A daring proposition…new life for ancient skills…restoring the Farmhouse, part 3

| Friday, May 8th, 2020

Monsieur le châtelain and Monsieur Xavier inspect the works.

Dear Friend, 

From the moment he accepted the challenge, our guardian and homme à tout faire (handyman) Monsieur Xavier was smitten. It was as if the restoration of the Farmhouse was the renovation of his own life. He was unabashed by the prospect of turning the moldering -- indeed perilous -- structure into a livable home.
 
For Monsieur Xavier is pragmatic as well as passionate. He had, after all, spent 20 years as a French Customs agent. Just as he knew that jewelry might be hidden in a spare tire, he sensed that the unprepossessing exterior of la Ferme hid a gem. He embraced the main problem immediately – the huge, ancient beam supporting the upper story of the Farmhouse. It was cracked almost in half.
 

Xavier came up with a brilliant and daring proposition – to jack up the main beam until it was level. The risk was that the outer walls of the Farmhouse would be pushed out before that happened, and that the roof, which rested on the walls, would then cave in. 

Alexandre skillfully rebuilt the fireplace and chimney, using the original bricks and stone.

 Two large jacks were set up under the beam. They pushed up wooden posts that would lift the beam and rested on three layers of long, thick planks that would distribute the weight across the surface. Otherwise, we expected that under the combined weight of beam, walls and roof, the jacks would crash through the floor.
 
Very slowly, the jacks were wound up. Very gradually, the beam lifted. Within a week of cautious cranking, the beam was level. The farmhouse remained intact. The floor of the upper story was now conventionally flat. We dug out the floor tiles and rubble foundation under the jacks and poured deep concrete footings.
 
Like many of our neighbors in the village, Monsieur Dubois, a son of Courtomer and a skilled carpenter, took a lively interest in the project. Propitiously, his name means “of wood.” He sculpted two pillars out of seasoned oak. These were slid into place next to the jacks, on top of the concrete footings.  One day, with great anticipation, we removed the jacks. Would the beam hold? Well… it almost did! Overnight, one of the pillars sank into the floor, crushing the tile around it. We anxiously checked it over the next few days. It had stopped moving. The huge support beam stayed in place. The floor above still looked level, even if it slanted imperceptibly.

A lesser structural problem was the chimney. Water had infiltrated the chimney breast and rotted the beam, the linteau, that serves both as an element of support and as the mantel. The entire brick structure of the fireplace through to the roof needed to be rebuilt.
 
Over the next phase of renovation, Alexandre the mason rebuilt the chimney, reusing the original bricks. Our gardener Michel knew a couple of elderly brothers with a stock of well-aged oak over in the Perche. He and Xavier went there to choose a new linteau. 
 
“Les affolants!” chuckled Xavier, upon his return. “Les truants!” he added, when I wondered what he meant by the first comment. I presumed that perhaps the brothers did business the old-fashioned way, without a lot of paperwork. And perhaps as a former Customs officer, Xavier found some aspect of that particularly amusing.

Michel sculpts the linteau for the chimney piece.

Michel revealed previously unknown skills, carving the linteau on-site. My husband stepped away from his career as an international business man to repair the broken corbels of the jambage, the “legs” or sides of the mantel. He artfully doctored a mixture of lime, sand and cement to look like the original pierre tendre, or soft limestone. Meanwhile, Xavier lovingly removed all the poutres and solives ­– beams and cross-pieces -- from the ground floor and upper story ceilings, cleaned them, treated them for worms and the devastating fungus la mérule, and sanded them. The team put them back, fixing them in place with wooden pegs and blocks – just as was done from medieval times to the early 20th century in rural France.

Drawing from a 19th-century handbook, showing traditional roof construction, la charpente.

The renovation went on for many, many months. I remonstrated. 
 

"Une fois la maison construite, on oublie le charpentier," responded Monsieur Xavier, citing an old French adage rather crossly.  
"Once the house is built, one forgets the carpenter."

A re-purposed window from the old Farmhouse brings interior light into a new bathroom.

But no-one at Chateau de Courtomer is likely to be ungrateful for the loving and thorough care that Xavier lavished on the restoration of the Farmhouse. And he stubbornly persisted in his mission.

He found flagstones, probably from the medieval Chateau de Courtomer, that had been reused in one of the other farm buildings. With them, he repaved la Ferme’s entrance hall. The old hand-made clay tomettes, fabricated on the estate as early as the 17th century, were cleaned and stacked in the farmyard by size and color. They were to be installed on the upper story floors.
 
He made new doors for the interior, reworking old doors and the remains of the old plank walls from the upper story of the Farmhouse as well as bits and pieces from a charpente, or roof structure, he had repaired in one of the granges. He reused old hinges and locks. He found antique ones on the internet.

He even cut out heart-shaped iron roses, when necessary, to attach handles to the doors. We saved hand-made iron nails from the beams, and reused them on doors and trim where future generations could appreciate the artistry of the past.
 
The interior walls were stripped of old plaster and taken back to bare stone. Most were plastered again with fine-grained chaux. Some of the stonework was left exposed. The granite block surrounds and ancient oak casings around doorways and windows were cleaned and polished.
 
Not that it was always jolly work. Monsieur Xavier teetered on the verge of perfectionism at times, and his acolytes, mere mortals, necessarily fell short of perfection. But the work and the workman moved forward…
 
Until next week, with our final installment about bringing the Farmhouse back to life.

A bientôt, et aux jours meilleurs!

We saved hand-made iron nails from the beams.