Last week at The Old Notaires House

Well actually if I'm honest probably the last ten days or so but we embrace slow living here so I'm not really counting!  We're in a bit of a limbo at the moment, building ourselves up to start work on the house. The plan is to move into the barn conversion over the winter, and probably spring, while we gut the house and make it beautiful again. However even though we're only going next door it's not as simple as it seems.

We've lived in the house for nearly two years now and we've spread! There are still boxes yet unpacked from our UK move because we have had nowhere to put them, as just one example our current kitchen is not big enough to even house the fridge (which sits in the corner of the sitting room) and only contains a counter top mini oven and a single induction ring. I'm trying to only take across the absolute minimum we need to live in the barn so am having to do a lot of packing and working out where to store stuff. Meanwhile there are still some small furniture projects to finish off and planning for the work on the Notaires House.

Andrew has decided to ease himself back into physical work by constructing a small decked terrace at the end of the garden. It's a favourite spot of ours and guests. We'd noticed that as soon as people come through our gates they would start walking down the garden to look at the river, it's only when they walk back up that they spot the view of the old town of Corrèze. It's also a shady spot to sit in, very welcome as we still have temperatures in the low 30's. Like all our projects it took a lot of planning, and a lot of digging for Andrew but we love it. I need to soften the edges with some planting but that will have to wait until we have some desperately needed rain in the forecast.

Close up - needs some planting to soften it

View from the balcony

Apart from the clearing and packing I've polished off a couple of small restoration jobs. I had previously bought a pair of small tables to use in the Phileas Fogg bedroom but wasn't entirely happy with them. They were a little small for the space and too feminine. I happened upon a pair of more substantial cupboards at Emmaüs, nothing special but a much better option. After running the gauntlet of "What do we need those for? Haven't we got enough small tables?" I cleaned, sanded, painted and waxed and then wallpapered them and they look much more in style. However me bringing home yet another small table (although this time for the barn sitting area) on Friday didn't go down terribly well...

Before

After

The weather here is still really warm and dry. The préfecture keeps reminding us about water consumption as the rivers are so low, we haven't had rain for weeks and there is nothing in the forecast. The trees around us started to gain their autumn colour from the middle of August and some of the conifers in our garden are shedding quite a lot of crispy, brown needles.

A dry Corrèze

A highlight last Sunday was the pilgrimage of Notre Dame du Pont du Salut in our village (and I have to thank our friend Andrew for the photographs). Each year the statue of Mary is taken from the tiny chapel to the church in the old town. Masses and adorations take place during the day and in the evening there is a candle lit procession as she is taken back home to rest for another year. Crosses are lit and the path to the chapel, and the bridges, are lit by hundreds of candles. I'm pleased to say that I understood a lot more than I did last year.

I'm hoping that by my next blog post we will be resident in the barn, but I'm not promising! Meanwhile if you want to find out more about our daily life in France then you are welcome to follow  or friend us on Facebook

Barn/9

There's nothing like a deadline to motivate. With guests arriving from mid-June and nothing quite finished we knew we had to get a lick on! The non-exhaustive list included:

• 2 bathrooms to tile and fit
• Full decoration downstairs
• Bedroom floors to be laid 
• Hall floor to be tiled
• Staircase to be revealed from under it's protective covering and oiled
• Banisters up
• Guard rail to be built on the first floor
• Furniture buying

Did we make it? Well sort of...

Bathrooms, still need towel rails and proper hooks

Bathrooms (after and during)

Bedrooms had new floors

New flooring

Decoration is finished downstairs although there is still snagging to do, plus a lot of styling needed

The exotic animal room

Hall floor has a big tick although the understairs cupboard and hot water tank area need 'tidying'

Staircase & hall

Staircase is finished and banister done. We are still not sure about the design for the guard rail at the top of the stairs so Andrew built a temporary one. We've got used to the big hole in the floor but guests may not.

Furniture buying - ongoing. Although I've been buying furniture over the last few months we still need more, and what I did buy needed work. The summer kitchen in the main house became my workshop while I worked on two chest of drawers, two dressing tables, four bedside cabinets and assorted chairs. New beds were ordered and linen sourced. We still need wardrobes but as we didn't want to rush into buying furniture we were not entirely happy with we made do with a couple of temporary clothes rails. We bought a sofa but I still have a few chairs to reupholster. The fabric for one of the bedheads didn't arrive until day two of our friends' visit so I had to sneak into their room while they were out to finish it off!

Before & afters

Upstairs in the open plan living, kitchen and dining area we were finally able to reveal the lights. The kitchen isn't yet installed but we did get a refrigerator and set up a small table to enable morning tea and coffee making. Regular readers may remember that upstairs has a Mid Century Modern vibe and I was really pleased with a vintage aluminium and orange light we found for over the dining room table.

