Tour This French Chateau - Part One

three years ago me my brother Billy and his fiancee Gwendolyn took on the mammoth task of restoring this stunning French chateau at first it was just the three of us but since then the whole family has moved in to help bring this place back to its former glory and not forgetting the newest family member baby Ernest [Music] we do everything ourselves from fixing the leaky roof managing the vast 60 acre estate to restoring the grand interiors back to the way they were a hundred years ago it's not always easy but that's what makes life in a place like this interesting my name's Michael and I'm going to be showing you what it's like to live work and play Chateau to the family I've just woken up and seen that we have over 40,000 subscribers that's happened in just over a week so I'm gobsmacked I'm just glad that everyone really likes the videos and I'm gonna keep making more one thing I need to explain is that at the moment we can't really do much DIY work and restoration because well as you know most of the world is in lockdown including France all of the DIY shops the builders merchants they're all closed and we can't get any building materials so for now we're just going to have to concentrate on other projects today specifically I was meant to be doing some building work but I can't do that so what I'm gonna do instead is give you a tour of the Chateau now there's quite a lot to see I can't really fit all of it into one video so what I'm going to do is I'm going to split the video into two parts so first of all I'll show you all the downstairs rooms the lovely grand rooms the first floor bedrooms and in the second part of the video what I'll show you is all of the unfinished parts of the Chateau the stuff we haven't touched and the basements and the servants quarters so I need to get up get ready and start this tour seeing as we're here I might as well show you my bedroom this is up in the top floor of the West Wing tower and I've got this whole place to myself at the moment the whole tower because everyone in the Chateau they all sleep at the other end of the building I'll just show you what it looks like out of the window from my bedroom just open it so there you can see it looks out over the chapel and the forest and just there is the guest house and it's a long way up you won't wanna fall and there's another window and this one looks out over the wall garden there you go that's the wall garden and all the countryside beyond you can see for miles from up here and this is my desk where I do all of my art work I do quite a lot of water colors and designs but I've been so busy doing these videos of the minute that I haven't really had time to do anything and that's my bed and my antique union flag just above that reminds me of home and there's an interesting story about this flag and how you know whether it's hot there right away because a lot of people hang their Union flags upside down by accident so the way you can tell whether it's up the right way or not you've got this large cross here in the center that is the cross of England but you've got a second cross here a red one which is the cross of Ireland and Northern Ireland and the way that you can tell if is up the right way can you see that this cross is not in the center of this white band it's actually slightly to the left here slightly to the right here this cross this thinner one should be cartwheeled slightly to the left that way you can tell that your Union flag is up the right way I'll just show you how high up the building I am because if you go out here you can see there's lots of bits that still need restoring if you've got these stairs this little door goes into the attics I might show you those again on the tour but I won't go in there now because it's a bit messy and you've got these old skylights that look out over the roof and if you look down you can see right the way down so we're about four floors now above the first floor so that's not even the bottom of the Chateau just there so it's a long way up well I suppose the best place to start this tour is at the front door so let's take a look around [Music] [Music] well this is the chateaus main entrance hall and it's the where the grand staircase is it's all made from oak and it's probably the newest thing in the Chateau because it was completed in 1920s so it's hundred birthday this year there's one thing about this staircase actually it really reminds me of Titanic [Music] so you want to go to a real party when we move to the chateau this entrance hall was not very pretty it was well somebody had painted it like a pinky yellow I don't know what color it was didn't suit the place so the first thing we did was painted this sage green and I think it makes a big difference it looks more Victorian now well this is quite an interesting painting not because of the actual woman herself but more of what's been done to the painting originally she would have been nude somebody has added all of these ropes here here yeah and a little piece of hair just there so ever be interesting to see what's underneath well this was actually a present from gwendolyn's father and we didn't know what it was when he got it but we did some research and we found out that it actually was owned by one of the kings of France and part of his wall