49 Keys

49 Keys We bought a 500 year old house in the Brittany region of France. Follow along for the aventure.

So we removed 4 tonnes (yes, four actual tonnes!) of dirt from our 4th floor attic. When we bought the house, one of the...
30/10/2025

So we removed 4 tonnes (yes, four actual tonnes!) of dirt from our 4th floor attic. When we bought the house, one of the more bizarre things we noticed was that one of the attic rooms had a dirt floor. We've heard a few different reasons as to why it had a dirt floor, but the most logical explanation seems to be that it's how they insulated houses in 1629 when this part of the house was built.

This type of floor construction was called using 'canelles' (or so someone told us - I can't find any reference to that on the internet). Basically, there are large beams that run the length of the room. Then, across each beam are placed these wooden rods wrapped in dirt and straw (see photo). These are laid very close together, packed tightly. Then, once they're all placed in there (I'd estimate we had 300-400) they'd pack more dirt on top to even things out.

We had no idea how the floor was constructed when we began to take it out, so we started using a pick axe. Once we realized that the floor was made up of these 'canelles', we began to rip them up by hand, then smash the dirt off the stick using a hammer in to a bucket, then putting the sticks in a pile. We'd then shovel up whatever excess dirt there was and we'd fill the rest of the bucket. I bought 30 buckets, so we cleared the dirt 30 buckets at a time, using a pulley to get it down the four stories. We started off taking them to the dump, but eventually decided that was taking too long and just started dumping them in the back yard.

In total, I removed 456 buckets of dirt. Each bucket was about 9kg, so a little over 4100kg. Then we had about 300kg of wood and 100kg of stone, for a total of 4500kg (this is 10,000 pounds). Huge thanks to James, Tristan, Livo, and Arthur who each helped with the buckets!

This whole thing started because we had an engineer look at some cracks in our walls (which he recommended fixing) and said that before we repaired the cracks, we should get this heavy floor out of here. So once it was out, we replaced it with a nice OSB subfloor. We don't have plans for this room right now. It might become Fanettes photo studio, or we may build a loft in it (it has 18ft ceilings!) and make it a small apartment.

I've spent the last couple weeks restoring our front doors. Maybe I should have just bought new ones for the effort it t...
27/06/2025

I've spent the last couple weeks restoring our front doors. Maybe I should have just bought new ones for the effort it took, but I like to keep original items when I can. My original plan included remounting the door frame so they're not at the funny angle they are today, and then to fix any rotted wood. However, as I started to fix the rotted wood, it required me to re-mount the bottom hinges. Just the hinge remounting alone made the doors fall out of adjustment. I'd say I've spent a good 25% of this project just trying to get the doors to close properly. It was frustrating enough that I decided not to remount the frame for fear the doors would never close. Even with this decrease in scope, the project still took longer than I expected (what project doesn't, right??). And it's still not completely done. I've still got to scrape paint off the top windows, and paint the rear of the door. I'm also considering going with a magnetic latch as the mechanical one is quite finnicky. I bought a new mechanical one, but I don't like the way it latches - I think it'll make my latching issues worse. All the same, pretty happy with how it's turned out so far.

It feels like a ton of effort for what looks like a coat of paint in the end. :) I did change out the glass (the old ones had 3 different types of glass, and added a new larger mail slot.

Wow. I am an absolute slacker when it comes to updating this page. Last update? 2 years ago!! Ok, so I've got some catch...
15/06/2025

Wow. I am an absolute slacker when it comes to updating this page. Last update? 2 years ago!!

Ok, so I've got some catching up to do. Over the next few weeks, I'll do some video overviews of what we've been up to, and then I'll try to be more regular with the updates. For now, here's a video overview of the kitchen. The kitchen was the biggest project of 2024, and it's about 95% done.

We found a staircase under our staircase!!So, we've always found it odd that the railing in the staircase is as low as i...
05/03/2023

We found a staircase under our staircase!!

So, we've always found it odd that the railing in the staircase is as low as it is - it comes up to about mid-thigh. The staircase is one of the few things in the house that we know an exact build year for - 1625. Fanette and I just thought that's how they built railings back then. All that changed today.

The bottom 4 stairs of our staircase have always been in really bad shape. A while ago I found a historic website that has some photos of our house taken in 2001 https://tinyurl.com/54s98mud and the wonky stairs can be seen in that photo, so they've been like that for a while. Today, I decided to fix them.