Vintage MCM light

So what's next?

Snagging has to be done and the two bedrooms need styling. Upstairs the kitchen needs to be finished and some more furniture sourced. We will probably move on to some landscaping (once the current heatwave has finished) as we want to provide a private terrace for the barn gîte guests.

Progress - 29th June 2019

It's difficult to show the scale of the barn, which I was trying to do in the photograph above. The black wire light in the centre is just over a metre across but it doesn't look it here!

As always you can follow our progress, and life in France on Facebook. If your particular interest is French barns then why not join this group.

A change of heart

When we lived in England I kept bees, only one hive as we aren't huge honey fans, but I loved having them. I could see 'the girls' from the kitchen window and would often just stand and watch them, if you kept out of their flight path they wouldn't bother you. Although our garden in France is suitable for a hive we will be having paying guests from next year and I don't think it's worth the risk of people being stung.

I still enjoy bees and we were walking out of the village the other morning and heard a great humming ahead. There was a shrub by the side of the road covered in bees, the flowers were insignificant but there were honey bees and several types of bumbles. Further along we could hear more, in fact so loud we were convinced there must be a hive somewhere around but couldn't see one.  As we got back home I could hear the crickets, they are such a soundtrack to the summer that you can almost 'forget' to hear them but I think as we had been talking about bees we noticed them more. When I went into the barn I had to rescue one from the window sill, along with a beetle. There are a lot of insects around here!

Just outside the village

It got me thinking as to why this was. It could be our local industries contribute in some way - forestry and our famous Limousin cattle. Forest management needs no weedkillers that I can see, and when trees are harvested the land is not usually cleared. It can look a little unsightly but at least all the tree debris rots down which is great for insects and wild flowers quickly fill the gaps. The cattle graze on pastureland, and maybe nitrogen is used to improve the quality of the grass but I'm not convinced and certainly no weedkillers.

Limousin cattle

There certainly seems to be a difference in the management of roadside verges and weeds here. Our last house was in a semi-rural location in Norfolk, surrounded by hundreds of acres of commercial apple orchards. Several times a year a potent weed killer was used under the trees, you could smell when it had been done and we wouldn't let Mortimer walk there for at least 48 hours. If a contractor couldn't mow the roadside verges with a sit on tractor then the weed killer came out, resulting in most paths having dying, yellow edges. In our village of Corrèze it's different, our verges are strimmed not sprayed, and so we have roads and paths that are edged with grasses and wild flowers that can seed. Just walking out of the village is beautiful at this time of year.

Corrèze roadside

The other benefit to all these insects is the aerial displays that we get. I can spend hours (well I could if I wasn't restoring a barn and a house!) watching the house martins flying over the village and the river. As dusk falls they are replaced by the bats. We have a lot of small lizards that live in our old stone walls and they look pretty healthy too.

We've decided to encourage the insect population by letting some areas of our lawn stay uncut, probably only mow them two or three times a season. There is one patch in particular with some purple flowers that is heaving with bees at the moment. We have what the French call a park style garden, no it's not huge but we have a lot of specimen trees and grass (well moss), and few flower beds. Fortunately for the non-gardener that I am, it means that the garden can take looking a little unkempt so these wild flower areas blend in well. At the bottom of our garden is our neighbour's donkey field which is full of flowers at the moment.

One of our garden's wild areas

Solo the donkey's field

So I've decided that if I return to a recently glossed door and there are a few flies stuck to it I'm not going to whinge, just be grateful that we have

so many insects and bees here.

If you want to know more about our new life in Corrèze, and the restoration of our house and barn then you can follow us on Facebook or if you love French barns then here

Happy thoughts

I've been thinking about my father a lot this week, in a gentle, happy way. He died nearly three years ago but I've been working on a furniture project this week which reminds me of him.

For a few years we had an antique business together, while we both did the buying he did most of the restoration (unless it involved fabric) and I ran the shop. It was the shop that really set me off on an interior design path. I'd always enjoyed design and styling, I'd even won a trip to the Caribbean through a window display competition many years previously, and the shop gave me the opportunity to hone my own style. Customers would often comment on the displays, sometimes buying complete room sets and asking advice. They would invite me into their homes and ask me to source pieces for them and suggest ideas - I loved it. I decided that if I was going to do this well I should train properly, which I did.

Mid century table project

After he died I inherited a lot of things from my father's workshop - tools, waxes & polishes and all manner of handles, knobs and hardware. This week we bought a mid century Danish teak table from the 1950's and although it was in good condition it needed a clean and oil so I headed to my father's kit. There were some weird and wonderful potions which fortunately I know enough about not to do any damage with! But it was just nice to know that I was using things that he had and carrying on his enjoyment of furniture restoration. With the barn to furnish I don't think that it will be my only furniture restoration project!