baggage-train well actually I just found some paperwork that was inside the trunk and as you can see here this is the trunk here and this is the Royal Arms of France yeah so this symbol here is the order of st. Michael me now I'm not decent Michael I am Michael and the Order of the Holy Spirit which is just on the front of the trunk they're probably worth a fortune I'm not clear how much [Music] so just off of the entrance-hall we have the Winter Garden and I'll just take you to have a look at that now [Music] well this originally was the billiards room but there's no billiards table we need to find one and at the moment we're using it as the lounge because the Goron salon is not usable we're doing work in there so this is the place where we sit and watch television just chill out and it's in the kind of Arts and Crafts style so it's a bit different to the entrance hall it probably dates to about 1910 the interior still white its original tapestry about the fireplace and also this is where we keep the gramophone so this dates to about 1920 so as a hundred years old and it still works perfectly I'll just wind it up [Applause] [Music] we'll never finish it so this is this is my baby grand piano it dates to about 1930 it's not quite an antique but it still doesn't need a restoration but still played quite nice well I can't play anything that's copyrighted so I'm gonna play something that I wrote myself [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] so this is the chateaus bibliothèque which means library I did show you it before in a previous video but there's something I didn't tell you about this room which is really interesting now the emblem in this fireplace is the honeybee and that was the official symbol of Napoleon now an interesting thing is that this Chateau was actually a gift from Napoleon to one of his generals and this fireplace may have also been a gift from Napoleon so that's actually really really interesting and you can see the fireplace that perspire but it's very very Napoleonic so my body ball that well I've talked about this room before so let's move on to the dining room [Music] so this is the chateaus dining room and there's something really interesting about the ceiling if you look at the ceiling you can see they actually it looks like it looks like wood but it's not wood it's actually plaster that's painted to look like wood and whoever did it did the most spectacular job because when we first moved here we thought this was a wooden ceiling made from oak but it's actually plaster so that's craftsmanship and its best so I just show you the fireplace of the dining room is probably the best thing in the room well you've got the cast iron here which has got fleur-de-lis in it which is the symbol of the kings of France but what's really interesting is this bronze plaque in the fireplace and these signature on it is a very very famous bronze sculptor called Euler and there is one of these by the same maker in the Louvre the Museum in Paris and there's also one in Versailles and we've got one here so this is our kitchen at the Chateau it's not actually the original kitchen at the Chateau that's in the basement and I'll show you that in a bit but when we moved here we've definitely need to the kitchen actually one thing that this kitchen has got that the basement kitchen has a lot that's four really nice views over the top just look at that beautiful [Music] I'm sure you're all dying to see upstairs and I had to well it's quite high up I had to get up there with the ladder and do all the cutting in by hand that was a bit scary it looks good so this is gwendolyn's office I'll just show you when Dylan's quite busy at the minute looking after earnest she hasn't had time to organize the room so please bear with all of the clutter but it's a really nice room and I just wanted to show you because it's got some lovely bits of furniture in it and then this door here opens out onto the balcony above the front door that's it granite balcony so right now we're in the center of the Chateau I'm gonna take you West go to the west power is the entrance to the servant staircase which goes all the way down into the basement I'll take you into this now there's a pair of these stairwells one in each tower identical but they're a mirror image they go right to the top floor right to the attics just here is the bridal suite that we use when we have weddings I'll just show you now obviously we've got no weddings on the moment so it's not all dressed up glamorous he like it normally is but I just think have a little look now this room was a complete mess on your booty the ceiling was cracked it was literally there was a crack of the door so big I put my hand in it so that all had to be repaired we had to strip back all the woodwork and paint that put the wallpaper up and varnish the floors did everything in here I just want to show you in here because this is really interesting you might have noticed in the title sequence when I say at first it was just the three of us you've seen me budding Gwen and was sat in what looks like an absolutely destroyed room with no wall and I'll show you what it looks like now but this is it now so I was stuck here being sat there and when were sat there and that's transformation and we did everything in here ourselves but the floor was all damaged