Stone deaf in France

Renovating an old house, compared to building new, will certainly cost from five to fifteen (or more) times as much. In most of Languedoc, houses were made the same way with similar techniques and materials for over a thousand years, in fact it is hard to date some houses by looking at the style or construction.

The dream to do a “make-over” on an old stone house has emptied many savings accounts and some dreams have turned into nightmares, but if you do it right, the rewards are worthwhile.

I am not a great fan of tradition without reason, I love our central heating even though we live in a 19th century “Maison de Maitre” near the Mediterranean, I like flat ceilings and smooth walls, but I do understand the love and respect for good classic architecture.

Here is an exchange of emails about this over the last two days.

===

Hi Tony,

Firstly, thanks for all the interesting emails/newsletters I have
received over the past few years from your sites – we bought a
village house in France (before subscribing to the emails) and the
info has been relevant and entertaining and has jollied us up quite a
few times too!

I am looking for a book or website that has info on the methods for
refurbishing or maintaining a traditional village house and wonder if
you know of any useful sources? I have a book on traditional Spanish
houses, written by a man from Hampshire (!) and that is useful but
has also instilled a worry in me that we have made a bit of a mess of
the paint finishes, and may have repaired the plasterwork and rendering wrongly (not just out of keeping with the traditional style but
actually in a way that may cause or exacerbate future damage). Local
builders are of course not interested in old methods and my French is
hardly up to detailed conversations re lime versus cement or
whatever….I have tried searching internet myself but I think I am
woefully inadequate at finding right search criteria as I just get
masses of property sales pages! Is there by any chance a newsgroup or
discussion forum for people who have old traditional village
properties (nothing grand in our case), in the Languedoc?

Keep off those choccy eggs by the way – I had 2 Cadburys cream ones
over the past couple of days and I must say I still feel queasy!!! We
should have learned by now!

Regards,
Lorraine

==

Hi Lorraine

Setting up a forum about this sort of subject is an excellent idea
- I will look into this and try to get something working this week.

My personal attitude is not very sympathetic to “authenticity for
authenticity’s sake” – After living in a medieval stone and oaked
beamed house for ten years I rather cherish covering up beams on
ceilings with nice flat well insulated plasterboard and covering
over old stone walls with nice flat modern cement, taking out old
smoky fireplaces and putting in efficient central heating and
modern walk in shower rooms plus lots of loos replacing the old two
hole planks in a chilly outhouse.

However I am most impressed by the hundreds of hours of work some
local people have put into their homes with an annual lime-wash,
rebuilding stone casements and remolding cornices.

I wonder what the collective noun for Creme eggs is? A glutton? A
yeatbfyt ?

Best wishes

Tony

==

Hi Tony,
Thanks.
Not interested in tradition for it’s own sake but just worried I
might have made a big mess of our walls and they might start falling
to bits in future – help!
Collective noun for lots of cream eggs is a “sickness” of cream eggs
- I know! Famously overindulged as a child (with both my own eggs and
my sister’s) and have never quite recovered…..
Hope you had a great Easter holiday – we did – actually quite warm
here in Blighty at moment.
Regards,
Lorraine

==

Hi Lorraine,

I am sure you will have done nothing to put your home at risk. Our first home in France was over a thousand years old with wall over 3 meters thick. I attacked this with modern materials; plaster, crepi and reinforced concrete, in fact I poured over 200 cubic meters into the walls to stabilise them. By the time I had finished – not a jot of difference – in a few hundred years time my hours of toil will be a mere “blip” on the memory of the old house and I doubt my name will be known by the owner in the year 2207 and more that anyone could tell me who the owner was in 1807.

The loony local architect for the historic monuments lobby used to plague me with requests for things like “a roof-scape which could be the same as if seen from a 19th century helicopter” – so after asking for a loan of a 19th century helicopter to check things with and telling him to pi**-off – he left me alone.

Whatever you have done your walls will be fine – but I wish the medieval architects had thought of the problems of dense basalt walls, ten foot thick on Wifi ! Bring on the plasterboard partitions and high speed Internet.

For the Creme Eggs, I like a “sickness”, other offerings are “a Garfield” – “a bloating” – “a binding” and “a suppuration”

Bonne Chance

Tony