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THE
FIRST COTTAGE - part 4
 We
always approach renovation from the top downwards, so
with the first floor finished, it was time to move downstairs.
We retained the granite steps, suitably painted and
stencilled. The front doors were made from tongue and
groove timber used for shutters. The original walls
were finished with a few coats of limewash (thin lime
and water mix) and painted. Limewash is a traditional
finish here. Used on a bare mortar wall, it imparts
an increasingly smooth finish with successive coats.
Mix to the consistency of single cream and remember
to stir it at regular intervals otherwise it tends to
settle. The final coat can be lightly sanded. It can
be left natural, but if you are not going to paint it
ensure that you use Chaux Blanche which dries white.
Ordinary Chaux Naturelle dries to a greyer shade, which
is ok if you are going to finish with a coat of emulsion
paint. It brushes off stonework quite easily afterwards.
The windows in the cottage are the originals. They were
the only ones in the entire property which we could
save. Astral make a range of old French colours and
the green that we chose for the cottage is one of those.
Finding replacement windows that match the original
style is not difficult. Despite our property being around
200 years old, standard sizes existed for all of the
windows in a variety of wood - the range is enormous.
The conversion of the first cottage took around four
months, the others would take considerably longer.
The photographs below are a couple of before and after
shots. If you're wondering why my wife is holding the
stick - when we visited the property the first time,
I forgot to bring a tape measure. Needing to know roughly
the scale of the photographs, we took them all with
the stick in the photo's. The stick came back to England
with us - it was 1.3 metres long - Voila!
One last feature of the cottage - the lintel above the
front door was originally a stone sink - the masons
of La Creuse never wasted anything!
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