2 YEARS (in 15 minutes) RENOVATING a CRUMBLING FRENCH CASTLE into DREAM HOME

two and a half years ago we quit our jobs in paris  left the city and our friends behind and took the   biggest gamble of our lives we decided to spend  all of our savings on buying a crumbling chateau   hoping to be able to renovate it into our dream  home and begin a new life in the countryside this   chateau has 16 rooms plus a cellar and an attic  space but it only had two toilets when we arrived   one of the biggest tasks for us when  we started renovating was to install   more bathrooms a heating system get electricity  to all the floors we had to find a way to bring in   all of those pipes without damaging the integrity  of the chateau and without changing too much   so the only way to do that was through  the entrance hallway under the stairs we   did have to remove all the tiles that were  here but we took that opportunity to put it   down this really beautiful pierable gone stone  that could have been used in the 18th century would you say you are a professional builder now   well i never wanted to become a builder it wasn't  a plan was it no the problem is when we budgeted   the renovation work we had a loan in mind but it  did turn out for several reasons that the loan   would be much less and then we had two options  either you know not to buy it or to find a way   to renovate it with much less and we decided  we were so much in love with this place i'm   crazy enough and crazy enough to go for it anyway  that's how we became builders full-time billions we calculated everything as precisely as  possible but we made one major mistake   yeah and that was with the facade the facade yeah  i think we had budgeted about 25 000 and the quote   came in at a hundred thousand but there was no  way not to do the facade and we couldn't do it   ourselves so we had to spend that money in fact  there was five people working over three months and we managed to do three out of  the four facades and we're happy originally we were living well i say  living but it was more like camping   out of cardboard boxes on the first floor whilst  we renovated the second floor which was the former   servants quarters and we transformed  those into our private living quarters do it took us about six months longer  than expected but the result is   perfect for us we have our  small but cozy apartment it felt like we'd finally made  the chateau a little bit ours   and we started walking on the three first guest  rooms for our guest house business but we didn't   have much time we were on the enormous pressure  because we were running out of money and in   order to continue the renovation we needed  the income from the guest house this is our   biggest guest room apart from rotten windows  it was in good condition and it will get its   own ensuite bathroom this is a south facing room  and it has a lot of windows so it's quite light   we decided to be daring and  go dark with the color in here are you doing a good job that's the main  question i'm extremely slow especially   compared to the professionals who used to  work here with let's check out your handy work it's also the first room where i tried to make my   own bespoke wallpaper using  a lino printing technique this room here was actually a small bedroom and we  decided to create a bathroom in that bedroom one   of my favorite features in this bathroom is the  car scion bath it was originally here but it was   very damaged wasn't it phillip but we managed to  restore it and yeah and it's a beautiful feature   and it looks out over the ground and i think this  is the perfect spot to run yourself a nice bubble   bath and have a nice glass of champagne as  you relax and look over the front garden this room didn't have a bathroom obviously  and there were two options either we would   make a square bathroom in here but then we  would have lost the symmetry of the room   that would just be a typical hotel configuration  and we wanted to avoid that so the only other   option was to use these two cupboard spaces and  turn them into a shower a sink and toilet room   it's a lovely light room here  because we have beautiful big windows   and we also have a stunning view  over the 12th century church   but then in the midst of our  renovation of the guest rooms   coveted and suddenly we lost all of our walkers  they couldn't come back we quickly managed to buy   some building materials but we were the two of  us basically locked in in our kind of diy bubble   your mum was thankfully looking after the girls  and we just worked night and day you had some   injuries as well and i had like a tendonitis from  painting so it was really physical and mentally   we were like pretty exhausted but thankfully  they lifted the restrictions my parents were   able to come over from the uk and give us  a hand for about two weeks yeah and we were   able to finally finish the guest streams and the  breakfast room in time to open in august of 2020. we had an excellent start we had a full house  but unfortunately the fun didn't last because   kobe hit again and there was another  lockdown we had a finished guest house we didn't wanted to sit around feeling  sorry for ourselves so we decided   to film us renovating and putting  it out on youtube so at least   after the lockdown people would maybe know  about us and come and visit us that's how   the vlog started and the very first video was  taken here in this room do you remember anna this is what happened this red is really stressing me i was  like just doing one panel over here   and i literally had to stop because  i was like getting palpitations i was   physically stressed by the red then we  realized okay so we need to change the color and as the youtube channel started growing  we figured out i needed an editing room   actually i figured out i need an  editing room and you stole my italia   i did normally our guests don't don't see that  room for obvious reasons because it's one of   the unfinished rooms in the chateau and we use  it as a as a storage room and anna also uses it   as her atelier we will eventually turn it into  an office probably and at the back kitchen   there's anna walking on two benches  to canapes for our evening salon say philippi happy i'm very happy  i finally get my yellow room   i think it's going to be very nice to work in here  because it's north facing so it's going to kind of   warm the room up a little bit  not that it matters for you   as it is in my room i think i will be coming  in here yep to bring me coffee and tea so one of my favorite rooms downstairs however  is the guest washroom that anna made so here it is this room never existed and once we had the shell  here it obviously looked very bland very modern   and so we knew that we needed to do something  to make it feel that it existed in this space   within the chateau we had the idea to  get benoit in and he did a great job   putting in this beautiful paneling so that it ties  in with the paneling and the rest of the chateau   and then we found this original 100 year old sink  and taps which are beautiful they were in the only   bathroom upstairs and we knew that this would  be the perfect thing to bring a little bit of   history into this room the inspiration for the  mural actually came from you because you made a   beautiful documentary about the pompeii frescoes  and i was very inspired by those roman frescoes   and all that botanical feel obviously i had to  transform the italian orange trees into normandy   apple trees and then what's the technique that  you use to do this well the idea was to make a   kind of degraded effect so down at the bottom the  paneling is very dark green and then i did a light   green wash as a base and then i did a darker  green wash so you can see that kind of fades   out towards the top of the room and then i worked  on top of that to build up my botanical scene we hope you enjoyed watching this video and if  you did then please consider subscribing to our   channel because we have loads more renovating  coming up and we can't wait to share it with   you guys and click the bell button because then  you get a notification when a new video comes out   and happy new year happy new year guys for exclusive videos and behind the scenes  updates have a look at our patreon page   thank you so much for watching

Channel: How To Renovate A Chateau

Views: 6,076,914

Keywords: Chateau, chateaulife, newlife, countrylife, diy, renovating, familylife, restoration, france, castle, doing it ourselves, chateau diaries, doing it our selves, living in france, chateau Bed & breakfast, boutique hotel, luxury hotel, house tour, chateau tour, french property, country life, barock, architecture, architectural digest, escape to the chateau, howtorenovateachateau, escape to the country side, renovation, french style, house and garden, timelapse

Id: qLVQy8YD3xY

Length: 14min 28sec (868 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 09 2022