Renovating the Room We’ve Avoided for 2 Years (in a Heatwave) - Our French Renovation, The Good Life

Описание: Renovating a house is tough at the best of times. Renovating during a French heatwave is something else entirely. It’s less DIY, more survival training.

Normally I can just about keep pace with my wife’s terrifying work ethic, but in 38°C heat she somehow found a sixth gear while I was melting into a puddle. Still, with guests arriving soon and needing a room, one without exposed electrical cables, lizards in the walls, or floorboards that give way under a strong breeze, we had no choice. It was time to tackle that room.

You know the one. Every renovation project has one. Ours had been impenetrable since day one. Rotten floorboards, beams held together by hope, and a smell that suggested multiple things had crawled in to die. Over the years, it became a wildlife sanctuary. Rodents, hornets, cluster flies, lizards; they all moved in. We shut the door and pretended it didn’t exist. Out of sight, out of mind.

But now we had to face it.

Step one: rip up the rotten floorboards. Easy; they practically crumbled in our hands. Meanwhile to our surprise the beams underneath were in surprising great condition, which was lucky because sawing new beams in this heat had me flushed just thinking about it.

Sweat ran into my eyes as I crawled around rewiring, trying not to think about how the old electrics looked like they’d catch fire if someone so much as turned on a lamp.

Yet somehow, we made progress. The new floor is solid, the chimney sealed and the wiring no longer a fire hazard. The room isn’t finished — far from it; but it is no longer a death trap.

We collapsed by the lake, drinks in hand, dusty, battered and exhausted. There’s something oddly satisfying renovating like that, even if we’ll be aching for a month.

It’s not perfect yet, but it's a room that is useable, walls that aren’t alive critters and soon if we're lucky it'll boast a coat of paint.

00:00 Exposed oak beam ceiling finally plasterboarded
00:24 Tape and jointing duty… Mark draws the short straw
00:59 Dismantling a very questionable farmhouse fireplace
01:33 Ceiling done… but is it good enough?
02:21 Lime mortaring begins in our French farmhouse
03:16 Hearth removal sparks talk of blocking the fireplace
04:06 Mixing lime mortar in brutal summer heat
04:21 Surprise quiz about our French veg garden
06:09 Two lime styles clash… plasterboard saves us
06:57 Lime mortaring isn’t a race… apparently
07:30 Teamwork wins, but Mandy clearly wins more
07:47 Decision made: the drafty fireplace must go
08:18 Mandy’s stone wall skills steal the show
09:41 Outside walls reveal urgent farmhouse problems
10:52 Dangerous cable in stone wall… is it live?
12:41 Lime rendering our first display stone wall
15:08 Sealing gaps to banish cluster flies forever
16:03 Floorboards ripped up before they collapse
16:36 Woodworm feast uncovered under the floor
17:06 Mandy goes full demolition mode on floorboards
17:42 What’s stopping the hearth falling downstairs?
18:35 Why is the floor repaired with tin cans?!
19:41 Floor gone, smell remains… cleaning begins
20:20 Old houses aren’t square… not even close
21:13 Laying new floorboards in a wonky farmhouse
22:01 Are the floorboards straight? Mostly…
23:52 Sock-sliding test on the new floor
24:44 Insulated stud wall hides messy stone walls
25:56 Dodgy electrical socket found — safety first
27:44 Hiding a time capsule for future renovators
28:16 Ready for paint, furniture, and real life

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