The Adventure Begins - Renovating The Gardeners Cottage

[Music] well hello and welcome back what I've been up to this week well at the beginning of the week I went to get my hair cut in whren and my hair our it was a mess before I was so embarrassed doing these videos with my hair I just couldn't do anything with it so I went to get it a car because the lockdown restrictions have been eased a bit so that was an interesting experience so I had to wear a mask obviously the hairdresser was wearing a mask and she had like her little visor on as well I had to hold my mask over my face like this with my two hands so that she cut the back so that was really interesting what I didn't film that because the hairdresser didn't want to be filmed so there you go you'll just have to imagine it me like this she's got a mask on and gloves on I've got my mask on can't really hear what each other's saying but hair turned out alright so not too not too bad there's a big cathedral next to the hairdresser's and I could hear music coming from the church and there was an organ playing so I went into the church with my camera and I was the only person in there so it's just me the organ player and this beautiful music so I filmed some of that and I'll show you a bit of that now [Music] [Laughter] [Music] on the way back from Rennes I had a bit of a incident with the train so I had my ticket I went to go to the platform that I thought was the right platform actually it turns out it was the right platform for the train back to Laval which is the nearest big town to where I live so I get on the train and I sit in my seat and the train leaves about five minutes early which I thought was unusual because trains in France they're always well on time very confused sitting on my train and about 25 minutes into the journey I'm thinking I should be stopping at my stop now so I get out my phone and go onto Google Maps and look exactly where I am and I'm Way up near the coast in Brittany about hundred miles from where I should be so it turns out this train was going from Paris to Brest so it's the Perry Brest TGV Express service so I was going way way way way in the opposite direction up near the coast and so I'm gonna have to just get off in Brest which is probably about three and a half to four hours drive from the chateau luckily the train stopped about halfway there which is about 40 minutes into the journey in a place called Lamballe yeah I had to buy a ticket back so luckily there was a train back to Rennes 20 minutes later so I got back on that yes so then I got picked up by my mum so then we went to my grandparents that's my mum's parents and they live in France as well they live about an hour's drive from the chateau so we went to theirs because it was their 61st wedding anniversary and so I filmed a bit of stuff there and I'll show you that now Farmar grandad we've been isolated for two months 61st wedding anniversary congratulations so this is my nan and granddad's house in France I think they bought this in the early 90s and it was just a ruin you couldn't live in it it was just erm completely abandoned it had mud no water no electric and they bought it really cheaply I think they got it for about fifteen or twenty thousand pounds or something at the time so they moved out here in the very early 90s and they've lived out here ever since they retired early bought this place did it up themselves I just thought I'll show you around their little kitchen lovely old range cooker there she's got quite a large collection of blue and white China and that's just a fraction of it all of this up here and it just keeps going around and around the room yeah I think quite a lot of these things I bought her actually I know I bought her that cake plate oh they're lovely I didn't borrow those but they are Spode salt and pepper shakers this is a Spode lamp and it's the willow pattern which is based on the old Chinese designs that were popular in the 18th century but this is an English design and based on those and I think this lamp was a Christmas present from me and my mum and my family actually my mum said that I went into the shop when I was quite young apparently I put a deposit on it I think I must have been about 12 or something obviously I was young I couldn't afford to actually pay for it so my mum had to end up buying it but as far as I know they don't make this willow pattern anymore and it's one of my favorites so it would be nice if they actually reintroduce this pattern huge huge collection here lots of bits and pieces some of these are really old I know a lot of these big platters they're Victorian or nothing old tea caddy I know that's a ginger jar that's a tea caddy well that's a lovely teapot see this these kind of tea pots are my favourite shape these sort of elongated ones all that nice even got its teapot stand I know she's got some really pretty things in her living room in the little cabinet let's go and have a look I see what she's got in here so this is her living room this is where she keeps all the treasure let's have a look now this I bought my grandmother for Christmas one year it's a special edition Spode willow plate now what's different about this one well it has Christmas trees and you can see father Christmas just there and some elves and they are really really hard to get hold of now I tried to find one on ebay and and just couldn't find one I think I bought her these cruet set salt and pepper there now this it's a Spode miniature terrine see absolutely love Spode for years absolutely loved it but I never actually bought myself any I always used to buy it for my grandmother when I was a lot younger as Christmas presents miniature willow white my food oh that's also Spode so there's a little mini Bowl yeah now