Tag: before

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Spalling

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Spalling

This is a close-up of one of the things that can happen when a house is left to rot. Fortunately this house was left for just a couple of years, so things haven’t gotten too bad.

The house was built of the smaller stones that you see, then covered with a kind of heavy, 19th-century equivalent of stucco. As with contemporary stucco, it can crack. Water seeps between the structure and the stucco, then it freezes, expanding in the process. It can pop that stucco right off – and has done so on this house, in quite a few places.

My contractor will have to remove all the damaged wall coating. Then he will replaster the house with new stuff, all smooth and gold-colored. Some day soon, my house will be beautiful again. Then we will keep it that way with the floor heating, which will evaporate stray seepage and end the freeze-thaw cycle for a good, long time.

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Demolition derby

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rear facade before
So this is the back of the house. Notice the wild oats growing up to shoulder height. I am standing in the field as I take this photo. I have lovely roses , those pink dots, and fruit trees: cherries and apricots, I think. I have a lot of work in my future
greenhouse
I think this was a sort of winter garden. It would have let in some afternoon sun and allowed folks to start seedlings with just a little protection from the elements. It’s in pretty bad shape, now. The windows were never good and the roof is going. The only question is whether it will go before we take it down. We may take out the back wall, as well, to open the space to the back yard — garden, must call it garden. Over here a yard is paved, like a prison yard. Anyway, if we want to develop this space it will be nice to have it open to the view. We shall see.
garage before
Some previous owner kept pigs here, lots of pigs. I’m a California girl myself, which is to say I prefer cars to pigs. So the pipe rails, the concrete that holds them in place and the paving below them — cobblestones in places and not much in the way of drainage — will all make way for parking. Too bad I have only one car.
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Future Mud Room

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mud room
I’m about to get busy, so I’ll do another post right away.
This area will change quite a bit. This is at the front of the house, but to the side. The door straight ahead leads to a utility room which will become the mud room; a lot of mud gets tracked in, so I want to contain it. So. The door and shutter will be refurbished. To your left in this image will be a ramp that will lead to a terrace, which will be at floor level. Those steps will be pulled forward. The wall to the right will have a window and a door which will open to the kitchen. Up above, that curved shutter will be fixed up but will otherwise still look about like that. All this sad black and tan will give way to basically tan.
Those bedding plants might be relocated or might be sacrificed to the cause. I like species fuchsias and yellow roses, just not right in the middle of my terrace. I love the glass awning but my architect keeps whining about safety issues. Really, when it looks like that, who cares? We’ll be careful, honest! So we’ll see. Maybe that will be relocated, too.
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Kitchen to Go

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old kitchen
So, take a last look at this kitchen. Every surface you see will go, very soon. The radiator will be relocated. Cheap tile, cheap cabinets, old wallpaper, all gone. The windows will be replaced by thermopane windows that will retain the profile and general look of what you see here.
In the new plan, this won’t even be the kitchen. This will be the dining room. The wall facing the cabinets will go too, so that the dining room will look into the new kitchen. The new heated floors should make this space toasty in winter. In summer when we turn the heating off, the lovely new tiles will help keep the house cool.
I am still deciding about colors. The dining table and chairs will be cherry wood. Maybe a gray green, though green is supposed to be bad for the appetite. Fortunately I have a few months to think about it.
Apologies to anyone viewing this on a slow device. I just noticed that this image is 1.9 MP in size. That’s 1% of the size of the original. I could start making the originals lower resolution, I guess. Let me know if you are having download issues.
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Waiting, waiting…

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Olivier and Marie-Claude
While we wait for things to get going, I thought I’d let you take a look at Olivier and Marie-Claude, the folks who got me into this. They have had their house in the Vendee for decades now. When I get to be their age, I hope to be able to say that about myself, as well. These two are as delightful as they appear to be. I am pleased to count them as friends.
So we have a tentative start date of 10 June, less than two weeks from now. First comes demolition, of course. They will rip out the entire floor on the ground floor level. Then they will remove the old oil boiler and old geothermal compressor from the basement. I imagine other odds and ends will come out, as well. I should dig up a photo of the existing kitchen; none of it will be missed. Right now we are in the final stages of lining up the ducks and then we’re off! I can’t wait.
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More Before Stuff

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Neready-8

It's difficult for me to take and post photos of the house looking bad because I like it so well. I gravitate towards images that make it look more or less how I want it to look at the end. But here you can see how big the weeds have gotten; yes, Jacques is standing in that photo. You can also see how degraded the exterior surface of the house is. In time the contractor will power-wash the walls and put something called rendering, a sort of hard plaster finish, over the gray area.
It’s difficult for me to take and post photos of the house looking bad because I like it so well. I gravitate towards images that make it look more or less how I want it to look at the end. But here you can see how big the weeds have gotten; yes, Jacques is standing in that photo. You can also see how degraded the exterior surface of the house is. In time the contractor will power-wash the walls and put something called rendering, a sort of hard plaster finish, over the gray area. The upper photo shows rising damp in the entry hall. The house was protected from rising damp until the heat was turned off when the house was listed for sale, two or three years ago. Once the heated floors are installed, the foundation will dry out and this will no longer be an issue.
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Progress report

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well
I know what you guys are thinking. You’re thinking enough with the nice lady who sells magic potions. What about the house? Hmm???
The simple truth is that there hasn’t been that much going on with the house. I’ve been filling in, feeding you apps while I scramble in the kitchen to pull together some kind of main course.
I have an architect, Nicholas Adams, nice guy, good crews, great choice. I’m happy. We have been trading emails and floor plans. The time has been well spent but not exactly blog-worthy. The visit Jacqueline and I made to the gallery he and his wife run was close, but maybe a little off-topic. When you think Nick, I don’t want you getting confused about the connection.
Today we got to blog-worthy. I had been unhappy with some aspects of the plan. The floor plan was awkward and the kitchen layout even worse. The heating system was close but not exactly what I wanted.
A couple of days ago I went to the house and realized the logic of the original plan was starting to make sense to me. Then I started having dreams about where things should go. Yes, I had a dream that told me where to put the washing machine: sad but true. Then today I had a meeting with Nick, his cabinet guy and his demo/energy expert. They liked the house and really liked the new plan. I just love it when I describe my idea and the guy who has to build it, who came here from the chateau he is working on, listens and his eyes light up. That tells me it’s going to work, maybe even better than I thought.
And best of all? Do you see that well in the photo? That’s not just a 19th century relic, not just the nucleus of my graywater system. No, it’s more. We wandered into the cave, where I had never been, and found an old geothermal heat pump. The energy guy did a little dance and explained it all to us. This heat pump was some 30 years old; it was cutting edge technology back then. 30 years ago the previous owner created a heating system that used the earth’s warmth to heat the house. This involves a heat pump, such as the one in my basement, and rods buried deep in the ground — or, in my case, deep into the well. That well and a new heat pump are going to heat my entire house, including hot water and pool, at a quarter of the cost of electricity. They don’t have much natural gas over here, so this is big. The system set up by the previous owner made it possible.
So now, finally, we are ready to move forward.