THE ROOF TERRACE

This was the roof terrace in July 2015.

It was a bit scruffy and we more or less ignored it for the first few months after we moved in.  It seemed an odd thing to have - an outdoor space accessible only by climbing out of the bedroom window!

The roof terrace is above the "well room" which is at the far right of the house.

The well room is clearly an addition to the original building, being three walls and a roof built over the well and attached to the end of the house, for who knows what reason, an unknown number of centuries ago.

Tacked onto the back of the well room is another building with a tiled roof which looks like it was built in the twentieth century as a pair of animal sheds.  We don't know what kind of animals but it's a useful storage space.

In 2016 we noticed that the condition of the roof terrace floor over the well was not good and getting increasingly worse.  The terrace leaked and the structure was rotting away.

During that year Nick set about repairing it and once the old tiles were off the extent of the damage could be seen.

He replaced the rotted floor panels and one of the beams and covered them with a waterproof membrane.  On top of that he laid new tiles.

 

This picture illustrates why the roof terrace was actually there in the first place.

The "door" is in fact the window that leads from the bedroom and on the right hand side you can see the line of the original roof.  When the well room was built (however many centuries ago) the rear slope of its roof would have covered the window.

This wouldn't have mattered to the people who had the well room built, as the "upstairs" was not a habitable floor at all, just a loft space.  This space, called the "grenier", would have been used for storage, would have had a tiled floor made of rough terracotta tiles called "tomettes" and two access hatches, one at each end.  There would not have been an internal access to it (staircase) from the ground floor originally, only the two hatches.  These would have had wooden doors, not windows.  With one access blocked by the well room roof the space would still have been accessible at the other end.

Amongst the photos left for us by the previous owners of the house is one which shows the inside of the blocked off access.  When this couple bought the house, renovation had already been started on the other end of the grenier.  They then wanted to extend into this end of the grenier, creating a large bedroom, and to reinstate the access as a window.

To uncover the access they had to cut off the rear part of the roof over the well, creating a large void.  They put down beams and a wooden floor, tiled it, and built a back wall under the remaining roof section, also made of wood.  Et voilà!  A roof terrace!

This is the bedroom the previous owners created with the window to the roof terrace at the end.  This large, light and airy space was a huge part of why we fell in love with the house.  The previous owners were rightly very proud of it. 

The roof terrace in September 2016 after Nick had repaired it.

We loved it.

A misty sunrise seen from the roof terrace in September 2016.

Over the years we made a few alterations to the bedroom, removing the home made office desk, rehanging the closet door so that it opened outwards rather than inwards, replacing the velux window and finally, fitting a new carpet and decorating it in September last year (2022).

The only way the delivery drivers could get the carpet upstairs into the bedroom was via the roof terrace.  We had not used it at all for three years (due to spending so little time in France during the pandemic) and it was in terrible condition.  Nick took down part of the barrier so that the carpet could be hauled onto the terrace and then into the bedroom via the window.  Having stepped out there for the first time in ages the true horror of the state it was in was both embarrassing and worrying.

It was leaking badly again and we were worried that it was becoming unsafe.  Much as we never really wanted or needed a roof terrace at all we realised we had to do something about it.

The fundamental problem was that the terrace bounced slightly as you walked on it.  This movement gradually caused the tiles to break up and the membrane to puncture so that when it rained water seeped into the wooden floor panels and beams, causing them to rot.

Although we didn't want to have to invest in a new roof terrace it was clear that the wooden beams and floor would have to be replaced with something more robust.  Concrete.

The roof terrace in April 2023, in bad condition and desperately needing repair.

This picture also shows the line of the old well room roof and how it covered the window.

Work started in April this year.  The roof had to come off, the old floor and wooden beams were removed.  The roof over the animal sheds was also removed because it was in poor condition.  

New concrete beams were installed and a concrete floor supported by a forest of acrow props.

In May work began on replacing the roof over the well, using the original tiles that were taken off.

In June the big digger was driven away from in front of the house where it had lived for over a month, the new tiles were laid and, with a lot of work still to be done, we were at last able to enjoy the space again.

The new guard rails were fitted and finally the new panelled roof over the sheds at the back.

It's been a long and expensive project but it's a space we can really enjoy.

As a finishing touch Nick built some new oak steps to enable us to climb safely in and out of the window!

It is a bit of a white elephant, a vanity project, that we don't need and never wanted but had to do in order to solve a problem that was never going to go away otherwise.  We like to think that it's an asset to the property or at least that if we ever want to sell the house prospective buyers will see it as a such.  Only four months ago it was just a problem that badly needed fixing.

We celebrated the finished job by inviting the lovely builder and his lovely wife round for apéros on the roof terrace just the other day.

RAIN STOPPED WORK and other news.

