1. Converting the loft space (grenier)
When we bought La Basse Cour in 2004, there were two small bedrooms upstairs but no bathroom; half of the space was a grenier (loft space).
In order to make the house suitable for our bed and breakfast plans, we had to completely gut the upstairs and start from scratch.
This is what the house looked like, front and rear, when we first saw it in March 2004; we moved in on 1st August that year:
Sortly after moving in, we hired an architect who drew up plans and submitted a "permis de construire" to the Prefecture for the work; we obtained quotes for the work from a number of local companies - we needed a mason, a roofer/carpenter, an electrician, a plumber and a joiner.
Work began in February 2005 and the three holes, to take new windows, were made in the roof just in time for an unexpected blizzard in early March.
Despite this unexpected cold snap, which actually froze the sand abd stopped the mason from working for a week, work continued for the most part on schedule. The timber frames were constructed for the five new lucarnes (dormer windows) which were designed to match the three existing first floor windows.
Work had to be carefully co-ordinated so that no-one was delayed by having to wait for someone else to complete part of their work; the architect drew up a detailed schedule of works from start to finish, in consultation with us and the artisans. Weekly meetings were held to record progress and plan the work for the next week.
By the end of April the major works were finished; all that remained was to paint, paint, lay flooring, skirting, tiling, paint, paint and install banister rails etc., which we tackled ourselves. Plus more painting. About 80 litres of paint in all!
We also had 25 tons of gravel delivered and it took us two days to spread this at the front of the house. To top the house off we commissioned a weathervane of two flying ducks and installed this on one of the chimney pots. The outside appearance of the house had by now changed considerably, but is entirely in keeping with the original farmhouse character.
Here is the house front, before and after:
Here is the house rear, before and after:
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2. Rejointing stonework
We have a 3 year plan to rejoint/repoint all of the exterior stonework in lime mortar - most of the old mortar had reached the end of its life or was totally missing in many places, as well as being patched by inappropriate cement mortar. In early summer 2006 we started on the rear wall - it took 3 weeks to rake out and 4 weeks to refill an area of about 20m wide by 5m high.
First job was to rake out the old mortar - for this a home-made lightweight 'pick' was much easier to use and easier on the arm than a pointed hammer. The pick was made from a piece of 1cm solid iron bar, gently curved and about 30cm long with a point ground onto on each end. In the middle was welded a tubular metal handle. With crumbly old mortar it was possible to hack out about 2m2 per hour. For the harder cement mortar, an electric percussion hammer was necessary.
The technique: start at one end and work up the wall from the bottom doing 1-2 metre width at a time. Rake out to a depth of about 2cm - you don't have to get all the old mortar out. Don't worry about stones moving or the odd one falling out, it's normal. Put down a heavy tarpaulin to catch the muck. Keep doors and windows and shutters closed! Use a scaffold tower or similar to reach the higher areas above shoulder height - working up a ladder is not practical.
Afterwards pressure wash or hose the wall from top to bottom to remove any remaining loose stuff. Angle the nozzle down the wall, not into the cracks, or you'll wash out too much old mortar.
Borrow or buy a cement mixer - they aren't dear if you have to buy one and they save a lot of effort. Mix mortar comprising approx. 100 litres coarse sand (sable de rivière) to 35kg lime (chaux blanche). Measurements on chaux sacks are often given using this weird mixture of buckets (in litres) of sand and sacks (weight) of chaux. This mix translates to approx. 1 bucket of chaux to 3 of sand. There is no fixed rule for how much water to add - it depends on how damp the sand is to start with. We added water to obtain a mix with the consistency of a cow pat. If you pick out a bit and toss it from hand to hand, it should form a loose ball and keep its shape, but still be easy to form and to squeeze into crevices. NOT TOO DRY or it is awful to get into gaps, especially once it starts to go off.
