C O N T E X T 1 1 9 : M A Y 2 0 1 1 29 Transforming the byre into a kitchen/eating room was the largest item of work involved in the refurbishment. The walls were festooned with all the plumbing from both floors, so we decided, not without a certain amount of trepidation, to build false walls of briques, piping the spring water into the drainage system and leaving hatches for access at certain strategic points.To date (fingers crossed) we have not needed to use them. The only change made to the plan form of the house at ground floor was to insert a partition at the back of the kitchen to create a utility/store room/larder, with borrowed light from the remainder of the kitchen. In the living room, four irregular steps down, previous (English) owners had installed a bar and a rather hideous stone fireplace, making what is actually a large room seem rather small. We removed the bar and the fireplace and installed a Jøtul wood-burning stove.This supplements an oil-fired boiler, housed in an adjacent stone shed, which heats the radiators and supplies hot water. In the depths of winter both forms of heating are needed. Upstairs, we had to rebuild one of the bathroom walls, as it was extremely thin and disintegrated when the old tiling was removed. The rear bedroom had an en suite bathroom in one corner.We decided to extend this to accommodate a bath as well as a shower, and to create a small walk-in storage cupboard, thus eliminating the small arm of the L and creating a more or less square bedroom. The grenier is of limited use, as an averagely tall person can stand up to full height only immediately to either side of the ridge beam, but it would make an additional bedroom/playroom for children or a study/computer room (we are currently awaiting long-promised broadband).We thus have two large rooms on each of the first and second floors, plus two bathrooms and the grenier. Externally, the house’s well-weathered render presented a most attractive appearance but, unfortunately, extended only to the front and some two-thirds of the street elevation, the remainder of this elevation and the other two sides being cement rendered. The existing lime render was rather decayed and had been patched in places with cement. We therefore decided to have the whole of the two principal elevations re-rendered. We should have liked to have extended this to the other two sides, but as these walls are blank and have little impact on the public domain, while their cement render was well-weathered and appeared to be causing no great problems, we have left them, at least for the time being, as they are. We did have a French drain dug (no idea what this called in French!) to take damp from these walls to a soakaway (in someone else’s garden!) and this seems to have helped, though we still suffer from some damp and at times of very heavy rainfall water sometimes comes up through the floor of the lowest room. To carry out the re-rendering, we made a good choice of maçon. He needed no prompting from me as to the benefits of using lime and we agreed a suitable colour of sand to give just the right finished appearance. A difficult choice had to be made when the old render had been removed, as we were put under pressure by the maire and our neighbours to leave the face of the stones exposed and to have the walls ‘buttered’ rather than fully rendered. The maire even spoke directly to the maçon to ensure that he would do the buttering for the same price as the rendering. In the end (feeling initially that it was against my better conservation judgment) I gave in and the two walls are now buttered. In fairness, this is a traditional technique which is found in the area (though perhaps more usually on secondary buildings) and I think the outcome has been very satisfactory. Other characteristics of the house are the curved corner (to avoid it projecting into the street) and the génoise or projecting tile courses at the eaves which, in the past, substituted for rainwater goods. (They also provide a home for house martins.) However, The house before and after renovation.The génoise or projecting tile courses at the eaves originally substituted for rainwater goods.
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