this plate is very very special and I've seen other ones I met they made a few in this set and there were slightly different designs I think they did two or three different versions of this and it was a willow Christmas plate but this one with the Santa very difficult to find I've not been able to find another one and I've been looking for years spy blue rim collection Willow Santa adapted from an early willow hand engraved copper plate made in England very special now Spode if you are listening please bring back the willow pattern I know you have a slightly different version of it now it is Willow but it's obviously it's not blue and white and it's in a sort of a more modern design but I love the we lo pan bring like willow do love a Peter Rabbit see I think this is where the Peter Rabbit obsession came from grandmother or I remember doing that one so Windsor Newton ink bottle with a crown on on top of a Windsor and I did that for a competition this is one that I did years ago when was this I must have been about 12 when I did this so willow pattern as another one that I did was that a Christmas present for you if you when you come up next I'll film you do you mind when you come up next nan will you when you come up next will you bring some of my art works like this one and this one looks I'd like to take and scans of them and make some prints out of them especially that one oh that's we got married let's have a look mid Randi so Minster Abbey is on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent oh this my uncle is also an artist most asleep in here when I am used to come and stay in France hidden oh yeah I wish some artwork so I did and these are just prints though yeah beehive and some honey bees there it's another one of my artworks in fact none I think you probably got the largest collection of my artworks out of anyone even my mum's had a go at doing a bit of art all right we better get back then so that's my grandparents they obviously they've been in lockdown for two months so we haven't seen them but they've been fine they've been looking after themselves really well and now it is time for me to go and make a start on the gardener's cottage all right well there's a lot of stuff to move there's bikes to find homes for we've got all of these shutters from the Chateau they need to be rehomed all of these doors and everyone's out at the minute so I'm gonna have to move most of it myself well it's typical isn't it all the heaviest stuff is in here but these shutters they're so heavy I can barely carry them but we'll get it done only problem is I'm going to need to get better at filming myself I can't really hold the camera and carry all this heavy stuff so I'm just going to give you updates so far I've managed to move three pairs of shutters some guttering pipes and a huge cast iron thing I don't know what it is but I'll give you another update we're not moved a bit more right well I've just moved all the shutters they're probably the heaviest bit well I say that the heaviest bit there's a huge stack of solid oak doors there and as you know Oaks very dense just storing all of these heavy shutters in this little room here so you've got some here some stacked up here got these lovely little work sheds just next to the cottage there's one there just along this wall here that's where the cottage is so just be carrying all of those through from here chose a good day to start doing heavy work it's so hot outside it must be about I don't know 27 degrees Celsius 28 something like that is really really high like mid summer get there in the end well I'm just going to try and move this really heavy out door this door was actually from the I think it was from the basement and it used to be the door to the old elevator shaft it's not there anymore obviously they removed that because it was so dangerous I mean there was literally it wasn't like a modern elevator from the first floor it used to just open up into a shaft which dropped right down into the basement so that was super dangerous so it's probably best that he was removed but we still have the old runners like the rails for it here these things here these are the Oh bang my head these are the old rails that used to go up the side of the elevator and we haven't thrown them out obviously because they're original to the Chateau but how it's basically a huge lot of Steel how we're gonna lift it try move the other one they are heavy right well at least they're moved out into the little room in the side for now because that's that rooms not going to be touched until much later on now I've got to try and move this big heavy oak door well I couldn't lift it and yeah I just knocked a bit of the old plaster off the wall trying to move it but and plasters got to come off the walls anyway so it doesn't matter just came off a bit earlier than expected Turin work that's my interesting you see that graffiti on that door years and years ago the shutter was owned by a Malaysian lady and she decided that well she didn't live here she basically left the Chateau abandoned and it was inhabited by squatters they didn't instruct like they didn't destroy things but what they did is they got spray paint and they just spray painted like the interiors of the Chateau well incidentally she disappeared no one ever knew what became of her and because she wasn't paying her taxes the Chateau was repossessed by the state and then sold on to another guy we know what happened to her we haven't found her here unfortunately we didn't take care of the Chateau so it got burned but the guy who bought it after he did quite a lot of work to clear up all of the spray paint I mean lots of the paneling and the staircase probably that was all sprayed with spray paint he managed to clean