What to do with our Old Walls?

Compared with the cottage, the house renovation has been so easy.  We have the wonderful Monsieur B as our project manager and when we have any concerns we speak to him and he sorts it. 

Until now.

To keep within budget, we limited what the builders and artisans would do for us.  One job we thought we could manage ourselves would be painting the walls in the dining room and my study.  So we began to remove the layers of old paint and crepi so we would have clean walls to paint. 

Well the old paint and crepi came off easily enough. It was just that the old plaster and render behind fell off as well. Suddenly we are down to stonework, some of which is damp and crumbling and no more than small bits of rubble and brick, not the large shaped pieces we had hoped for.

So where to stop?  And what to do now? Do we ignore the budget and go back to the plasterers?  Trouble is they are likely to be booked up for weeks (if not months) ahead and our furniture is coming out of store at the end of May.

We know that old houses are best lime rendered and lime washed so that the stonework can breathe, but we have little understanding of what materials to buy and how to prepare them.  It all feels very daunting.

Then through friends we meet someone who knows about old houses.  He comes, looks at the mess and shows us things we have never noticed: like the stone pillars of the gate to the veranda that have been cut down from an old doorway; and the beams in the gîte that come from old colombage - the holes in the beams were cut to take the wooden cross pieces between the mud and horsehair. 

He reassures, tells us what we can do and is coming to help. It feels like the arrival of the cavalry.

The Kitchen is in

(Started to write this in April. Forgot to post it.)

The kitchen is in, looking sleek and modern against our off-white freshly painted walls and the beautifully laid floor tiles. 

Two cupboards with shelves that slide out, either side of the big fridge freezer.  At last I shall know what we've got in store without having to scrabble at the back of the top shelf while balancing on a ladder.

Large pan drawers under the worktop offer a great space for pots, pans and day-to-day china.

The new black cooker, bought via the internet, looks better in real life than on screen.  The knobs and handles are dark brass, not the bright gold I feared they might be.  It sits in the fireplace flanked by cupboards.  The chimney breast is a bit low for Tod, but he'll manage to cook on the front jets.

The fireplace colombage had been sand-blasted to remove the sooty tar from years of wood burning. Some bits are still sooty. I thought it looked charmingly rustic but not with the new smart cooker and cupboards.  It just looks grubby. So we've asked for one of Monsieur G's workmen to come back and scrape out the dirty cement and repoint.

We (or rather I) have had second thoughts about the tiles for behind the worktop.  Having made a mistake in the cottage, I don't want to do the same in the house.  I find it hard to visualise the total effect of tiles, worktop and units. Each may look fine on their own but not together.  I like the tiles we first chose. They echo the reddish browns of the colombage but they are not enough of a contrast to the taupe of the units and the effect from a distance looks drab.  The colour of our off-white walls look better and so we've gone for the same in the tiling, plus a thin line of dark orange as a single band along the length of the worktop.  That took a lot of deciding.  The thin line of orange tile is called a listel in French.  I've no idea what it is in English.

We have to wait the usual "quinze jours, trois semaines" (two to three weeks) for the tiles to arrive.  Shame.  The tiler came this morning (Saturday) complete with his small terrier that Vita teases, hoping to get the kitchen finished.

The rejected tiles