Preserving the past

Glen cleaning door hinges

Before & after - antique door bolts

As we start to do more and more with the actual fabric of the chateau we have a responsibility to the history of the building and everything in it. Because the building is so old this presents problems in certain areas. For example the wood panelling on the small wall by the entrance into the chateau through the square tower is one such case. The panelling was a bit rotten and we had to do something with it -
 

main doors removed

should we remove it or try to restore it? We took

Igor removing door catches

it out to have a better look at the condition it was in. We then found behind the panelling an original stone wall from the 16th century, the wood panelling dates probably from the 18th century. So now we really had to decide which century we would preserve at this entrance - we went with the 15th century as we think the door could also be from this time. We are trying as much as possible to keep original features of the chateau, especially the doors, the shutters and the windows. Luckily most of these are quite solid and just need the hard, old lead paint removing and some minor repairs before repainting or waxing. Of course on all of these is the "furniture" - the latches, catches, hinges etc. So we are cleaning these, removing rust, re polishing or painting to get them ready to

Door furniture from the main doors

go back on in their original positions. Even the doors that we are removing that will not be used in their original position we are keeping and restoring so that we can use them in new areas and make features of them. It is tricky but also good fun deciding  just how to stitch all the different periods of the chateau and its past together and to show the transitions and past renovations. Where we have found mud and straw insulation

Repainted items

from the 16th century we will keep it visible with a glass panel, the same with some painted wall decoration that is very old. We are lucky to have such a great team helping with the restoration, everyone appreciates the responsibility and we have set up a little workshop room where we can restore many of the items that we find or remove.  The outside of the chateau is no different, we want to preserve old features in the walls such as an old entrance arch clearly visible in the wall above Mark & Michelle in the last photo. and repair in the correct way. 

Mark & Michelle reporting wall

Mark & Michelle are using their skills to repoint and repair the stone walls using lime - the same way in which they were built. In some cases we can not keep things visible, a good example being the old doorway that was visible inside the main wall of the oldest part of the chateau, with this we took a lot of photos before covering it up again. This photos and a description of what we found will be displayed in the room that the door would have lead into. We plan to have photographs and "stories" in each of the rooms when they are fully restored, it will be interesting for guests and also a nice reminder for us of the work we did!