Firstly I want to say a big thank you to all those who offered their advice regarding my question on my last post. A new blog will be set up early next week, it may shock some of you, but will show how adversity can, more often than not, bring about change for the good.

The roof is now well underway, as you can see from the picture above the old dormer window has now gone. We had to be realistic we were never going to use the small amount of storage space in the roof, and to keep it would have added additional cost to the work, so it had to go.

Continuing with the theme of change the roof started to help us understand the history of this house. We had always thought that our kitchen was a later ‘addition’ to the house (our house was built in 1812) but we now know that it had been an open ended stable, and the loft above it would have been used to store the hay for the animals. At some point it was bricked up and turned into our kitchen. You can see from the photo how the bricks were put in to create a doorway, and if you look to the left I believe that there used to be a window there also.

It also explains why we have such small windows (soon to be made bigger) in the wall at the side of the house, they would have just been open windows, the type you find in a barn.

The door to our living room from the kitchen is a beautiful, sturdy, solid oak door (shame about the wallpaper on it for some reason French people used to love wallpapering doors!) so we had assumed that this had been an outside door at some stage in our house’s history.

We also had our suspicions because it was clear that at some point the front door to our house was here, leading straight into what is now our big our living room. There is a concrete lintel in the floor under the window, which was a step at one time.

It was probably led into a small kitchen then, as you can see that our living room was originally two rooms, as there is a steel rafter across the centre of the room.

It’s been an exciting and busy time, the cats have loved investigating the old loft space, and our garden looks like a building site, but the first stage of the roof is now watertight and ready for the tiles next week.

We have been blessed with good weather, and I am counting my blessings every day. I realise as I write this now, how we are making more changes to this house, that will add to it’s history that, one day, someone else will uncover.

As I always say the only constant in life is change.

Keep reading, there’s more to come folks.

Moisy