Home tour: historic home and B&B in Normandy near D-day beaches

hello welcome to another home tour video I am taking you to norm to the village of Berni sur where theadi disembun Beach onday 1944 we're going to discover a beautiful B and breakfast la maison p maxov hello hello welcome to the house P thank you I have already met the cat Ursule ursle hello from the house uh this house we bought it 11 years ago uh we did a lot of work because when we arrived it had always belonged to the same family since 1785 and when we arrived well it was in its own juice as they say in fact there was everything to do it was built in three stages at the time of the landing for example it served as a hospital on the morning of June 6th on the 10th when the Canadians arrived in the village in fact there were Germans waiting for them a little bit above in a wood and they killed a large number of Canadians and they the regiment repatriated to the garden and by force of the things the lady who lived here opened her house and the house became a field hospital so welcome to the small living room uh it's the place where we welcome our travelers since the Peloquin house has been a house of ore for 3 seasons so here if they want to relax if they want to have a coffee a cold drink read well it's the ideal place to settle down I really like all the woodwork it was it was it's the woodwork everything is exactly uh everything has been repainted but nothing has changed it's exactly the same room as originally except that you added yes exactly that it was added and painted in the same shade as the wall to be able to integrate it as well as possible it's an oak parquet exactly wow in fact the house was built in three pieces this part there is the oldest part uh then there is the part next door which is between the two wars with a rather unusual roof with a so-called cathedral frame uh to At the time, the owner was friends with a lady who had a castle not far from here and who had a roof like that and she wanted to be like her friend, have a roof like that. Today, when you have a friend who has a nice bag, you want the same bag as her. Well, at the time, you had a friend who had a nice roof and you wanted the same one. You had it built exactly. Here is the third part, it's 1825, it's the part called Guerneusé, which is the part that I'll show you later. It's a really, really different style. So here we are in the dining room, uh, for breakfast every morning, uh, we have five bedrooms and uh, we receive travelers from all over the world. People come here for the landing beaches, so we can have Canadians, Americans, English, Germans, lots of Germans, uh, Belgians, finally, people from all over the world, and everyone ends up at the same table for breakfast. So here, the dishes that I China so if you like old dishes I'm going to show you some plates that are all pretty like that ah yes different things rather in the glasses I also have some funny little scenes with ah yes the talking plates it's called he ah I don't know that name it's called talking plates okay because it tells a story ah yes so there are even some that are very funny that tell you let's teach children the way to the Caisse d'Épargne it's funny yes it was probably sponsored by Crédit Agricole things there that are quite funny the French charm there I have some green ones glassware finally lots of different things all that is Chinese things in fact I love I also have things hidden here in this piece of furniture which is funny because this piece of furniture in fact uh it was my husband's grandfather's workbench he had a beautiful workbench so an incredible workbench because in fact he was uh he was a surgeon so nothing to do with DIY but uh he liked chinis already at the time and he had recovered this on the sidewalk in Paris it was a counter of the BHV and so uh if you look here there are even still the holes he had installed his eto in fact here is the small counter to serve where I set up the buffet lesc cissant obviously homemade jam honey from the garden because my son has beehives in the garden and we serve honey from the house peocquin Norman cheeses obviously granau the house there are Norman yogurts there is Norman apple juice but everything comes from here good things from Normandy there are some that come from an old an old café then there were family chairs then these are chairs that come from Emmaus uh there is one that we found in the house in fact yes they are only chairs which each have a different story in fact I find that dining rooms are always a little pompous you see like a place and I wanted to put a bookcase to break up the overly ostentatious side of the dining room and so I put lots of objects uh that come from everywhere and that I like you see there is there is a photo of our family there is uh a pot that comes from my grandmother's anyway there are lots of different things it's a cardboard greenhouse head uh that I had in my old house and then uh Rodolphe found it funny even though we're not hunters to give it a side a bit like the room back from the hunt you see like the dining rooms in the past so he hunted for frames of hunting scenes from everywhere so there it is a little nod to the dining rooms of other times in country houses we move on to the kitchen with the little one I'll show you that in fact look I'm going to put on the other side and the serving hatch that we kept from the period is funny since next door we just have the kitchen hop there was even the board you see to put the dishes we said that it was nice to keep it but yes so here we are arrived at the kitchen which in fact before was in two pieces because there was an office next door and we made the choice to make a large kitchen to live in and and