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Storeys for Kittens

Hello!

A busy week with lots of drama and excitement. The kittens have been to the vet and had their first vaccinations (I am recovering from the bill!). We almost managed to get them in their carrier first time – almost. 3 in and Louka decided he was not that keen. We succeeded in grabbing him, not ideal, all hissing and scratching but then the other 3 escaped! The girls were easier to retrieve but then they broke out again. Kittens everywhere, literally, and all stressed out, not to mention me. Meanwhile the boys had turned feral. If it hadn’t been so tense as we were running late, it would have been the stuff of comedy! Eventually we got a second carrier and armed with towels and gardening gloves got the girls back in, followed by the boys. My hands were wrecked, blood everywhere. I arrived at the vets looking like I had been in a major fight. The kittens, of course, behaved impeccably at the vets!! No sign of the teeth, claws and hissing we had experienced!

This following a bone crushing experience with Bear a few days earlier. My hands are not what they were! He spotted a pheasant while out on a walk on lead. He normally doesn’t do much. Not this time. I was caught unawares and he dragged me down a slope toward a tree, with the lead wrapped around my hand. 42kg pulling on my hand – to say quite painful is a tiny understatement! I couldn’t let go as the lead was wrapped around my fingers, plus it would have taken forever to get him back! Ouch. Long story short, I avoided the tree, stopped Bear but to the detriment of my hand. I was convinced he had broken my fingers. I was all strapped up for a few days and off cooking/washing up duty, plus no gardening! I have very bruised fingers and two are still really quite painful. I don’t think they are broken just badly squashed, and now very scratched too. The lady at the boulangerie looked quite concerned yesterday!

We have also been trying to sort out various admin things for France, including our Cartes Vitales – basically getting into the health system here. A useful thing in a pandemic. Not a quick task and not over yet – we originally started the process in January!

The kittens are exploring more and into everything, as well as taking over Bear’s spot.

We love Bear’s spot on the sofa!

As they are going further afield in the house and have seen more of it, I thought you might like to start exploring too.

The house floor plan

As you can see from the plans we have quite a lot of rooms, across 4 floors. The quirky side of this house, and some of the others that we saw, is that many of the rooms lead into other rooms. The challenge in renovating is to try to do it sympathetically to the house, while trying also to make the house flow well. At the moment people have to pass through one or two rooms to get to another. We are getting used to this but it does make for a bit of a challenge. As we plan to set up a Chambres d’hôtes (B&B) we need to add bathrooms, so we will lose a couple of bedrooms. Over time houses do evolve as lifestyles change. This house evidently has and is now ready for a new chapter.

Your grand tour starts this week with the ground floor:

Ground floor plan

The main front door (featured in last week’s post) leads on to a hallway. Off this hallway are three doors, the first leads to the souillarde or utility room. This is the former kitchen, for now more of a store room and somewhere to clean paint brushes, etc. Sorting this room out is quite a long way down the to-do list! Opposite this is the Billiard room! Sounds very grand but as there is a billiard table in there I guess that is why it has this name – perhaps a games room in the future, although I would really like it as a sewing room. Max, however, is determined to have his billiard table here! This room came with a photograph of Pope Pius IX – signed no less, at the Vatican in 1875. He was the first pope to be photographed apparently. I think there are religious connections to this house. We have wallpaper for this room and a colour scheme. The floor is concrete (yes concrete again and old, but no I am not returning to that subject at the moment). I am thinking of stencilling it. All will be revealed. A door leads off to the tower staircase and there is also a hidden and currently blocked up door to the salon. I can’t wait to unstick this – in hope of hidden treasure but in reality it will be full of Sid the spider’s family! (He stayed, by the way, as apparently his family have lived here for a hundred years – or so Max told me – maybe that was one of the children’s stories he is writing!)

At the end of the hallway the third door, which incidentally is hung upside down for some reason, leads onto the salon, a large room with a beautiful old tile floor, not in great shape but full of character! There is an enormous mirror, which came with the house, over a marble faced fireplace. Our chimney sweep said that the fireplace was at one time much larger and has been reduced in size – he could see this from the inside. Fascinating, although I haven’t looked up the chimney myself yet.