I visited my first brocante the other weekend and just like last year it was bitterly cold.  In fact the weather during all of April has been pretty disappointing.  Easter weekend was nice - warm and sunny on Easter Sunday - but either side of then we have had a lot of rain, hail, and cold northerly winds.

At that brocante I bought just two items; the watercolour painting of the bay at Morbihan and a nice pot.  The pot is the one in the middle and as soon as I saw it I knew where I would put it - on the well.

Our well is very deep, 35m, and has its own room.  When we bought the house the previous owners always referred to the place as the "well room" which we thought sounded a bit daft but as we haven't come up with a different idea the name has stuck.

I expect that when it was first dug the well was outside the house then at some point an occupant of the house built a roof over it.   Hence the room.  Looking at the walls that was probably a few hundred years ago.   It’s a useful storage space although difficult to access because the well itself blocks much of the entrance.  For the last few years we have used it to store all the wood from our walnut tree which we had to have cut down to make way for the septic tank pipework.  

The builder who repaired our outside walls a few years ago said the massive stone at the top of the well was the biggest he had ever seen.  We modified the wooden lid when we first got Daisy as we didn’t want her to go snooping under the gap and fall in.  Now the lid is a temporary home for some rustic pots, to which I added the latest acquisition.  I say temporary because building work on the roof of the well room is about to start (hopefully) and the contents will have to be moved out for a while.  We seem to have spent an awful lot of the time we have had this house moving stuff from one part of it to another to allow for work to be done!

There is a window at what would have been the end wall of the house which overlooks the well room.  I'm not sure when that was put in as originally, when we think the house was probably two dwellings plus a bread oven, it was presumably just an outside wall.  This picture is the view of the living room from inside the well room.

Above the well room is the roof terrace.  There will be more to tell about this as major work is about to start on repairing it.  The main problem is that the beams are not strong enough to support the terrace, it bounces when you walk on it, cracks have occurred and it leaks.  The beams and base of the terrace are rotting away.  Nick made a good attempt at repairing and sealing it a few years ago but it didn't last because the basic structure is not sound.

We have more or less ignored it for the last few years but last summer we stepped out onto it, looked at the view and thought that we really should get it fixed and enjoy using it.

The builder and his team came this week to finish the gates and start work on the roof terrace but the weather has been so foul that it all came to a halt.  All we have so far is some scaffolding and the beginnings of a rather nice wall (it fills the gap where the side gate used to be).

The weather was much better at Easter weekend, being about ten degrees warmer, for the brocante at Angles-sur-L'Anglin which is always a good one.  There I bought this nice green dish.  

In "other news":  we had a rare visitor on one of the few sunny mornings lately.  A hoopoe was parading around the garden, pecking at the grass.  They are funny looking birds and we have only seen one chez nous once before.

And internet update:  with our new 4G connection we have gone from the dismal 0.8MB on the livebox to 16.5MB on the flybox.  It has made an enormous difference, making it possible to do all the things we want to do with the internet.  We still await and look forward to the connection of fibre!

The quote from Leroy Merlin for the air conditioning was a little over half the amount from the local person, yet the units to be used are good quality Mitsubishi kit.  Needless to say we snapped their hands off (as we would say in the UK) and the work is booked for late in May.  Hopefully before the inevitable summer heat waves.

We have collected our "new" car and are practising our driving on the wrong side of it.  We are getting to grips with the gear stick being at our right hand instead of the left and the number of occasions that we get into the car on the wrong side and try to change gear with the door handle is definitely diminishing.  Of course,,..having two virtually identical cars where one is LH drive and the other RH drive is not really helping our brains to slip into the right  correct mode!

ODD WEATHER, AUTUMN COLOURS AND ANOTHER PROJECT

 

In our garden we have a tree which is an absolute delight at this time of year.  Before the leaves fall they turn the brightest red and last for ages like this, bringing a very welcome splash of colour when the weather becomes, as it inevitably has, more autumnal. 

It is three years since we saw the tree like this.  In 2020 we only spent eight weeks during the summer here, in 2021 only twelve, dashing back to the UK in mid September both times because of the pandemic, so we missed seeing the tree in all its glory.

It's called a "rhus typhinia" or "staghorn sumac" tree and it almost glows a glorious red.  We have a sapling growing in the grass that Nick has avoided mowing over and are tempted to plant it elsewhere in the garden.  You can never have too much colour.

Our geraniums, dahlias, roses and petunias are hanging on well and also provide splashes of colour around the place.  Or at least they were until the last rains gave them a bit of a battering.

I had forgotten how much of a trial it is having work done on the house.  The fitting of the smaller windows was delayed because of the weather - we had a brief rainy period - and the fact that the builder had not received the windows from the suppliers.  Luckily they turned up a week later which was a huge "phew" moment as a huge amount of work needed to be done after they were fitted and before the carpet arrived.

