space upstairs. The bedrooms are on street level, and although quiet at night, we will have to make sure they have decent sound insulation. We had to get the downstairs planned and that was one of our friction moments. I was for two ensuite bedrooms so that one or two couples could have a really generous space. Andrew wanted to make it a three bed gite to maximise rental potential. Fortunately for me whichever way we planned, and we spent hours playing with the spaces, it never quite worked with three bedrooms. We could have done it with just a family bathroom but this wasn't the way we wanted to go.

The barn

We have been holidaying in France for over three decades, usually just us, sometimes with friends, and always struggled to find nice accommodation for just two or four adults. There are some stunning rentals in the peaceful countryside with uninterrupted views but far fewer in pretty towns or villages and even less if you want some quality.  How many gites have we stayed in where it has obviously been furnished with the strangest assortment of mismatched items just to fill cupboards. Does a two bedroom cottage really need a dozen eggcups? For us one of the joys of holidaying in France was to feel French for a week, to walk to the boulangerie or restaurant and not have to worry about driving. This is why for us the combination of the Old Notaire's House and the village of Correze is ideal, we can live this life and offer people the same experience.

So far the floor joists and internal walls have been removed and the new walls nearly finished. We have ordered a staircase and I'm about to battle with the dossier I have to prepare for the mairie as we want to replace the windows and front door. You can do almost anything you like internally but any alterations to the exterior of your house needs approval. This has been made more complicated for us as we are inside the Millevaches Natural Park and within 500 metres of an historic building.

We have no timescale for completing the works but we are hoping to get it finished by winter in which case we may move in there while we work on the Notaire's House. It's much easier to renovate if you're not living in a house plus I'd have a kitchen :-)