to knock down this this this large wall and to obtain like that in the kitchen a fireplace which is very pleasant so in the kitchen we made the choice not to uh install a contemporary kitchen we preferred an old dresser which was uh found at some nuns not very far from here no cupboard curtains uh uh there you go everything at hand uh very easy it has to be practical and so they are narrower than classic gutters but in the end they are gutters normally for the exterior there was that at my florist's once and I found that it was very practical to put a whole bunch of little bits and pieces this niche was found in an attic and in fact it is a kennel that was used for dogs to be transported on stagecoaches in fact that's why there are handles it was to actually carry the kennel and when we found it and we had a dog we said to ourselves but it's ideal we just cleaned it with a carcher and it's still in super super good condition and so there it is and so it was used for hunting exactly yeah Ursule he likes it a lot because in fact through the wicker he can actually see what's going on outside so it's a bit like his lookout what and the grid you don't put it no we take it off because to be clear for everyone that it's for decoration the little grid we said to ourselves that it was a bit like a prison and that we spared him that no it's a cart that was recovered from a former butcher in fact so it's a bit unusual but he put his carcasses inside and uh and when rodolp found this I thought it could be ideal for storing wood uh it's on wheels it can hop be brought outside and then hop to be loaded the woodwork in fact it was there it was very dark it was a little stripped and so this floor it is it is very very old it is really medieval period in fact it is really the very beginning of the history of the house the house uh it is an old fief which belonged to Denis Peloquin Peloquin it is not very charming because it means dog pot then the fief was destroyed abandoned well it burned more exactly then so then it was abandoned and much later another gentleman took possession of the place and he had a house rebuilt more or less on the site of the first building so baptized it after Denis Peloquin but he kept the name of this gentleman to give this name to this house and and from then on this house has always belonged to the same family but there are some like that which are old elements which date from the old fiefdom just like the stone that is above the door I will show you after there is an old stone which is a stone from the period yes a fiefdom is it is the baptism of someone important and a farm to be able to live in self-sufficiency and so there was a dovecote there was everything that was needed to live here without having to go elsewhere to have water to have food in the village of Berniè surmer there are five fiefdoms because historically they all belonged to notables and even today there are traces in the village it is a pretty village because there are lots of big buildings like that which are the result of all these ancient years in fact I can also show you the map that was found it is an old map of Paris so it's funny because I think it has the date 1848 and so we found it in the river here and so if you look closely in fact well the Eiffel Tower does n't exist yet in fact uh it's quite funny to notice all the details with all the forts in fact which encircle the city of Paris in fact there are some everywhere and it's very pretty because if you look closely there are lots of little drawings where we even see people with carriages with horses finally it's quite quite nice and we made the choice to make an office on the left and to create this corridor and then well as there were lots of things in the in the attic there was among other things this this glass roof which allows to bring a little light to the corridor it's rather practical the Alibaba's cave when we arrived in the in the attic it was rather nice yeah we found lots of things people they had left a lot of things they had left things that they didn't necessarily think reusable I'm showing you for example here the bench which is here so obviously it wasn't in this state it was very dark it was sandblasted on the canvas was no longer in good condition but so Rodolph took me time to restore it and finally I find that it is very nice in the entrance whereas it was abandoned in the attic and this floor too eh so it has lots of imperfections eh so you see there are holes a little everywhere but I find it so pretty that too bad it is not completely clean but it is the charm too it is true you are right and as there are several eras in fact in the house I think of that uh you see the tiles follow one another they have nothing to do with each other it is quite curious you have checkerboard here there is cement tile and then this one it is quite astonishing I can show it to you look so it is not real mosaic but still it has a quite incredible shade wou and this door is the door which is original in fact it was the door of the house and we made the choice to keep it in fact we said to ourselves how funny it was [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] the house stopped where the tiles change color uh that's why there's the old door which is still there we kept it and in 1825 this part was added because the owner at the time had fallen in love with a young woman from the island of Guerneesé and he wanted to make a part for her in the style of his island and suddenly it contrasts with the rest of the house you'll see I'll show you there are small openings there's a lot of woodwork it's a bit unusual and then also this ceiling if you go up here you'll see it's a ceiling with an effffel structure a metal structure