Walking Through Old Doorway

Standing in old doorway discovered behind partition wall
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The doorway that we discovered behind the plaster walls and kitchen units is now fully opened and we can walk through it.

Taking down the plaster walls to show off the tuffeau walls is giving the house back its old-fashioned look and feel.  Having the old doorway with the rebates for the door carved out of the stone and a wooden lintel is a fantastic bonus.

We have also taken off the very old green plaster that was directly on the wall behind the modern plaster blocks and generally tidied up the wall.  We will now lime mortar the joints in the tuffeau and also render the lower 2 courses of stones with lime mortar render to stop the tuffeau deteriorating any more.

More Tuffeau Walls Revealed

Tuffeau wall of old farmhouse being uncovered

A few weeks ago we found an old doorway between the bathroom and kitchen that had been bricked up and then plastered over.

We have been itching to open it up on both sides so that we can get a really good look at it and, silly as it may seem, we wanted to walk through it. The plaster walls have been in place for something like 20 years so we know that no one has walked through it in that time.

We have knocked down a 'breakfast bar' across the kitchen made from house bricks and cleared part of the wall that hides the secret doorway. The next job is to clear the kitchen units and the rest of the plaster from the wall so that we can see what state the tuffeau walls are in.  At first look, it is the same as the other walls that we have uncovered with the first couple of courses eaten away and then the rest are solid.

This is the sad aspect of taking the plaster off, seeing how the tuffeau walls behind have deteriorated because the plaster has not allowed the stone to breathe. Tuffeau is incredibly light and porous, but that means that it can absorb its own weight in water, and if it cannot wick this away then the tuffeau simply crumbles.

Diary update - repointing the bathroom wall

Tuffeau wall revealed in bathroom

As you know we love the look of the tuffeau stone blocks that the old farm house is built from, so we want to preserve as much of this beautiful stone as possible.

As we work our way through the main house, stripping out the modern plaster block walls, we are uncovering some fantastic tuffeau stone walls that with a bit of TLC will look gorgeous. 

We have stripped the downstairs bathroom and found that three of the walls are tuffeau.

The two longest walls are internal which means we could keep them exposed.   The external walls are being heavily insulated in an attempt to keep us warm in the winter and our fuel bills low.

Both of the internal walls were originally covered in lime render and limewash. One wall is in a sound enough state that, with a little careful cleaning, we can retain the original limewashed render. We will protect this with a few coats of limewash when the temperature drops a bit.

The other wall has not fared so well as previous owners of the house have removed large areas of limewashed render to enable earlier renovation works.  We have now removed all of this render and cleaned the wall.

Unfortunately the lower section of the wall is crumbling due to damp, so we will render with lime plaster. The beauty of this for an old house built without a damp proof course is that the lime render allows the moisture to escape into the room. The stonework is damaged in this and other rooms because during the previous renovation the walls were covered in moisture resistant plaster and concrete which trapped the moisture into the porous tuffeau, leading to it crumbling away.

From about 1m up the stone is sound so we are repointing the joints to give an authentic and attractive finish.

A doorway to nowhere

As I said in a previous posting, there is no point in making firm plans for too far ahead with this house because it will take any opportunity that it can to throw an obstacle in your way.

Blocked up doorway revealed during renovation work

This morning we were minding our own business, gently bashing down the plaster panels in the bathroom that were lining the tuffeau wall when a wooden lintel hove into view.  What, I said to Mrs RiotLife, is a lintel doing in the middle of a solid stone wall?  Well, a bit more gentle tapping and it became obvious that it's the old doorway into the next room.  

Blocked up doorway revealed during renovation work

Now, this is a wonderful house, but previous renovations have modernised the interior to the extent that other than the stone walls there is nothing of character visible.  Because of this, wherever we find a 'feature' in the house we aim to highlight it.


The upshot is that what we had intended to do in the bathroom just won't work, so we are looking at how we re-jig the room to show off the doorway while taking account of the need for the room to be closed. 

Tuffeau Walls Revealed

Our house is mainly built of tuffeau, a limestone extracted in the Loire Valley. As part of the renovation of the house we have decided to expose as much of the tuffeau stone walls within the interior as possible. With a building this old it is not surprising it has been transformed many times during its lifetime, with the result being there are layers and layers of different wall coverings on some of the walls.

The wall coverings include modern crepi (a sort of interior render), ceramic tiles, lime wash and mortar. We have decided to strip back all the walls to the bare tuffeau in order to give ourselves the opportunity to inspect the walls and repair where necessary. The plan, in as much as there is one, is to leave the tuffeau exposed on the interior walls while heavily insulating all exterior walls. In this way we can retain some of the original character of the building while not racking up enormous fuel bills and wasting tonnes of energy.

Tuffeau wall covered in plaster and concrete

Cleaning the tuffeau is a very messy but not too onerous a job, although you do need to approach it with some care. For example, in the upstairs apartment the tuffeau was covered in a thick layer of plaster over concrete, which we were able to chip and prise away with a palette knife and hammer without causing severe damage to the tuffeau.

Tuffeau wall in apartment uncovered

Because tuffeau is so soft it needs to be able to move, so the mortar between the blocks must also be soft to ensure that the stones are not held rigid and so crack.  To make sure that we didn't damage the mortar we had to be extra careful when removing the concrete from over it.

Uncovering the tuffeau in the hallway

With the renovation downstairs we have the added complexity of rising damp which is causing the tuffeau to disintegrate.  This has been made worse by the walls being enclosed, with the result that they could not release their moisture.  Maybe even worse, the crumbling tuffeau has filled in the gap between the plaster blocks and the tuffeau wall enabling the damp to bridge across. 

Cleaned tuffeau wallin the hallway

Once the plaster cladding was removed we very gently tapped the mortar on the tuffeau to loosen it and then used a palette knife to lift it from the surface of the tuffeau. We are having to be particularly careful towards the base of the wall due to it being very damp and crumbly.  Not an ideal way to make the foundations for a 10m high house!

Once we remove all the old plaster/mortar covering we will clean the joints and remortar them. We hope the result will be a rustic yet beautiful tuffeau wall that will last for many years to come.

Tuffeau Stone

Chateau de Chenonceau from the southern river bank

Loire Valley châteaux, in common with our house and many of the older building in this region, are in many cases primarily constructed from tuffeau stone. Of the many fabulous châteaux in the Loire Valley built of tuffeau, the most famous is Chenonceau.

"Tuffeau is a marine sedimentary rock which is found in the Loire Valley of France. The Loire Valley formed the floor of a vast sea 90 million years ago. Over the millennia, sediment from the sea floor, comprising fossilized living organisms and sand particles, became compressed to form what is now known as Tuffeau stone."

The mining and extraction of tuffeau has created vast networks of troglodyte or troglodytic caves in the Loire Valley which are now been converted into wine cellars, mushroom farms or, as our friend's son is doing, a night club.

Strawberry Bed in front of Tuffeau Stone Wall

The tuffeau stone is a beautiful creamy white stone which glows in the sunlight making even the most modest buildings look absolutely stunning. The big problems with the stone are that it is very soft and porous, which means that it can easily absorb a large volume of water that then causes it to crumble away.  It seems to be particularly susceptible to airborne pollution, which accelerates the breakdown of the stone.

On the other side of the coin, it is incredibly light for its size, which means that large blocks can be easily manoeuvred.