The stunning salon

Through an arch off the salon is the original bathroom, now housing the washing machine and dryer. The old bath looks like it might be a claw footed bath so we will try to dig it out. Someone in the past has kindly added concrete around the edges so a challenge for a sunny day (too cold in there otherwise)! There is also a bit of storage just before the bathroom, some useful shelves in a house not blessed with storage, and we think a former doorway into the log shed/cellar.

Also off the salon is the séjour (salon 2 on the plan). The door, like many doors in the house, has a beautiful original latch.

Old door latch

This will be our dining room one day, and breakfast room for the B&B and is next in line for decoration. Currently we use it as a sitting room as it has a woodburner in it. This was one of the rooms from last week with the lovely plaster mouldings above the mirror. From here a door leads to the back hall. The latch needs to be put back on this door, so it matches the other one.

The back hall isn’t actually at the back. Maybe we should call it the north hall. The old main staircase is here, along with a door to the front garden and one to the terrace garden. We inherited a large old bureau that has also apparently been in the house forever, as well as two photos – one of man, possibly a former owner, and another of a group of young men, possibly lawyers/students from quite some time back judging by the clothes. No idea who they are! This hall has been renovated with a tiled floor. The old staircase was apparently sinking into the ground when the house was sold in the 1990s. Fortunately it was saved as it is very beautiful, although a good clean and polish would do wonders for its appearance.

The main staircase

Off the hall is the kitchen – fabulously large with a huge woodburner in a very impressive fireplace. It took the best part of last winter to work out how to get the woodburner to heat the room well; once it does it is toasty in here. I am sitting by the fire as I type with the dog snoring behind me – stretched out in front of the fire. It’s a dog’s life! We are brightening this room up from custard colour with green windows to a colour called Perfect Backdrop with white window frames and doors. It took a while to decide on the colour, far too much choice.

Too much choice

We are adding a kitchen island and bought a huge kitchen table from the previous owner that seats 12. When the previous owners bought the house this room was in very bad shape with very rotten floorboards. They had the floor tiled and changed it to a kitchen. It was known as the Green Room before that– perhaps the paint on the windows is original. It was apparently used for family events. Little by little we are finding out bits of information about the house. We have also decided to be a little bold with one wall. Fingers crossed it works – you will see the end result later this year!

The arched kitchen window – old green?

So there is our ground floor. 3 more floors to go. Nothing much to do really! Having said that the house is habitable, if a little on the cold side away from the woodburners. It’s going to be minus 3C tonight apparently so a bit chilly!

Time to add some more wood to the woodburner…

Until next week. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Ali x

6 Comments

  • John and James

    Ali, this is another great read. It just sounds so enchanting.
    The fascination of finding out what’s behind the closed off doors would have got the better of me by now!!
    Custard and green and white gets my vote. We’re about to go bold on a couple of rooms here. Crimson in the lounge and a very bold stripe in hall stairs and landing (keep changing our minds about the strile flour!!)
    Sounds like you have slipped into French life very well; the artisan baker with all those trests I’d be the size of a house.

    Keep the blog going az we’re really enjoying the updates

    Love to you both

    • Ali

      Thank you. Lovely to hear that you are enjoying it. We have red in our plans too! Hope all well with you both and hope we can see you out here one of these days!
      Love to you both too xxx

  • Pat and dad

    It really looks stunning, when you have finished I think it will be quite breath taking. A long way to go though, so wish you every success with the work. Do you have good builders you can rely on as that is so important, I did a lot of extensions in the past and the most important thing is a good builder.

    Your Dad is rather impressed and thinks it’s lovely. Quite an undertaking.
    By the way I had to go through the chocolate blog the others didn’t work, but thank you for telling me what to do.

    Love Pat. xx

  • Teresa

    Hi Alison believe it or not I am only just reading this now! Really enjoying it though. Can’t wait to come over again and see your progress for real. I’m reading one more then saving the rest for tomorrow. Speak soon xxxx

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