I pulled the treads off and found the oddest thing. The stair treads that were visible are nailed on top of old treads underneath. Based on which floor boards match the visible treads, my guess is that those top boards are from the 1800s. But somehow, the original treads became tilted and whoever decided to fix it, thought that the best plan was to elevate the lower side and nail new treads on top. But that's raised each stair by about 6 inches at the railing. So our railing isn't low, our stairs are high.

I started looking at how much work it would be to get them back to the same level, and it would be months of work. Months we don't have right now. While I was taking a closer look at the stairs, I found that some of the balustrades had roman numerals carved in them - likely to keep track of which ones went where. Oddly, they're numbered XI, XII, XIII, XIIII, XV. Which seemed odd, but apparently back in the day, there was such a thing as additive roman numerals like XIIII.

So I've been trying to find as much info as I can on the history of our house. Other than the fact the house was built ...
08/01/2023

So I've been trying to find as much info as I can on the history of our house. Other than the fact the house was built in the late 1400's to the early 1500's, I wasn't able to find much information. I emailed the local Historical Society and they told me they wrote a 500-page book about the half-mile stretch of road that our house is on. I figured it was worth a read. It was testing my ability to read French and find any bits about our house, but I did manage to find a page that mentioned our house.

In that paragraph, they mentioned that our house was actually two houses until sometime in the 1600's or 1700's when they were combined (we knew this previously, and it's very apparent looking at how the attic is constructed). The book mentions that the facade was redone in the 1700's to make it all look like one house, and I know from another book (also pictured below) that the staircase that joins the two halves of the house was built in 1625.

However, one interesting thing that the first book said, was that the addition in the back was built (or redone) in 1629 and was marked as such by the year carved in the stone over the window. Reading that, I thought I must not be reading about our house because I never noticed any date carved in the wall, nor did anyone ever mention it. So I go outside to look, and sure enough, there it is over the bedroom window '1629'.

Since then, we actually found (through a friend) a report the historical society made for the previous owner on just this house. it focuses mostly on the families that lived here and their roles in the town. It does say that it was a hotel at one point (Hotel du Boisdaniel) and was at another point it was the mayor's residence. I'm very curious what purposes the shops beneath us served throughout the centuries. Currently, we've got a pizza place and a v**e shop. Prior to that, there was a wine shop (in the pizza location) and a record shop (in the v**e shop) but that's all I can find out. I'll keep on looking.

Well, we finally got one room done-ish. We decided just to paint the whole thing white. The hard part about that was re...
10/12/2022

Well, we finally got one room done-ish. We decided just to paint the whole thing white. The hard part about that was repairing all the damaged wood trim. Once we got that done, the actual painting wasn't so hard. Now we've just got to change out the window and add some artwork on the bare walls.

Sadly, as we were putting the finishing touches on this room, we realized that the wall we spent so much time on (with the wallpaper) will likely be one of the only walls that gets removed in our final floorplan idea. That's ok, we're pretty sure it will get re-used elsewhere, we just have to be careful to take it down without damaging it.

So I swapped out one of the old electrical panels today. The old one had ceramic fuses that I'm guessing were from about...
19/11/2022

So I swapped out one of the old electrical panels today. The old one had ceramic fuses that I'm guessing were from about the 1950's. When I was pulling the old fuses as part of this job, I noticed that at some point someone just 'jumpered' all of them except one. Meaning that they ran wire across the two sides meaning that the circuits weren't even fused anymore.

There is a main fuse panel by the front door, and it feeds 8 smaller ones. Or is it 9? Most of the small ones are newer circuit breaker style ones, but there were 3 of these old ceramic style fuse panels. So one down, two to go. But I'm not in a hurry to do the others. I wanted to get this one done so I could run a separate circuit for a networking closet.

The majority of the wiring in the house is fairly new. There is no knob-n-tube like we found on our old Philly house (built in 1875). So all the wiring is plastic coated, and in fact it's all oversized for the job it's intended to do - which is nice. Sadly though, it's all dual core, so all of the outlets are ungrounded. However, there are differential breakers on the main fuse panel, which act like whole-house GFCI breakers and stop you from getting shocked. I also read that you can ground outlets to copper pipes. It doesn't meet code in the US today, but it was a common practice in the 1960s before PEX pipe became popular. I think I read it's still done in Canada, but I couldn't find what the regulations in France say about it. But all our pipes are copper, so it's an option.