NB You should only use chaux with stone - a cement mortar mix when used on any stone can lead to problems as it can be too strong (has less 'give' and more grip) and prevents the wall from properly expelling moisture. Lime mortar gives and then self heals when the wall moves slightly; cement mortar doesn't, either it cracks or the mortar cracks the stones.
If the wall is in a very exposed position you may be tempted to add "impermeabilisant" during mixing - but again, this can reduce the ability of the wall to breathe and is not recommended.
Sand is cheapest bought direct from a quarry - about half the price of loose sand from the "grands surfaces", PointP, Gedimat and the like. We paid 19 euros a ton TTC plus 35 euros delivery (2005).
Do not mix more lime mortar than you will be able to use before the mix goes 'off' and becomes unworkable. A wheelbarrowful (circa 10 litres chaux, 40 litres sand) is enough for a day's work. This mix will easily keep for about 2-3 hours, and you can add a little more water to loosen it if it starts going off. A barrowful, covering about 2.0sq metres (depends on the gaps in the stones) can be applied in about 3 hours. Cover the barrow with a plastic sheet to keep the mix moist.
Thoroughly dampen the wall with a hose before you apply the new mortar and keep the wall damp as you work - this is important to stop the stone sucking all the moisture out of the mortar as soon as you apply it. The mason's manual technique is to sling the mortar onto the wall using a backhand flicking action with a medium sized triangular trowel; the mechanical method uses a pump and nozzle. When I flicked the mortar I ended up with 90% on the ground rather than the wall. So I tried putting a hawk (a square piece of wood or plastic with a handle underneath in the centre, for carrying small quantities of mortar to the work surface) up against the wall and pushing the mortar into the joints with my trowel. This was less wasteful but still took a long time to get anywhere.
So here is my cheat's method of mortaring. Buy a pair of mason's gloves and pick the mortar up in your hands, toss it hand to hand to exclude any air bubbles, then squash it into the gaps and push it well in. This is not as daft as it sounds. Your French neighbours may laugh if they see you but it works and it's quick. Using the trowel-less method I managed two-barrows compared to one barrow the previous day.
It's best to apply mortar early morning to midday, working from top to bottom of the wall in approx 1-metre wide sections. Start at the top because it stops your work staining when you apply more water to the wall. During the afternoon come back and check the wall occasionally - once the lime mortar starts to look white-ish in parts and you can rub without it clogging a brass wire brush, you are ready to clean off the excess mortar. Don't leave it to set completely or you can't brush it off! Work over the mortar from the driest (usually topmost) section, rubbing off until you get the degree of stone exposure required. Don't use a steel bristle brush if you can avoid it - they wear out quicker and are a bit too aggressive. Best is a brass brush that curves as it avoids scraping your knuckles.
The initial result may look white but this is due to dust - if you hose it down, or just let it weather, it soon takes on a softer hue. The finished result is shown below. There is not a lot of stone left exposed on the rear of the house because (1) it is north-west facing and (2) the stones are a mixture of sizes and colours and unevenly distributed, so do not look too good if exposed. IN SOME AREAS HARDLY ANY STONE IS LEFT EXPOSED AND THERE IS A REASON FOR THIS: IF TOO MUCH STONE IS EXPOSED IT WEATHERS MORE QUICKLY IN FROST ETC., PARTICULARLY IF THE LOCAL STONE IS SOFT AND/OR POROUS.
Having completed the rear of the house in 2006, we waited until 2007 before starting on the front.
Here are some pictures taken of the front of the house in 2007 as work progressed. The hacking out took one week and the repointing 12 days (over the course of a month). Because the stones are more attractive and there is less weathering on this side than at the rear, we left more of them exposed.
Hacking Out Stage 1
Hacking Out Stage 2
Repointing Day 1
Repointing Day 2
Repointing Day 3
Repointing Day 5
Repointing Day 7
Repointing Day 8
Repointing Day 10
Repointing Day 12
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3. Lake (Etang) Restoration
One of th attractions when we bought La Basse Cour in 2004 was that there was a beautiful lake (étang) in the grounds, which could be viewed from the kitchen window and which reflected the trees and hedge bordering the adjoining field.