all that off they didn't manage to finish it so things like the staircase we've just put the varnish back on that was really heavy really heavy that one's definitely oak heavy well that's very interesting so it did have electric at some point I don't think it was electrics for a home I think it was just some sort of light just to put light in here so people could use it as - no workshop or storage or something some absolutely amazing finds in here look at this let's give that a wash let's see the color underneath Wow just look at this ashame there's not more of them I wonder where it came from - no what if that was in one piece that would have made an amazing trivet to put hot pan or a kettle or even a teapot on definitely won't be thrown away though that's beautiful what's going to be really fun is going round to all the reclamation yards and antique shops and trying to find old fixtures and fittings for this place because as I said in my previous video I want it to be really really old fashioned and to the point where everything in it is old and I'll very sparingly use new things and anything new I use will be like replicas or or in the style of a vintage deck or so that's gonna be really fun you know things like if I can find some old paneling to go around the walls at the bottom then we'll buy that and put that in things like even the kitchen I'm gonna have to have a kitchen maid but I know a local carpenter who's actually agreed to do it at a reasonable price and what we're gonna try and do is use as much reclaimed wood as possible so it's not new newly milled stuff is all old so the kitchen will have a bit of an old feel and if things you know bits of wood or a bit beating up here in there like it will just add to the to the aesthetic and it will look as if it really is old I want this place to look as if it is like original everything's original and it's just been really well looked after that's what I'm going for so even down to things like the plugs and the light switches we'll try and find the beautiful vintage like 1920s plugs and light switches so that everything is in keeping even things like though the electrical wiring I'm gonna do the old fashioned thing they did in 1920s so instead of putting the wires in the walls and hiding them they actually put the wires in little metal pipes like conduits very neatly all around the room with little round metal junction boxes and things like that so it's all exposed so it's very off the 1920s years ago people didn't chase wires into the walls and things like that they actually they would have had it all exposed or nothing it actually looked really nice and really stylish so we're gonna try and do that but we're not at that stage yet so let's get this thing cleared out first well look at that started to expose the lovely old terracotta tiles on the floor well these ones are missing that one can be saved oh look they just lift out so easily that one could be saved that one's that one a lot of these are just crumbling they can't be saved useless or broken every now and again you have one that comes out hole so that'll be saved unfortunately a lot of these are beyond repair that one's still home probably about 50% these are going to be unusable you can see they're all cracked but there is a silver lining we go and have a look over here when my parents cleared out their cottage which they're doing up at the minute on the top floor where all these look how many there are hundreds of them hundreds and hundreds so what we need to work out is are they the same as these ones I believe they're identical yeah so we can use all of these ones to replace the ones that are broken thankfully what I'll do is I'll take one of these now if it fits okay yeah they're basically the same these ones are a bit nicer actually I've still got a lot more to do in here to clear this room out let's try and get a good look at this space now it's quite a decent-sized room so if you can imagine this is the size of the cooker that I'm going to use no the one I've got it's almost the same as this but it's a cream model and it has slightly different front and this one was an old gas model so we won't be using this one but I've got an old one that runs on coal a cream one and I don't know if you go sit in our ger cooker before but they have an enamel top and they have these lids that lift up and the normally have a like a cast-iron hot plate and leave we've been taken out to make it a bit lighter to move you have them lit and they are running all the time because they're so well insulated and they've got huge cast iron castings inside that they store up so much heat and that you only need like a really small fire just to keep it going once it's already hot so usually it's always hot and ready to go and they actually give off heat like a radiator from the outside so you have a top oven which is surprisingly quite a big oven it doesn't look very big here but I can assure you it's probably about the same size as a normal oven but it's obviously positioned sideways so it's a narrower at the front so you have a hot oven which is for roasting and you can also bake in it if it cools down a bit and then you have a smaller simmering oven which is probably at about a hundred degrees Celsius this one is usually about 200 to 220 the top one and then on the left above the fire you have a big lid that you can lift up and these lids are insulating you see these lids here they're packed full of insulation so the heat doesn't escape from the hot plate so you have a big cast-iron hot plate here which is the boiling plate and that's really hot the top of that could be like 300 degrees Celsius and then you have a simmering one here so you have a place different places different zones I would say four