This Old House Reunites Old Friends
Empty, Cold and old - this house has it all
There’s something about old houses and old friends. The two just seem to go together and I am very glad of that!
When we bought our 200-year-old French character house on a hill (with two barns that are even older) just over a year ago we had lots of friends reach out – some in disbelief, some in envy, most in confusion.
“You did what? Why?” All good questions.
When we moved into the house on that frosty morning in February, we found the place unheated, unfurnished and largely unloved since Scott and Fi, the couple who meticulously did the initial restoration, had moved out.
It did have a fireplace – two in fact – and we rounded up some firewood, got a blaze going and immediately started to feel better.
Amazingly the cable guy arrived within hours of us moving in and we soon had decent WiFi and could at least watch Premier League Futbol - standing of course.
But more importantly we could start to furnish the place with the basics – dishes, beds, beer.
With an empty, cold, old house pretty much everything becomes a basic.
Our house is on two acres in the middle of prime Bordeaux wine country.
Girard, the friendly farmer and grape grower who owns most all the vineyards that surround the house, insists our district - the Gironde Department of Bordeaux - is one of the premier wine appellations in the world.
I must admit, the local wine is great. I have come to appreciate what goes into a great vintage whether red, white or rose.
And I have come to appreciate how difficult and complicated it is to get the harvest just right. It’s a year-round, nearly 24-hour a day labor of love (not unlike our house) and respect for the “old ways” says Girard.
As I write this on a cold February evening the vines are unimpressive, just sticks attached to wires.
It’s cold. It will probably dip into the 20s tonight and the sunset, and later the stars, will put on an amazing light show.
Over the next four months we will watch the vines go through a remarkable transformation, becoming green with leaves, fruit ladened and low on the bough.
But first we must get through the winter in our old house. And that takes friends.
Our first overnight guests were Bill and Annie, long-time Wisconsin residents who were with us for our first “weather event.”
Very heavy rain and wind hit the region hard, and we quickly found that our windows and doors – which are lovely in the summer – were giant sieves in the winter.
After mopping up the walls and floors – fortunately everything is made of limestone, so no permanent damage was done – we headed to the local hardware store – called a quincaillerie.
We are very lucky. Pellegrue, which does not even have a restaurant, does have a brand new quincaillerie with a super helpful owner.
His English is nonexistent but his determination to help is overwhelming, always overcoming my lousy French.
So far, packed into his tiny store we have found every valve, tree trimmer, tool, nut and bolt, shovel, sealant, hammer and nail that we could possibly need.
Our first project required sealing up the doors and windows as best as possible to keep out the cold and rain.
And from there, other projects and repairs just took flight.
Our next visitor to arrive was my hardworking sister Patty. Conveniently, she is an expert on wood working and conditioning.
She repaired, sanded and sealed our authentic wooden kitchen counter tops. Good for another 100 years we hope.
Then came Tim, a buddy I had not seen since college, and his wife Diane.
Tim, a retired designer for Boeing (no, he was not on the 737 Max team) had a sister who lived near Provence, so he was in the “neighborhood” anyway.
With his 30-yearlong engineering career, Tim was able to help me assemble (over two long days) a dresser from IKEA.
While I was recovering from the dresser assembly incident, Peggy’s sister Nancy arrived.
Nancy is a champion weed puller with an enthusiastic approach toward life. She helped me count cars on the D-16, one of France’s least traveled roads which runs past our driveway. If we have 10 cars pass by noon it’s a party!
Our good friends Twyman and Jesse came next. They moved to Mexico last year and decided they needed a little flavor of France which we were happy to provide while we picked their brains on interior design.
Merrill, my buddy from the newsroom days, arrived on a wet spring afternoon. A photo editor for the New York Times for 20 years, I figured Merrill would be good for helping us “document” our little project.
He did take some photos, but it turns out Merrill grew up on a farm near Merced in California’s Central Valley and was very good at tree trimming.
Such luck. I had trees badly in need of trimming and as our rainy spring turned into a hot summer, Merrill worked his tree pruning magic.
I had kinda assumed that a limestone house would require little exterior maintenance.
Big time wrong. There is something called rendering. It’s basically re-plastering and sanding all exterior walls. Hard, dirty, difficult work.
Work that I hired Paulo and his crew to do for us. Money well spent.
But before Paulo could put up his scaffolding and crank up his generator, decades of ivy and other vegetation that had taken root in the walls needed to be removed.
The stuff can’t be burned out, it can’t be killed, and it won’t fall out - ever! It must be dug out by hand using a broad-blade screwdriver – literally an inch at a time.
Once again, the train from Paris delivered our solution.
Eric, Gail, Diana and Shari arrived on a sunny, warm September afternoon. Patty came back as well.
They had been warned that there might be some “chores” involved. It was an insufficient warning.
I had no idea how difficult it would be to remove the ivy. Fortunately, it had been years since we had all been together and the hours passed quickly as we scraped, laughed and sweat the ivy off the stone walls.
Our son Taylor, and his partner Zac arrived in the fall to help with ditch digging and planting and holiday decorating.
They also were extremely helpful following my back surgery in December. And while I have been slowed during recovery, Peggy has not.
Just today she was preparing her raised bed vegetable garden for spring and restacking and measuring the firewood.
We still have several weeks of cold weather ahead of us and we don’t want to run out.
The big project for spring is shoring up a large barn located right behind the house. It is nearly 300 years old, three stories high and about to collapse.
The barn is not a job for amateurs, so we’ve hired Samuel, an artisan and expert carpenter who is fast becoming an overall advisor on the proper restoration of our house.
Samuel and his wife Christine climb across the loose and in some cases broken Mediterranean barn roof tiles avoiding rotted timbers while making needed repairs.
They are quickly taking their place with the scores of friends and skilled laborers who have contributed their time, enthusiasm, expertise and good nature to restore a modest piece of French heritage.
Because, while the house might still be old, it’s no longer empty or cold. And for that we’re grateful.
Editors Note: Stay tuned for updates. A house is a house. Unless it’s yours!
Can’t wait to touch those beautiful stone walls and add our names to the list of enthusiastic visitors/friends/helpers come May!
What a lovely ode to home, hearth, kin and friends! What is a “character house?”