we had to rip the floor out new one in it was actually two rooms but it didn't make sense to have two tiny rooms that what we did is we made a great big ensuite so that when people have weddings here they can feel you know luxurious they've got a nice space to get off in and get dressed in well this is actually the first bedroom in the Chateau that we ever did up and it was originally billion Gwen's bedroom but they gave it up and they the other end so this is the picture gallery and in fact this was quite a big drawback to do it this room because the ceiling was completely destroyed it actually looked like a shattered plate that was cracks in it everywhere and there was what quite being crap there actually which I had to repair you can still kind of see it it was Sir it was quite a lot of work but it's actually really beautiful room down and it's quite simple just a nice sort of off grey colour sort of a beige and gray color on the woodwork and this lovely gold wallpaper it's just really nice this is Ernests bedroom now this room I did that quite a lot by myself actually so this room I chose the paint color bin when let me choose the colors which was really nice of them so I chose this beautiful sort aquamarine color and this in papers got a really interesting story actually so just while Ernest is playing now I'll [Music] I'll tell you about the wallpaper this wallpapers actually a replica of a wallpaper from the 18th century that was found in a house in fact in actual bronze it was acquired by the Whitworth art gallery magister and a company different green they make a Corvette and yes thank you yes lovely thank you yes so they had a replica made of it and you can buy it and it's actually a design from the 18th century I think it was 1760 and there was an actual date stamp on the back of the original wallpaper that said although he's found in France actually came from London actually I'll show you these curtains another set of curtains that I made in fact I'm actually the only person in the chateau who knows how to make curtains so whenever they need a pair they're quite nice this beautiful experience is for me to probe the only the style of it actually to show you these nights which is happening because um when we moved here the Chateau a lot the Chateau still in its original 1920s wiring and all of that had to be disconnected because it was deemed dangerous or obviously it was 100 years old it originally had all these beautiful 1920s light switches ah the old ones they didn't comply to modern regulations that barely managed to find replicas of them but do comply and wherever we can puts them in and they are just absolutely beautiful these little touches actually that really make the place look amazing this this is what I painted for earnest for Christmas it's a little Peter Rabbit I do a lot of watercolors but I haven't really had time to do many at the moment there's quite a few of them actually I think you'll be had to be somewhere didn't you disappear this old alcove is where the bed used to be and there's a little interesting detail in here actually there is a little doorway just hidden there and that is what we would call a modesty door because years ago it was deemed inappropriate for the lady to get undressed in front of her husband so what would happen is he would be in bed and she would be behind the door and she would just disrobe and when she was ready she will open the door quickly and it slipped straight under the duvet and he wouldn't never see her without her clothes on very bizarre that's what years ago okay well that's the first half of a tour done in the next video I'm going to be showing you the rest the Chateau the untouched parts and the servants quarters in the meantime I wonder if you'd like to have a look around another Chateau I'll see what my friend Stephanie is doing let me just give her a call hello operator ah could you put me through to shuffled along please hello hi Steph oh darling how marvelous I've been longing to hear your voice right well I was wondering if you'd show a few of my friends around your Chateau but of course you know I'd do anything for you anything right okay what were you thinking right now if possible I mean if the place is ready right now that's great absolutely everything's looking amazing you know I'm not the sort of woman who'd let things go just because of quarantine send them straight over okay toodle PIP darling I look forward to meeting them well bye then bye bye bye [Music] well looks like she's ready to show you around her place I'll put a link to her tour at the end of this video but come back next week because there's a lot more of the Chateau to see there's three upstairs abandoned floors that we haven't touched and the creepy basements so for now thanks for watching and I'll see you next week [Music]

Channel: Doing It Ourselves

Views: 702,269

Keywords: chateau, castle, france, doing it ourselves, english, escape to the chateau, escape to the chateau diy, dick and angel, restoration, french, millionaire, diy, family, English tea, scones, tea, downton abbey, aristocracy, history, wedding, wedding venue, chateau de la basmaignee, gold, gold panning, prospecting, the chateau diaries, Michael petherick

Id: iPMwwdk-jU8

Length: 24min 52sec (1492 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 03 2020