As always you can follow our new life in France on the blog or on Facebook

Two mid century modern chairs - waiting for restoration

Next projects

Barn/8

Last time I did a full barn post there was snow on the ground and the woodburner was being lit after lunch. Now we have blossom, tiny wood violets and primroses everywhere.

Corrèze town from the garden

Progress has been on the three F's - floors, finishes and furniture. So floors first. When we bought the barn there were several (filthy) piles of chestnut parquet flooring left in the barn, precariously balanced on rotting joists. I've lost count of the times that we moved these but finally we got to use them. I spent days cleaning and sanding every tongue and groove, then made piles of the different widths and lengths for Andrew to lay. This wasn't an easy job, partly because we have a floor area of about 70 metres square but also this was old wood, not straight from the factory precision cut joints. It was difficult to work out exactly how much we had but as the piles got smaller we decided that it was touch and go that there would be quite enough so plan B kicked in - the kitchen area would be tiled.

Bottom left is how we found the wood! 

Can I say now, never volunteer to come shopping with us when we're choosing something for the house, you will never get that time back! Both trained designers we each have strong opinions, sometimes they're the same opinions but with the kitchen tiles it took six hours and several tile shops before the decision was made. Then there was the planning, we didn't want a square edge to the kitchen area but a random looking transition from the parquet.

Once the floor was laid I spent more hours on my knees sanding, and then oiling. But we're please with the result.

While I was upstairs finishing the floor Andrew had moved downstairs. We had chosen a slate effect tile for the bathrooms and hall floors, they work well with the dark shower trays and as they are external tiles they have a good grip. Once again Andrew's skill in planning shows and all three areas are looking good, and will be even better when I treat them so they have a slight sheen. He's now moved on to wall tiling (having finished the plumbing) and I'm on furniture duty.

Planning the tiles for bathroom 1 and kitchen, and a finished floor

We're very pleased with the new windows and I love the way that they open so flat and wide upstairs to take full advantage of the view. The pointed wall is too irregular for kitchen units so Andrew has built a faux wall - and it's perfect for hiding the cabling.

I still have the downstairs to decorate but there were a lot of dirty jobs happening, as well as tools and equipment about so I decided to turn my attention to furniture sourcing. Nearly all the furniture for La Grange still has to be purchased so I have been hitting Emmaus and Troc hard! I'm not a huge shabby chic fan but I do like to use paint to unite disparate items. This was a mirror I found, I really liked the shape and the fact that it was bevelled but it looked too new so it got painted and waxed. The knobs are from Maisons du Monde and as you can see from the one on the left, a bit glitzy. After some black wax they're looking much better (right).

Two 'befores' and a detail from an 'after'

So far I've painted two side tables for bedroom one, two bedside cabinets and a mirror for bedroom two. I've painted and nearly finished re-upholstering a bedroom chair, started stripping back an armchair, painted another large chair and bought a tub chair which needs a full restoration. But there is still a lot of furniture to source so I think the next few weeks will be busy. And did I say I have a mid-June deadline. Insert chewing nails icon!

Still to do!

So it looks like another busy week ahead. As always you can catch up with our progress as the barn progresses on the blog or feel free to follow us here on Facebook.

Barn floor status report

I know that I'm overdue a barn update but here's an interim report because we've finished the upstairs floor in the barn.

The previous owners left us approximately 70 square metres of chestnut parquet flooring. We think it had been in the barn for around 30 years, so you can imagine the state it was in. Added to the dirt, it was different lengths and widths and it's has taken a lot of work by both of us. Being the unskilled half of the work force my job was to sand every piece, each tongue and groove, and sort into piles. Andrew then spent days on his knees fitting it and using some of the left over for skirting boards. Back to me for sanding and oiling but finally it's finished. And we both have calloused knees!

One of the three piles of flooring

Finally finished (the gap is for kitchen tiles)

You can follow our progress as we renovate our house and barn in Corrèze on the blog or on Facebook

Projects

The river Corrèze

Work on 'La Grange' is getting quite exciting now as we're slowly moving away from building works to decorating and design. I'm rarely seen without my design folder (which is getting fatter by the day) and am constantly on the look out for furniture and styling items.

As I write, we are a good two-thirds of the way through laying the upstairs flooring. We were lucky to have inherited several piles of chestnut parquet with the house. Never used, filthy dirty and assorted sizes but beautiful. Because it's been sitting around for a couple of decades I have to sand each tongue & groove before handing it to Andrew for glueing. The jury's out on the likelihood that we have enough, but there is a Plan B. We're hoping to get it down and treated before the kitchen arrives at the end of the month.