different cooking temperatures so if you want to boil something you can boil it on here and then you can transfer it to the call a hot plate which is here to continue simmering it or you can bring things to the boil here and if they're in a fireproof or you know like an oven dish or a frying pan that doesn't have a plastic handle they can then be transferred to the oven to continue cooking and the great thing is these ovens they have little vents in them in the back so all the steam and cooking smells go up inside under here and they go up to fluid up the chimney so you get no cooking smells in the kitchen and my one obviously is a different model to this it's an old 1940's one and that runs on coal that I'm going to put that at an angle in this corner so you can actually see this is quite a large room so there's room just here to have a little wingback chair between that window and the door I have a nice little farmhouse table obviously showed you the cooker it's going to go in that corner and then a piece of a kitchen worktop here with a dresser above with all lovely vintage plates on and then to the right here I'll have a kitchen unit that comes just before where the door stops so the dog is still open you can walk past and above that I'll have there's a little arch window that's in the Wold it's been bricked up so that will be exposed up with that window back there's also another little arched window just up here as well that's been bricked up so hopefully I can open that one back up and have another little window here to let more light in so yeah this is where the kitchen sink is going to be in this area lovely old ceramic Butler sink above that that'd be that little arched window exposed maybe a sort of plate rack on the wall to put just plates in that I use day to day yeah cooker their front door their dining area here like I said a little farmhouse table there's a few chairs around it and my little sitting area at the back so upstairs will be the bedroom and through the upstairs of this little room through here that'll be the upstairs ensuite it will be very very small snug I'll be just enough room for a shower a toilet and a sink up there but I think we can squeeze the bar from in there and then that means that this little downstairs room I can keep this as a study I'll have my upright piano in here a desk where I can have my computer and things like that because I want this to be really vintage like I think I've talked about it in the last video but I really really want this to be so old-fashioned so that you feel like you step back in time and the thing is the reason that behind that is because when I went into Beatrix Potter's house in the Lake District I mean it is exactly as it was when she died in 1943 and the National Trust have kept it exactly as it was um but I looked around and said what this is great I could move in today I've got everything I need like an old range cooker and that runs on coal could quite happily have just moved in so I want this to feel very very old fashioned very old fashioned indeed and I can't wait right we'll have made plenty of progress in here just clearing out all of that old closet was a big job because there's so many heavy things all of those steel shutters for the Chateau I just need to get this massive auger cooker out that's going to be a big job that might need two or three people but I'm gonna come back in here tomorrow and really start clearing this out now I could stop taking up the floor getting those old tiles out and I'll probably get dad to back the trailer up with the tractor on it to the front door get a wheelbarrow and a shovel and literally just start shoveling out rubble into there and and you'll see all of that next week because I'm going to work on this every day next week I've had so much to do this week I've only been able to do one day in here just been sorting through their patreon account I had to compile everyone's names and addresses and get those all in order so I know who to send prints to and who doesn't artworks to and also I've been doing art work this week so I'll be able to show you all of that next week things that the patreon czar going to receive I can't really fit all of it into today's video so what I do is I'll put loads in next week's video I might even do two videos next week just so that we can get everything in because so much has been going on here literally I can't I can't fit all of it into a 25 to 30 minute video so next week there'll be loads going on and I just want to say if you signed up to my patreon and became a patron thank you so much because your donations are helping to fund this videos they're also going to help to fund this cottage if you donated through the GoFundMe page to save this cottage thank you so much because we're almost at the target now I can't believe it literally it's doubled since last week just can't believe it thank you so much what else there's so much so much to do and I'm going to have to cut this now I'm going to go edit this video because it is Thursday evening and the videos got to be ready by tomorrow morning and so I'm going to be a long night tonight editing and but just want to say thank you so much for watching and I'll see you guys next week thank you bye [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Doing It Ourselves

Views: 191,243

Keywords: chateau, chateaux, france, french, castle, renovation, restoration, escape chateau, reno, gardeners cottage, wedding venue, chateau wedding, forest, woods, trees, nature, peace, relaxation, vintage, gardening, aga cooker, spode, Porcelain, Aga, art, watercolour, church, cathedral, fun, train, cottage, kitchen, interior design, home, design

Id: R17tTGTstfA

Length: 29min 27sec (1767 seconds)

Published: Fri May 22 2020