During the weekend of relative inactivity while the builders were waiting for the windows we had guests for probably the last lunch of moules et frites.  We ate in the kitchen as there was a cool wind outdoors and the dining table was inaccessible due to the whole house being piled up with stuff from the bedroom.  It took longer to clean the kitchen down to make it acceptable for visitors than to cook the food.

It's great to have a window in the bathroom!

The week of delay in getting the windows in meant the decorating of the bedroom had to be done rapidly.  I don't like that kind of pressure, it's hard enough work as it is.  Still, the preparation of the room is complete except for a problem with the paint.  The wall paint is fine and we painted it a similar colour to what was there before because we liked it.  It just looks cleaner and fresher.  The beams are nicely varnished too.  

When it came to the skirting board (much of it newly fitted) we fell at the last hurdle as the paint was awful, like trying to paint with treacle.  I started the job and declared that I couldn't get a decent finish.  Nick had a go and he couldn't either.

French paint is a mystery to us even after all these years and of course, since Brexit, we are not allowed to bring such things from the UK*.  It wasn't until the middle of Sunday afternoon that we discovered that we needed different paint but no DIY shops are open on Sundays in France so we had to abandon the painting of the skirting board and leave it until after the carpet was fitted.

*Following Colin's comment below,  I have looked it up and it seems that you can bring paint to France up to a limit in value and presumably as part of your maximum allowance for personal items:

https://www.connexionfrance.com/article/Practical/Your-Questions/Brexit/Can-you-bring-paint-into-France-from-the-UK-for-personal-useI 

I was following the rule that only personal items can be brought and didn't think paint was typically personal!

This will be very handy if we ever want to paint anything again.

On Monday we dodged the rain and used some of our precious petrol (there are fuel shortages in France due to industrial action by the tanker drivers) to go and fetch different paint and a large quantity of frog tape!

The weather has been decidedly peculiar.  Saturday it poured with rain all day but was warm.  Sunday was very warm and sunny, as good as an English summer's day at 23°C.  Yesterday, Monday it rained all day and in the early evening we had a huge thunderstorm and, according to our trusty rain guage, 4.5cm of rain.

Today is carpet fitting day and the weather is glorious.  The nice young man turned up at 9.00 with his young daughter which suggests it might be half term.  As a teenager (I think) she is probably too young to be his paid assistant or apprentice.  Reassuring scuffling noises are emerging from the room above as I type this, suggesting that he's getting on with it.  Once he's done we will have the house to ourselves again, thank goodness.

We have, however, added another DIY job to our list.  The carpet will extend into the walk-in wardrobe/dressing room which is triangular in shape.  When we moved it it had a few wonky shelves with unfortunate gaps at the back and Nick improved it no end by levelling the shelves and making them fit all the way to the walls.  (He also rehung the door so that it opened out of the room, not into it, making access much easier.  Although we had to buy a new door as in France they come with a frame and the old one could not be re-used.)

Once the room was emptied we decided that now (or maybe next year) is the time to do something with it that makes better use of the space, more hanging rails, better shelving and some drawers.  Another project!  

We can research the possibilities while in the UK over the winter, no doubt requiring several visits to our local Ikea (and hopefully some of their meatballs and chips in the restaurant) and do the job next spring.

One day in the distant future we should have actually finished tinkering with this house and just be able to enjoy it!  Considering that when we first saw it and bought it we thought it was a "move straight in" we have changed an awful lot of things!

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Good news from the UK:  my brother is much better and is now at the stage where he could be discharged from hospital.  Except that he can't because he can't walk more than a few steps, can't sit up or get out of bed by himself.  There is talk of transferring him to a nursing home of some kind where he can continue to get physiotherapy and build up his physical strength before he returns home.  There is also talk of putting a single bed downstairs for him as the bathroom is also downstairs and stairs are beyond him and no doubt will be for some time.  

The worrying thing is that because he is now what is known as a "bed blocker" - occupying a hospital bed when he is no longer actually ill and in need of active treatment - the hospital discharge team in league with Social Services might under pressure to send him home with visits from carers and physiotherapists.  My experience of carers in dealing with my father's care is not good.  The service was shambolic and unreliable and some of the carers he had were lazy, dishonest and untrustworthy.  A frail and elderly person with dementia is easy to take advantage of.  The good ones were lovely people that deserve a medal for doing such work but were often rushed off their feet.  Fortunately, unlike my poor father, my brother is completely compos mentis.  He is perfectly capable of making it clear that his needs can't be met at home if he can't actually look after himself and that relying on unreliable carers is not the best way forward.  Not to mention the problem of how to ensure that he does actually get daily physio sessions like he does in hospital.  If he's going to recover completely and get back to work half an hour a week of physio will not be sufficient.