Creating our gîte d’étape – step 3: demolition time
It’s February 2025 and we’re tackling the left side of the upper floor, the main part of our gîte d’étape.
We’re really keen, so we’ve decided to do the demolition work ourselves!
Preparations
Before starting the demolition work, we need to clear everything out of the rooms. The “dormitory” and the garage are turned into furniture storage, and we manage to sell a few things.
We called upon our social network to find people who’d want our bathroom furniture, so it didn’t end up at the dump.
Our bathroom cabinets ended up in someone’s kitchen and a family took our bathtub to use as a water tank in their garden.
It was a whole undertaking to get the cabinets and especially the 200kg cast-iron bathtub down from the first floor! But with some help and a lot of muscle, we managed to clear everything out.
A storied fireplace
In the largest room on the upper floor stood a fireplace, built a bit crooked and, frankly, not very attractive.
As we had no intention of using it, and after consulting a professional, we began to take down the chimney breast – not to worry, it didn’t bear any weight.
A good thing it wasn’t being used anymore! The whole house must have been filled with smoke back in the day –there were holes and cracks everywhere. To be honest, it was a bit of scary sight. And as we’re cautious, we stopped there.
We called in the professionals to help us take down the rest properly. So, we’ll have to be patient…
Let’s knock down the walls!
In the meantime – as we want to reorganise the whole space – we’re starting to knock down all the old partition walls and false ceilings.
It starts off relatively simple, the partition walls and ceilings surrounding the old bathroom and toilet are easy to remove. They’re fairly recent and made of plasterboard.
The other partitions are older and made of small hollow bricks. They’re also easy to knock down but there’s just a lot more rubble to clear away. Luckily we’re well organised: whilst one of us knocks down the bricks, the other collects the rubble and takes it down to the trailer. Recycling centre, here we come!
On the other hand, the ceiling made of thick particle board and beams is another matter. They took a lot more effort and ingenuity to remove! We’re salvaging the beams, as we’ll need them later on.
It’s a nice space now that everything’s opened up!
The floor
The floor looked lovely, but it wobbled, creaked and was completely uneven. It broke our hearts, but in the end we decided to remove it.
And no wonder it wasn’t holding! It was laid on top of timber beams, of which no two were the same size. These beams were in turn laid on top of a very, very old (uneven) floor that had clearly had a long and eventful life.
In between the two layers, we found all sorts of things: nails, bits of wire, earth, small stones, bits of wood, buttons, shards of glass, empty walnut shells, well-gnawed corn cobs and even the remains of a long-tailed squatter occupation! Sadly, no treasure…
We cleared away at least 300kg of rubbish that had built up over the years.
We told you it was going to be “hard work”! But we’re proud to have risen to the challenge and managed to do it all ourselves!
And surprise! During the demolition work, we made some lovely discoveries. As a result, we’ve changed our minds about how to proceed with certain parts of the renovation. Just a little more patience – we’ll tell you all about it in the next episode.
