We Start Renovating The Coach House Interior... But There Is Bad News

Many months ago we began renovating the 200-year-old coach house on our property. We replaced rotten beams, built a new floor in the attic and then the masons took on the mammoth task of restoring the crumbling facades. After our summer break we are finally ready to crack on. We are back at the chateau and we are back renovating. I'm sure a lot of you have been waiting very patiently for this. So we are continuing to work on our 200-year-old coach house. The facade is now finished, we are going to start attacking the interiors. It's going to get messy but I'm actually quite looking forward to doing a bit of demolition. First things first, it's becoming a bit of a running joke but I feel like every couple of months I do a video where I empty the cardboard recycling from this building here. I decided to spare you the time lapse of me emptying it again because look at all the cardboard that has built up in the last couple of months. That's what I've been doing this morning which means that we can finally get on to the interiors. So the plan this week is to remove what was the former separation for the stables in here. A few people mentioned that they were really disappointed that we were taking this down and that we should definitely keep it for prosperity because it's part of the original architecture of this stables but this is not 18th century separation wall. This has been put in at a later date and it's not beautiful so we are going to be taking that down. I do think we might try to salvage the top part. I've got an idea that I could use that in my atelier and then we've got a massive mission on our hands because as you can see all of the old plaster is crumbling and falling off and we want to be able to get rid of all of that so we can see what is the state of the wall underneath. We are going to attempt to re-plaster this ourselves and Jean-Paul our mason has very kindly said he's going to give us a quick demo of how to do it ourselves. So watch this space that is the plan for the next couple of weeks. And there he is. Philip has turned up. Look I have shoes, work shoes, protective t-shirts, protective shorts. It's gonna get messy, it's gonna be dusty. Just how we like it. Yes. I'm excited to remove this because we will finally get to feel how this space is once it's all opened up. Yeah I'm excited for the removal of this. I think you're just excited to destroy. Yes. Okay let's do it. Okay I found out how it's attached it's like a metal bar going into the wall so I think we have to use be smart about it and either use brute force. Go for it Philip. Destroy that plastic. I definitely think it's some kind of improvised insulation that they made. It's nice to keep that here. I would keep that here as a souvenir. There's another one here for horse number two. You can tell whoever built this for their horses they must have loved the horses. They made a really nice building for horses. Good. Are you just destroying the wall? Let's do this end. Unfortunately they use concrete everywhere. It's really not good for the wall. You also have an electrical hammer thingy but a friend has it so and he's gonna drop it off later. Drop it off later but for now that's all we have. Yeah the horses they lick it. I just licked it. I didn't know horses licked it. Okay Anna how impressed are you with my progress here? Yeah I was pretty impressed to be fair. I don't know how you did it all on your own. Well I did it with a lot of thinking and in a delicate way. And brute force. No. You can flip it over again to this side together. Do you want me to? Can I? Oh. Careful. Oh yeah. Well done. Yes. That was amazing. That's like you know when hunters kill a beast they stand like this. No they don't stand like this. I don't know how they stand. How do they stand? Like this. They would be like this. Is that the thumbnail for this week? That's the thumbnail for the film. Yeah I killed the separation wall. So now Anna I let you get rid of this into the trailer. I want to keep this part though. Oh you wanted to keep this part? This part yeah. Yeah but how do you get it off the rest? There's some screws we just need to undo them. No come on. No it's not screws. They're old bolts. Yeah but it's fine. Give me something. Have we not got anything like a wrench or something that I can use? I start cutting those I can cut. Oh it's not that old I can tell. This is industrial. Industrial type wall. So I don't think it's 19th century. Late 19th century maybe. I'm just saying that because I don't think we should keep that. I know that many of you and Anna think we should keep that but I think it's wasted time too. Anyways different approach. Wow. That's the first time we see the room in full size and that's beautiful with these three openings here. That's gonna be such an amazing room. Really unique. A room with three arched bows. That's fantastic. I love it. I love it. Can't wait for this becoming my office maybe. Go in this corner and have a look at the three openings. Tell me what you think about this beautiful room. Oh wow. It's true I hadn't actually been seen it like this open. Looks really good. I'm sure this will never work but I'm sure it works. That's work Anna. Oh yeah. I thought it's gonna work. This is just to lubricate a bit. That's not the WD40. No it's something else. 8-in-1 multi-spray. It does smell like WD40. It's basically some copy of a... Really you should have told me before. I was sure they would be completely rusty. I don't think it's as old as it looks. Unlike other things in this room. Are you talking about yourself? A bit rusty. We are a bit rusty after five weeks away maybe. Speaking of age isn't there an important birthday coming up? No I don't know. I don't know what you're talking about. Okay no it's just a I had his impression. It works actually really well I must admit. Sometimes it's not all brute force. I think this we should keep because look how nice it is on the other side. Iron hinges wow. Yeah so and I think we can keep we can keep the old hinges. We can rescue them as well. Yeah. And then yeah we can do something with it. So now you're trying to rescue the other side of the hinge. Yeah exactly. Do you want some of my spray? My magic spray. My first one. Oh yeah that one's easy because it's just one. Yeah it's just one that doesn't want to come. You know what I'm gonna even keep these screws. They're quite nice aren't they? Yeah. I have a whole I've kept all these ones here. Yeah that's good that's good. See they're quite nice these. Look how beautiful. Yeah it's really cool. They're really cool these hinges. Beautiful. Another hinge. I really like this. They are really really nice. They will give some character to something in the future. I see it coming. Yeah. Oh that's heavy. Oh that's heavy. Oh my gosh. Why is it so heavy? Could they be useful for