Learning from Scratch: Renovating a house in Brittany: August = woodwork.

Ok, we've had to make some more compromises:

The floor tiles we bought need to be glued down, so out goes the breathable limecrete floor - we're paying someone to put a cement screed down through the house and then to tile it. Very disappointed because it was a hell of a lot of hard work to put the lime sub-floor down, but hey, I'll plant some more trees to offset it or something.

Same with the shower. If you glue tiles onto a wall, the pressure from the shower will force the water behind them and they'll fall off unless you have a waterproof backing. So we've decided to do a bit of ventilated dry lining around the shower area and clad it with extremely un-ecological polystyrene/cement/resin tilebacker board. More trees to be planted...

Basically, you have to do one thing or the other. Old way or new way. Beautiful, hand-made thick tiles that you can set in mortar that cost a bomb, or cheap(er) tiles that cost half a bomb and need gluing on something made from plastic. If I was to do this again (which I hope I don't!) I'd buy the real terracotta, the posh wall tiles, a couple of oak trees sawn up into planks first and then worry about the rest of it later. A handmade terracotta floor or wall would still look good if it was a bit wobbly coz I'd done it but machine-made ones wouldn't and need to be accurate (horrible word) to look good, which needs someone who knows how to do it.

Got some oak windows though, from a father-and-sons workshop locally, made from French oak. Being French they did what they thought we should have and not actually what we wanted (bare wood) so they're a bit orange from the oil stain, but that'll calm down in a bit.

I'm now cutting down inch-thick planks of chestnut (thought it was oak, but ain't) by hand, joining them by hand, planing them flat and smooth in a rustic charm sort of way by hand, treating them with boron preservative coz I'm not sure about this "tiger oak" wood applying to chestnut and then oiling them with linseed oil a couple of times. This is for covering the rough ol' oak lintels and making sills.