A True Story About Renovating A Property In France

This is our true story about the renovation of a 300 year old French farmhouse located in Gironde where the forest meets the vineyards of Sauternes and Graves. It is a beautiful and diverse countryside about 50km south of Bordeaux and slightly less to the Atlantic ocean. This French property had been abandoned for some 50 years. And even then, the house never had electricity, running water or proper sanitation. However, it necessarily follows that it is also the story of our personal madness and we would wish to say this clearly at the outset.

This is not how you should proceed in renovating your french property - you have been warned but was there another way for us?

When the property was purchased with its 2000m2 of land, it had no roof, no windows - simply nothing - a complete ruin. From first sight it was a disaster to behold, a hopeless case. Many of our friends thought we were insane and more so as neither of us were builders nor architects. Our experience of renovating houses amounted to no more than painting and decorating but that was all going to change. Having bought the property we had little choice but to go forward bravely or bale out by finding a buyer.

Nature had certainly taken over but underneath was a hidden jewel. Well we thought there was a diamond to be found somewhere beneath the flora. To cut and polish that rough stone would be a lot of work, time and of course money. The risk of stress and financial ruin was high but with determination, iron will and some helpful local people; we made a fast and tenacious start.

The back of the ruin was completely overgrown with weeds, ivy and brambles. The top of the walls had disintegrated and they were leaning out precariously in a couple of places. Fortunately at less than 10 degrees from vertical (so we were told later by a stone mason). Some parts of the walls were missing but under closer examination there were few major cracks to worry about. As we began to partially remove some of the vegetation, we could see beautiful stone walls which were over half a metre thick. Starting to clear this French ruin was like stripping wall paper - once you start, you don't want to stop and you can't stop. We certainly couldn't leave it like that, could we? Many might have...

Little by little, we could see this was once an unusual property, a bit special, a mix of 2 architectural styles: Girondine at the front and Landaise at the rear. In our minds, we thought that we could make a very substantial 3 bedroom house, in a traditional keeping with a large kitchen, dining room and living room. A large loft or playroom as well for our two young children. In total, we planned for about 220m2 of living space of great character and which would have been well beyond our means in the U.K. without having a spare million or two. Not having won the lottery, we felt there was little choice if we wanted such a property.

The roof had collapsed long ago. Acacia trees had grown rampantly inside the house in what appeared to be a drunken frenzy! There was a huge tree in the chimney protruding like a snake, spiralling upwards to the sky. The floors were an extension of the forest floor. It was impossible to see the real floors or even imagine they existed. They were submerged under half a metre of dirt, plantlife and rubble. This was going to be a difficult renovation by any stretch of the imagination. It crossed our minds many times as to whether it should be demolished and a new house built. Our budget to renovate a French property would allow us to build a new house for sure and at little risk - read on to see what happened.

Now at this point after initially clearing the jungle and with a planning permission in hand, we made a critical choice.

Aside: we will not bore you with the details of obtaining planning consent but suffice to say, one submits drawings and plans to the local authorities and start to pray. Our plans were the minimum required - the previous owner did the plans and gave them to us when we bought the ruin. An architect told us he was quite amazed that we were granted permission based on such an amateurish plan (he would say that, wouldn't he) but all was above board and we had the necessary signatures and stamps on the papers allowing us to proceed.

So back to our critical decision. Do we call in a professional architect to manage the renovation or do it ourselves. We decided the fees for an architect were just too high. Typically 8% of the spend. We realized the budget would be blown and the dream of renovating a property in France with it. We decided to take a big risk and use our common sense, some financial acumen (one skill we did possess) and the expertise of local builders - ha! ha!

This would be our next piece of advice - if you have the financial means, use an architect to do drawings whatever you may think of your skills as 'Bob the builder' - we did not have the luxury of using an architect.

Back then we really were short of a 'sandwich for a picnic' but in madness there can be method and motivation conquers many trials and difficulties. We at least had a rough idea of what work needed to be done (everything so that wasn't hard to figure out, was it?) and a budget with major line items which we built up over several weeks discussing the renovation with local trades people.

The budget was getting more accurate at each pass. And this prompts us to offer the most important piece of advice - as a minimum get 3 quotes from 3 builders who do not know each other. Take heed of the words underlined. Make a budget based on independent facts where possible, from tradesmen who do not drink in the same bar. Now we were fairly good at following this rule but we made some exceptions based on so called "trustworthy" advice (luckily we got away with these exceptions).

So with most of the work budgeted for, we began to clean up with help from various friends - usually two of us at any one time. It took weeks and weeks. Day in and day out. There was no relief come rain nor sunshine. Character building one may think - no it certainly wasn't. Soul destroying would be a better term but bit by bit, love for the building blossomed, closer friendships were made and we all lost a lot of weight together.