something? They could even be a good table. Like a good workbench. They would be quite a cool workbench. What do you guys think? As you said they could become a nice workbench but that said we already have another 5 000 pieces just like this which could potentially become a nice workbench. Yeah but it's already I mean it's already really solid. It's not completely flat though. Yeah you would need to sand it. Yeah why not? It's a keeper. Maybe let's let's call it a keeper but keep it out of here. That was easy. It would be a nice garden table. Oh yeah. Oh wow. Let's get let's get this out first. Ready? Yeah. That's heavy. It's still attached. Oh that's right. Let me just try something. Is it still attached? No. That worked. So the highlight of this video would have been us carrying out the heavy door and put it on a trailer but Anna forgot to press play. A record. A record and yeah now it's on. This is another room where we need to take care of the walls. As you can see comes off like this. This is on the other end of the coach house. As for now this is a kids swimming pool storage room. What I like in here in this room in particular are these all these little traces on the wall which give us some insight in what happened here before. This is a switchboard for the pump system here that was used to operate a well. The well that we still have and it pumped water in here at that time and I think they irrigated the whole property with this water. And on the wall I've shown you this already but I love these traces of former tools that were hanging there. That's the nice thing of these old buildings is they carry so much history and they carry traces of people who lived here. It's a lot of information everywhere all over these walls. A bit like when we leave traces on the online world when we surf online and when we are on the internet. 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And I think you're ambitious and you decided that you want to try out to re-plaster the wall ourselves. I think so. I spoke to Jean-Paul de Maison and he thinks that he could show us how to do it. And does he also think that we can do it? He wasn't saying. He wasn't saying. He's too polite. He's happy to show us how to do it. Yeah he said it's not as difficult as doing the outside plastering. And the first step in order to remake these walls look nice is to get off the old plaster right? Yes. All the loose bits. And I'm excited to do that because I want to see what it looks like underneath this brick hole. Yeah very exciting. Yeah cool. Let's do it. Let's do it. It just feels like going back in time. Six years when we started working on the on the chateau on this kind of job. Yeah a long time ago. Yeah this is definitely loose plaster. So I think it needs to come off. All of this needs to come off. Oops. Why is there a big hole in there? There's no more mortar in there. Yeah but that's quite a big gap. Yeah I think there was some there was something in there before. So I don't know what. Okay. Some rotten beam here. Can you see what's up here? Yeah it's a rotten beam. That's the problem when you use the wrong material. If you have plaster that's a normal plaster on wood. It doesn't work well. It makes the wood wet. I don't think it's a structural beam. But that doesn't look good. Crumbling this wood. There's a big big beam here. Completely rotten. And it continues here. And if I'm taking this off, which I have to, I'm pretty sure it's rotten as well. And I wonder if that is a bigger problem than we thought. If we just discover a big issue here. Because this beam is supporting all the joists. This beam is not so important I guess. But I don't know what it's doing here in the middle of the wall. I mean maybe all these beams are going around. That's probably what they're doing. I don't know what it means when they are rotten like this. Definitely need to speak with our Mason and Jean-Paul. It's not good. I don't like what I see. There's still brick outside holding everything together. This is kind of okay. It's not completely rotten. It's just we might be able to get away with it. So this is dead. So I need to find out what these beams are doing here. How essential they are. I mean this is obviously holding the door in place. And it does look a bit not so good. So I wonder if I have to replace this one with Benoit. I need to figure out something to reinforce this one here. You can also see here why these have been two pieces joined together. So it cracked. Well it's a bit. It's just dried out the wood this time. And here. Looks better here. Let's see the rest. What do you think about this beam Anna? Completely rotten. I think we need to tell Benoit to order another beam. Look. Look at that. I don't know how you would replace a beam like that. Maybe if we do cut little by little and just replace with brick. Maybe. Yeah. Little by little maybe. But I don't know what it's doing this beam. I think it's probably holding the house together to be honest. Maybe that's why it's moving so much. Yeah. I think it's not good. It's not. I don't like it. I don't like what we found today. No. And I think it might be the same on the other side. Yeah. Yeah. You can see it's warped as well a little bit. And it's because they put that wrong plaster on it. It's really annoying. It's non-breathable plaster. It's just you know it traps all the moisture in the wall and then the beam rots. Don't you want the electric thing? Yeah maybe. It's much more efficient. Look what you've done. Anna has done this. And I've done all this. Yeah but you Well so the main issue now that we uncovered the whole beam here to some extent why we have this crack here in the wall is because these beams as far as I know they're going around the building and they're holding the building together. They're holding all the walls together. So they are all linked and this obviously is a weak link and it has been where they were kitted together. They were torn apart and that allowed this wall to move. So I am pretty much sure that we need to reinforce this whole thing. Well it looks like it needs to be replaced that whole beam. Yeah replace it. I don't know how you replace the beam because what happens if you take this out? Can you just take this out without then making more cracks outside? I don't know. That's something we have to find out. It looks all right here. This beam looks kind of all right up to here. Now probably this is oh it's not good news. Not good news. That's a lot of work to replace this. But I'm afraid if you don't do it the house would just keep moving and cracks will appear and I don't know. We have to call in the experts. We have to call in Benoit and Jean-Paul again and then we will see how bad these news are. I mean they are bad I can tell but how bad. We'll find out soon in the next vlog hopefully. That's a cliffhanger but it's a cliffhanger for us as well as for you guys.