Some exploration

The plan today was to try and work inside as much as possible due to the high temperatures. Two rooms that we will start first by putting in the waste pipes and electric ducting are in the west wing of the chateau.  These two rooms will be a bedroom and ensuite bathroom. The room that will become a bathroom is not connected to the rest of the chateau. It just has a door to the courtyard. So first job was to clear all the old junk out and then remove the old oak door and cast iron radiator. The radiator was beyond heavy and along with all the others we take out will be sold. The old oak door we will send off for sand blasting. Eventually this door will go back in but only as a decorative feature from outside as it will be permanently fixed shut. 

In the room that will become a bedroom there is a large cupboard cut into the wall. We plan to open this cupboard right up and make it into a connecting door to the ensuite. In order to find out just what depth of wall we will be dealing with we decided to make an exploratory hole. Turns out the cupboard goes nearly all the way through the wall which is good. Now I have to get a couple of lintels so we can make the doorway. 

Whilst the guys were making the hole in the wall I decided to explore the fireplace in this room. The fireplace itself is vey old, I think at least 16th century and probably earlier. The chimney breast

has been plastered over so I started chiselling off the plaster. I was hoping to find the original stone chimney breast beneath the plaster. The first plaster I chiselled off revealed exactly what I was looking for - cut stone! However when I removed more plaster I sadly only found newer brick work. The bricks are 18th century thin chimney bricks. Very disappointing - it seems that in the mid 1700's the old chimney breast was "modernised" as is actually evidenced by the chimney itself. When viewed from the outside this chimney is very much 18th century. I guess some of the original chimney breast stones will be the ones we took up yesterday from the paved area five metres from this room!  

Next we turned our attention to the floor. We are going to put in underfloor heating so need to take up the present tiled floor (which is not attractive). We have a big supply of 16th century clay floor tiles so will lay these when the works have finished. The exploratory hole in the floor revealed a layer of concrete

under the tiles. We then went down further expecting to find earth but instead found another layer of tiles. Going further down we reached the dirt! However when we started taking up the floor in front of the old fireplace we found old stone slabs. This was great news but also brings more complications. Of course we will keep these slabs but the question is how to put in the underfloor heating! We may try to carefully lift the slabs and relay them later..... we will see.

Final news of the day is that Mark & Michelle

made it over from the UK via the Eurostar train :) Even better news was that they came with gifts - Branston pickle & Mint sauce. They were so pleased to be back that they wanted to go straight to the chateau to reacquaint themselves! Tomorrow they will get straight to work repairing the stone work around the old drainage pit I found under the paving.