with glass tiles and for the little anecdote uh the former owners told us that in fact the tiles were laid upside down you see there are small spikes and finally normally it there is a flat part and a part with spikes and the parts the flat part should be above and there was a mistake they put the spikes on the other side so when we arrived in the house everything was very very dark there were years and years of wax that had been placed on all this woodwork and uh we made the choice to sand them and so that is very old if you look closely there at the heads of the characters that is really the end of the medieval period they were old decorations that were found on males and uh they were then taken down to be installed there to make decorations on these walls when they did this part of the house they found that they integrated the panel into the decoration exement you will see inside there is also woodwork with seats that are even inlaid you see there which sometimes gives almost a side a little you know monastic a little like in churches this side little seat inlaid in the woodwork wou and so you see there are even little shutters so people come to the house I tell them that they have the right to climb on the little bench which is there to then go and close the shutters to have the night if they wish complete you see so hop and there you go [Music] so it is very different from number 1 it is more classic eh there is no woodwork here uh just an old fireplace an old mirror which is from the period and then a view on the other side of the garden uh this table was a small table which comes from my grandmother's the chest of drawers which is there was a chest of drawers from Rodolphe's grandfather and then after that well these are things which come from a little everywhere the small bedside tables it is Rodolphe who made them so in in all the bedrooms in fact there were sometimes sinks but there were very few bathrooms so all the bathrooms had to be imagined and then installed and for example this tiling it did not exist this floor tile it was found in an old house in the village and we put it there to actually imagine that it had always been there I'll take you to number 3 we're going to go through this corridor and so for the record all the little frames inside are old boards my father went to an agricultural school and it was these little cards to learn about plants around here oh it's bright it's south facing and so it's bathed in sunlight Rodolf made one with old windows he made a shelf well a wardrobe rather it was the old windows which were there in the house on the floor below the piece of furniture which is at the back there uh so it's a dresser which was in the dining room it had been custom made to be integrated into the wall in place of the bookcase and as it is extremely long it didn't fit in the truck when the owners left the place so they left it there this piece of furniture we moved it all over the ground floor because every time we made either I did n't like it and then I ended up telling Rodolp it's not going well I could imagine it on the first floor and so we took advantage when the roof was redone of a machine to bring it up uh because it's impossible to turn in the stairs finally in addition it weighs extremely heavy it was sanded and Rodolph told me I warn you we don't change places anymore and I think it found its place but at the beginning I was n't sure here we put a one like a basin like in schools because before I was in bleeding so we made a little reminder of my old job you see and I find it rather nice to have this side we share the basin the frame also it was found in the attic and I have a friend in the village who has a collection of postcards and I went to recover some I had them scanned and enlarged so that you see I can reuse ah yes I'll take you to room number 4 but the corridor allit before up to there and we decided to make a small entrance in this room to give it a little more space and when we changed the windows of the house Rodolf recovered the amount and you see he added it there to give a little light to this kind of little airlock before entering the room this one is a little smaller you'll see but it's rather comfortable the lamps it's Rodolph who made them we also recovered you see they are the small ones what do we call them domes there and then he mounted them on a linen thread and with a cable and then hop there it is it was ok I'll take you to the last room room number 5 is this one uh in his living room so with a sofa a place to have a little coffee uh here also there is a frame that we found in the attic you see and with another image of Bernière so you see we also added here old windows and hop and so there we go into the room uh we chose to put a panoramic wallpaper to give it a bit of character because otherwise as it is very big it was quite quite empty that was wallpaper that was up there in a corridor but which was all torn off finally we really could n't keep it and I found it pretty and so I decided to keep a little touch you see in the house the bathroom didn't exist well if it existed but there was just a sink and on the floor there were no tiles and so we found this old tile it has lots of imperfections but we have the impression that it has always been there [Music] [Music] I have been sincerely moved by the history of this place and also by its beauty and the incredible kindness of max sa rodolp thank you so much for sharing your home with us if you want to stay Aton pan they have five bed and breakfast rooms and a holiday home you can find the link to their website in the description box as always thank you so much for watching US but be sure to subscribe to my channel and I will see you very soon with a new video