Two thirds done 

Andrew's cunning solution to put pressure on the floor overnight 

It took some planning but I love this detail

The plastering has been finished downstairs and Andrew has made headway with the plumbing, just as well as the en-suite fittings and tiles have arrived. We have decided to put underfloor heating in both bathrooms, it's so nice underfoot.  Design decisions can be put on hold here for the moment.

Plastering finished

Andrew keeps reminding me how much painting I have to do once the plaster is fully dried. I'm ignoring that at the moment and am trying to get ahead on some of the furniture and soft furnishing projects. Before we left the U.K. I bought a small Parker Knoll bedroom chair which needs recovering. I love this make of chair, beautifully made and timeless style but the downside is that they can't be recovered, you have to start from scratch. I've stripped and painted it and am now waiting for my new toy to arrive so I can start work. We were gifted my father's compressor and Andrew has ordered me a stapler that I can use with it which will make my life so much easier. I am also fortunate that our next door neighbour is an upholsterer (with an atelier that I covet) and is happy to sell me any supplies that I need.

Before stripping 

Stripped and part painted

Other projects are lining up behind the chair, some furniture I've chosen to paint, which are quite simple projects, but I've also been inspired to make some lampshade covers, which is completely new to me. I've commandeered one of the old notaires offices as a clean upholstery room whilst the summer kitchen has become the painting room.

Ready to be painted

I'm avoiding the French shabby chic look in the gîte, it's a very popular but not really our style. I need the spaces to be practical, easy to clean and robust but I want to have some fun as well so I'm throwing in a few mid century design element. There are plenty of funky items around at the brocantes and vide greniers and they'll work beautifully with the contemporary feel we're after.

A surprise delivery from a French friend - crêpes and chocolate mousse

We do feel that we've hunkered down since the New Year, most outings have involved either a D.I.Y store or searching for inexpensive furniture. It has however been so much better than last year as the woodburner has kept us cosy and, on the whole, the winter weather has been quite benign. We have had snow and it has been very cold but not nearly as wet. The last few days have been really warm, I've even seen some of our friendly lizards basking on the granite walls and lunchtime baguettes have been eaten outside. I'm not saying it too loudly but I think spring is just around the corner.

Spring?

As always you can follow our French life here or on Facebook

Barn/7

It's been a couple of months since I posted on the barn (or La Grange as we're trying to call it). Last time the plasterer had just left and we were waiting for the pellet stove to be delivered.

We were keen to get at least the ceiling painted upstairs as our plasterer had kindly left us his scaffold tower to make life easier but even with this it was a slow job. I'm not keen on heights and with a ceiling at over four metres I tried not to look down too much. What was quite interesting was the beam. All had been numbered in Roman numerals except for number four which was Arabic - curious.

Painted & pointed

Beam number 4

It's a long way up!

The previous owners had built a chimney running from the cave to the first floor but unfortunately it proved too small for the installation of a wood burner. To put a complete new chimney in was very expensive and so we settled on a pellet stove with a balanced flue. This meant that we did not need a chimney plus we decided that the granules system would be a cleaner option for any renters. As with the main house we used Invicta Stoves in Brive la Gaillarde who are very good and we are really pleased with the results. It's difficult to get the scale of the room from these photographs but it's quite a big space.

Pellet stove from Invicta

Trust Mortimer to find the warmest spot

The big difference change has been the installation of the windows and a new door. We had to have the same design as the house but the new ones are double glazed and the 'petit bois' or glazing bars, clip in and out to make cleaning much easier. La Grange is much quieter and already warmer. Andrew made a small double glazed window for the end wall, although it's high you can still glimpse the trees.

Andrew's bespoke carpentry

Before

After

Now that the electrics are finished Andrew has turned his attention to the plumbing. We are fortunate that we are on main drainage and that the barn is attached to the house. This has meant that we can connect everything together and life is even easier as the two bathrooms are on the ground floor (we have designed an upside down house). The downside was a metre plus granite wall in the way! We have very tolerant neighbours who I buttered up with mince pies, they are very understanding and genuinely pleased that the house and barn  grange are being maintained again. Most of the bathroom furniture has been ordered and I've just received a telephone call to say that the tiles are in, which will merit a couple of trips as the total weight is over a tonne.

All pipes lead to the plumbing cupboard

The plaster should be back next week, snow allowing, to finish the window reveals and then our next big job is the upstairs floor. The plastic covered pile in one of the photographs is 70 square metres of chestnut parquet flooring that we found in the grange. Of varying widths and filthy dirty it will look stunning once it's down but it won't be a quick job. However it needs to be done before we can fit the kitchen.

As always most of the work has been done by Andrew, I'm chief decorator and the pointing of the wall was a joint (no pun intended here for the renovator nerds!) effort. At last though my skills are coming to the fore and I can concentrate on finishes and styling. Here's a little taster for you.