It's The Little Things ...

Roger Moss reflects on the task of coaxing an old, characterful French farmhouse into a stylish home, and concludes that it's really the little things which are the big things.

Things seldom work out quite the way you expected them to. We should know by now. Life, as a wise man once remarked, is what happens while you're making other plans. Take the interior of our house, for example. On the face of it, the work to be done when we took over the property seemed straightforward enough. The signs of heavy expenditure and a lot of hard work were plain enough wherever you looked, and the extent of what had been done far outweighed what remained to finish off the job and turn it into the comfortable home we'd planned. ' Doucement, pied par pied. ' were the heartfelt words of encouragement proffered by one of our farming neighbours when first we arrived. He was right. Step-by-step means room-by-room. Believe me, we've tried. But as anyone who's done it will tell you, it's easier said than done.

Here and there (mostly there), more mundane things tend to get in the way. Like plastering. The typical traditional farmhouse in many parts of rural France started life with all the living accommodation on the ground floor, the area above simply left open to serve as a grain-store, or grenier . The ultimate loft-insulation, in fact. Most buyers of these properties plan - given sufficient headroom under the A-frame roof timbers - to divide up the first floor into bedrooms, bathrooms, etc., using partition walls. Forget all you know about stud walls supported by a sturdy timber framework; over here the technology has moved on. It should surprise no-one that the land which conceived the Méccano set now applies the same philosophy to homebuilding, with galvanised steel channelling, secured by self-tapping screws. Just add plasterboard to either side (secured by more screws) and you're done. Or as good as. We rejoiced when we realised that the vast expanses of bare plasterboards would not, after all, require a full plaster skim. Just tape or glue the recessed joints, fill with soft jointing plaster, sand flush when dry and, paint-wise, you're ready to roll. Simple.

Four bedrooms, a large bathroom and a separate WC later, we're still not there. The reason? Ceilings, of course. More large expanses of pale grey, their smooth surfaces this time interrupted by roof beams (' chevrons ' is the precise term) which are far removed from the precisely-sawn items used in modern construction. Barns ( greniers included) didn't justify such cosmetic touches. Instead we have the naturalistic curves of the donor trees, a small forest above our heads. And a nightmare to paint around.

But we're getting there. The old floors of solid chestnut are being systematically (room-by-room, in fact) cleaned with steel wool and treated to a revitalising dose of an oil/wax solution. Soon it will be the turn of the huge dalles - flagstones of local limestone - downstairs. Already lifted, cleaned, re-laid and grouted when we moved in, they urgently need some form of protection against accidental spillages, and to keep the dust down. But what to use? Some form of colourless silicon-based treatment seems likely. We'll seek expert advice, rather than get it wrong.

Happily, the walls have responded well to the care thus far lavished upon them. Until we splashed out on some very up-market paint, that is. The extra money, of course, goes mostly into natural pigments, rather than the synthetic dyes found in lesser paints. The results are stunning. So much so, in fact, that the large areas we painted soon after moving in now look distinctly unconvincing. Put it down to experience.

All in all, though, life is good. The work, despite everything, is a labour of love. And with such surroundings in which to enjoy our occasional leisure time, surely it doesn't get much better than that.

© Words by Roger Moss, 2002
This text first appeared in everything France magazine