Since the early middle ages, many large étangs have been created in this area by building a dyke wall (dam) in the path of a stream, thereby creating shallow reservoir for fishing and to provide drinking water for livestock. Sometimes smaller ones were made by simply excavating a hole around a spring or in a the path of a steam. They are not generally very deep - most are only a couple of metres deep at most - though there are exceptions.
During the very hot and dry summer of 2004 the stream which fed the lake dried up; consequently, the lake itself began to dry out and by September it had become more of a mudflat; however, it refilled during the winter.
During 2005 the lake began to dry out again again. In fact, by the end of July - two months earlier than in 2004 - it was completely dry and all the fish had perished.
The reason for this was that there was so much silt in the bottom of the lake (about 1 - 1.5m) that the volume and depth of water (no more than 30cm) was insufficient to withstand summer droughts.
We decided we had to dredge the lake in order to secure its long term survival, otherwise within a few years it would become seasonal marshland. To do this we first had to find the plug, which was nowhere to be seen; even once located it took two days of digging in September 2005 to free this from the mud.
Unfortunately, pulling the plug had no effect - it was as if the drainage pipe was blocked. It transpired that if there was one, then the pipe which should have led from the plug to the drainage ditch (which borders the adjoining field) was blocked or broken. So in November 2005 we had to hire a JCB to dig a deep ditch to join the lake to the drainage ditch. Strangely, there was no sign of a pipe leading from the plughole to the ditch - perhaps no-one had bothered to lay one when the patch of ground between the lake and the drainage ditch was filled in, which it clearly had been, judging from the rubble and rubbish that was dug up during the excavations.
After several false starts (three landslides in the ditch during December and January, flooding the field next door in March 2006) we finally succeeded in emptying the lake by April 2006.
It had dried out perfectly by early autumn. The plan was to spread the earth from the lake bed - about 2,000 tons - on the field next door. Unfortunately, there was not sufficient time between the 2006 harvest and the planting of the next crop for this to be accomplished. So the "dry" lake had to be left until the early autumn of 2007 before dredging could begin. During the course of spring and summer 2007 a small forest of willows grew up in the former lake bed, which was more than a little worrying. If we did not get the lake dug out in 2007 we might never be able to do so, if the trees got too well established.
The unusually wet early and mid summer of 2007 meant that the stream continued flowing all summer and the lower levels of the silt remained sodden throughout the year. However, from mid July the weather improved markedly, the sun shone, we had several weeks without significant rainfall and, once the harvest for 2007 was completed, work was finally able to begin on September 21, 2007. The first stage was to dig a wide trench across the lake bed to allow the silt to drain further for a couple of days.
On September 24th work began in earnest, involving a Liebherr caterpillar digger and two tractor-drawn trailers to haul the earth. By the end of day one work had advanced this far.
Halfway through day two the first side of the lake was completed.
In order to access the second side of the lake, the temporary drainage ditch with its new pipe was filled in and an access ramp into the lake bed laid near the main house.
With the ramp in place (on the right) work began on the side of the lake nearest the house. Again, some of the earth is used to build up the banks and the rest is transported to the adjoining field.
After four days the excavation was complete; at its deepest the étang is now approximately three metres deep, getting gradually shallower towards the edges. The terraces on the far (east) and near (west) sides have also been made wider.
With the earth moving complete, we installed a new wastegate ("une moine" in French) in order to enable us to adjust the water level; the intention is to bring the water up to the foot of the new banksides and wait until spring to seed the banks, knitting them together before raising the water level to its maximum height. The water level is adjusted by adding or removing planks from the wastegate. Inside the wastegate is the original plug, repaired.
After about 4 weeks the water level had risen approximately one metre.
and by the end of November it had risen to the desired level for over winter. This picture was taken mid-December 2007.
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