Foundations of the New En-suite

The second bedroom is about as far away as possible from our one bathroom. Anyone taken short in the night has to find their way in the dark across the lounge, through the dining room, across the kitchen, past the utility room and along a corridor.

So an en-suite bathroom in the second bedroom is a priority. But the bedroom, with its sloping roof giving it a shape like a triangular slab of cheese, is a challenge. It was probably a cowshed attached to the main house with steps down to it from what's now the lounge. The end nearest the lounge soars up to a colombage wall. Yet this is the end where the en-suite needs to go.



To build a small box for the en-suite in the tallest corner seemed grotesque. This was the skill of our architect - to raise the box of the en-suite so it was on a level with the lounge entrance and put cupboards underneath into the bedroom. To give symmetry, a matching box is to be built the other side of the steps from the lounge for a walk-in wardrobe. The foundations for these two boxes are already down.

The Lounge Back Wall 2

Things have been quiet at the house for a few days. Monsieur M has been steadily making holes for the new wiring but the major construction side has stopped. The new concrete floors are down in the lounge and the bedroom and we guess that they need to dry out.

So we wander round the house and take a closer look at the colombage wall that has been exposed in the lounge. Because it's been covered and protected, in places it's in very good condition. The mud and straw have not dried out and fallen away and still hold the small branches that act as cross members between the vertical beams.




Colombage has been used as a building method for hundreds of years with little change and it can be difficult to put an exact date on a building. Views differ as to the age of our house. Some say two hundred years old, others three. We wonder if the pristine sections of our colombage will allow for more precise dating and I've posted a question to the Total France forum, hoping that an expert will respond.

I find an article on the internet which tells me colombage walls are built above stone to keep the wood from getting wet and rotting. We can see some stone blocks half hidden behind the render and still hanging electrics, but elsewhere it looks as if the posts - now damp and half rotten - do go right into the ground.




Already we are looking at a large task to restore the wall, starting with cutting away the rotting beams and building a new stone base. Fortunately we have large stones left from the cottage rebuild. We then have to decide what to do with the packed mud, straw and wood above.