Wish I had more of an update on build work, but really it's just been a lot of settling in. We're about 95% unpacked at ...
18/11/2022

Wish I had more of an update on build work, but really it's just been a lot of settling in. We're about 95% unpacked at this point, so still unpacking here and there, but also a lot of moving things around as we decide where everything will go. We've also been re-buying a lot of the things we sold when we left (mostly furniture and tools).

But here's a little list of what's been happening work-wise:

* We took apart all the old beds that the previous owner left in the house. Two have gone up to the attic to get used 'at some point', the rest sold or donated.
* I got my basement workshop mostly sorted. You can't work on projects if you can't find your tools or parts! The biggest part of this project was trying to fix up some old rusty shelves left in the garage and cut them to fit in the basement.
* Built some shelves in the attic.
* We turned the old servant's kitchen (which isn't really a kitchen anymore, but does have plumbing) into a makeshift laundry room, and reclaimed the laundry area back to the pantry. This seemed like a good time to get a new washer/dryer, which of course meant we needed to buy a van, making for 5 cars now (and 3 that actually run!). The van also helps with all that furniture buying too!
* We moved our bedrooms downstairs so we'd be living all on one level. With the high price of gas this year, it didn't make sense to heat the whole house when we could live in half of it.
* I spent about a day figuring out (and labeling) where all the pipes and wires go. It felt like working on a big life-size puzzle.
* I've been installing the odd light circuit or electrical outlet here and there, but have some bigger electrical plans for this weekend.

We have a few more interesting projects coming up here soon, as well as I've been finding out more about the history of the house.

So we've done a couple of "1-room, 8-hour-makeovers". We're not ready to really do a renovation on any of the rooms jus...
26/09/2022

So we've done a couple of "1-room, 8-hour-makeovers". We're not ready to really do a renovation on any of the rooms just yet, but we would like to get the place a little nicer.

The day basically goes like this:
* Wake up, have coffee, pick a room and make a plan.
* Walk around the house, see what pieces the previous owner left that could be repurposed.
* Sort through our box-o-curtains to see which ones match the room best.
* Go to the French version of HomeGoods, get some decorations, etc.
* Go to a French home improvement store, get trim paint, crack filler, and lighting.
* Scrub the room down.
* Fill in all the cracks in the walls.
* Repair anything coming apart at the seams with duct tape or other suitable material.
* Paint some or all of the trim. Install new lights, put up decorations, call it done.

It's a good little bang-for-your-buck kind of day. We did Jules' bedroom and playroom. We tried to convince him to switch bedrooms as the one he picked was really just one of our least favorite rooms in the house, but he wanted that room, so ok.

Old door meets new tech. Got the garage-gate controlled by a smart phone app. Now, we've just got to get the wifi situat...
20/09/2022

Old door meets new tech. Got the garage-gate controlled by a smart phone app. Now, we've just got to get the wifi situation improved to make it more reliable. More on that later!

So our stuff has now all arrived. A lot of it is still in boxes, even though it's been a week now. Both cars also arri...
20/09/2022

So our stuff has now all arrived. A lot of it is still in boxes, even though it's been a week now. Both cars also arrived, although the Volvo was running when it left, and isn't running now. Great, one more thing that needs fixing. The first thing we unpacked and assembled were two of our chairs, then we promptly sat amongst the boxes and had a coffee. We really didn't bring any furniture except these couple chairs, a bed, and a desk. The rest is all just stuffffff.

Fanette always teased me about being obsessed with staircases. She said I'd buy a house for the staircase alone. She's n...
04/09/2022

Fanette always teased me about being obsessed with staircases. She said I'd buy a house for the staircase alone. She's not wrong. I just thought the elegant winding staircases from the 1800s were so cool. Admittedly, I wish our staircase had more of that renaissance look to it. Ours is a bit more medieval looking. But it's held up pretty well for a staircase that will have it's 400th birthday in just 3 years. We found a book on the history of Quimperle, and there is a picture of our staircase in there, which says it dates to 1625. But the house is from the 1500's, so not sure how people got up and down before then.

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