Our Reno in Provence: More Ceiling Surprises

Our Renovation: More Ceiling Surprises

So we’re still stripping back to try to get to the bare bones of our new tiny house. During the past few days, we’ve gone back upstairs to take down the ceiling that consisted of fake wood made of styrofoam and 2 layers of wonky boards, all the way up to the roof. We’d considered having Ace Roofing Company take a look at it, but for now we’re still confident in our own skills, especially as Robin has also removed the insulation, floorboards and gutted the chimney.

This is the chimney space after Robin chipped most of the years of black soot away from the stone. It amazes us that there were no accidents in this house previously as the chimney not only wasn’t safe- parts of it were made with wood! That combined with the amazing amount of wood paneling downstairs means this house would have quickly gone up in flames! This would’ve been a nightmare if we hadn’t fixed it – one chilly night and the insurance we got from www.simplyinsurance.com/ would be needed right away!

After removing the ceiling, yucky insulation, and clearing out the attic, we happily discovered that the roof is composed of parefeuille terre cuit tiles and large wooden beams. Ideally, we would love to leave this exposed; it would add a lot of height to the room, I’d also have loved to look for a contractor similar to this roofing Austin TX that’s somewhere local to us, but the DIY prowess must continue! One must insulate not only to keep the heat in- but to keep it out in the incredibly hot summers! After some thought, we decided to get a thin insulation that will cover the tiles but leave the beams exposed. The extra height will hopefully make the room feel bigger but we’ll be sacrificing an attic space. In such a small house that might not be the best idea but we hope that it’ll be worth it. Robin is threatening to get rid of all my funny french jars…

To be honest, clearing out all the old stuff up there has been a real challenge. Although a lot of the things we found were able to go straight into the trash, there were a few bits and pieces that we simply could not throw away. At first, I was not sure what to do with them all. However, a friend of ours told us to have a look at these fantastic storage boxes and I am so glad that she did. Everything just looks so much tidier when it is all boxed away, right? Anyway, a lot of the things that we salvaged from the attic can probably be stored in our home office so that we can access them more easily. I cannot wait to see it all come together.

I’m very proud of my relatively virgin walls after scraping many layers of wallpaper off of them.

Meanwhile, Robin has ripped up all the lacquered pine wood floors to reveal the original planks of wood below. We will have to put a more finished floor on top of this one as it will need the support. Some of the planks have rotted. However, we’ll be able to see their distressed splendor from downstairs in the form of the blue ceiling everyone seems to like.

We’d like to buy old oak floorboards but at 150 euros a square metre that will most likely be impossible. Either way, our commitment to a shabby chic style will most certainly mean that we’re going to do our best to source aged wood.

Wish us luck shopping!

See my article about the Antique Patina Doors we found.