This phase of the project was hard as it entailed digging out the floors by hand. Our working tools were basically a pick axe, a chopper, a chainsaw, a pair of spades, and a wheel barrow (18m3 of debris and that is a lot to move by hand), pulling out tree trunks and lifting 130m2 of wonderful girondine tiles which were still stuck to the earth. The tiles had been hidden underneath the rubble and 70% of them were still good for reuse - at 65e per m2 they were worth the effort of salvaging. The major work though was picking the interior and exterior walls of old render and plaster. We did this mainly by hand with small pick hammers as electric chisels tended to break the stones. We also had to do some emergency cementing to secure the walls in a few places.

The temperature plummeted in late November (-5 degrees celsius) and our fingers turned blue and our feet went numb. However, by this stage, if we are truthful, even in such poor conditions, there is something about old stone walls and exposing them which became addictive. A kind of magic ensues and one feels connected to history. The thoughts of modern day life, the corporate merry-go-round and the stresses of the M25 car park (sorry motorway) become irrelevant and disappear - it was like a therapy.

These photos give an idea of what is involved in picking the walls to remove the old lime based render, moss and vegetation.

It took 3 weeks to burn and remove the tree stump from the chimney. The bottom of the chimney breast was badly fractured so it needed to be re-enforced with cement. Much later this was covered again in a more aesthetically pleasing manner. The chimney breast had also separated from the external wall and required new support.

The chimney looks very different today as you will see later in our story.

This was the corner of the kitchen - very nice: anyone for dinner al fresco? I think those who were held at Queen Victoria's pleasure in Dartmoor had better conditions.

It took two of us a solid week of work of picking the interior walls and making emergency repairs to bring this rude space back into shape. It was necessary to pick the walls so that we could reapply a new render later on.

After long hours of hard physical work, the stones began to come alive in several parts of the house. The bare structure started to appear in front of our eyes and it was a great encouragement and morale booster to continue with even greater gusto.

Unfortunately there is no picture of this archway beforehand but it was completely **** (you know the word I am searching for).

There was no roof and of course there were no ceilings either. The wood remaining was infected with termites and needed to be professionally treated to save it - some of it had to be replaced with reclaimed oak sleepers, courtesy of the French Railways. The floor was also sprayed and the colony of termites moved home in a great exodus - probably to the neighbour's house - I am not joking if his house has not been treated. They will be his new dinner guests.

Advice lesson number 3 - Always use a professional company to treat a house against termites who will be confident enough to give a 10 year guarantee. Don't underestimate this enemy, termites are common in this area and will destroy all the wood in a property in no time at all. The expert told us the termites are quite content to live in the stone walls until the next lunch of untreated wood arrives.

As you can see in the photo, the top of the walls were covered to try and stop the rain continually entering between the stones and soaking down into the core of the walls. This helped in keeping the walls dry enough to pick efficiently. As winter was upon us, we did not want the weather to further damage to the walls knowing that our new roof would not be in place before the spring.

These photos give an idea of what is involved in picking the walls to remove the old lime based render, moss and vegetation. It took 3 weeks to burn and remove the tree stump from the chimney. The bottom of the chimney breast was badly fractured so it needed to be re-enforced with cement. Much later this was covered again in a more aesthetically pleasing manner. The chimney breast had also separated from the external wall and required new support. The chimney looks very different today as you will see later in our story.

This was the corner of the kitchen - very nice: anyone for dinner al fresco? I think those who were held at Queen Victoria's pleasure in Dartmoor had better conditions. It took two of us a solid week of work of picking the interior walls and making emergency repairs to bring this rude space back into shape. It was necessary to pick the walls so that could reapply new render later on. After long hours of hard physical work, the stones began to come alive in several parts of the house. The bare structure started to appear in front of our eyes and it was a great encouragement and morale booster to continue with even greater gusto.

Unfortunately there is no picture of this archway beforehand but it was completely **** (you know the word I am searching for). There was no roof and of course there were no ceilings either. The wood remaining was infected with termites and needed to be professionally treated to save it - some of it had to be replaced with reclaimed oak sleepers, courtesy of the French Railways. The floor was also sprayed and the colony of termites moved home in a great exodus - probably to the neighbour's house - I am not joking if his house has not been treated. They will be his new dinner guests.

Advice lesson number 3 - Always use a professional company to treat a house against termites who will be confident enough to give a 10 year guarantee. Don't underestimate this enemy, termites are common in this area and will destroy all the wood in a property in no time at all. The expert told us the termites are quite content to live in the stone walls until the next lunch of untreated wood arrives.

As you can see in the photo, the top of the walls were covered to try and stop the rain continually entering between the stones and soaking down into the core of the walls. This helped in keeping the walls dry enough to pick efficiently. As winter was upon us, we did not want the weather to further damage to the walls knowing that our new roof would not be in place before the spring.

Read on to continue the story