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Sept / Oct 2007 we began work on the interior of the building, starting with removing all of the render from the interior walls a lot of which came away fairly easily due to the damp but over the life of the building cement had obviously been invented and patched into where the lime render needed to be repaired. 4 weeks and 4 tennis elbows later we were done.
Removing all of the floors which had proved to be quite perilous to walk on was next, they consisted of rotten oak boarding, about a 30cms of mud ,straw and poo, and tommettes (which are fired clay tiles about 15cm square).The job started on the top floor and the idea was that we salvaged as many tommettes as possible for later use which turned out to be one of the most labourious and fatiguing parts of the project. Lifting the tommettes was no problem once you had one out the rest followed very easily, the endless trudging down 2 flights of stairs, putting them into a wheelbarrow, wheeling across the front of the building into the yard and stacking them neatly in piles of 10 in the barn, now that was a killer (still trying to find a use for them 16months later).
The poo, mud, and straw was easier, that just got chucked out of the holes in the rear wall which were waiting for doors and windows adding to the growing pile of other rubble. Then the oak, what to do with this as it was not in good enough condition to re-use but fine to burn in the open fire place at coffee time. This ensued for weeks and weeks just to give you an idea we would managed about 10 Sq meters a day and had 180 sq meteres to clear but after it was finished the view up from the ground floor was really quite impressive.
At this point we thought it would be a really good time to get the sandblasters in and clean all the beams and stonework, quotes for sandblasting came back at stupid amounts of money so we decidied to have a go ourselves and hired a machine along with the safety gear heavy gauge overalls, rubber gaunlets and a helmet which would be better described as the torture suit. (I feel I have to explain that in rural France if a piece of equipment doesn't kill you immediately, then it meets health and safety regs).
We managed about 3 days of the torture of not being able to see, hear or breathe and got most of the beams clean but at this point cleaning the rest by hand with a wire brush seemed like a real treat (but in hindsight we would have left them till after the plastering).
HICCUP NO3
Now came the mammoth task of putting the floors back in which in itself would not have been too bad if all the beams were new and level, it was time to call in the expert, an American friend who is a carpenter.
Now the Americans have a different approach to building than we do so everything is overengineereed to avoid being sued especially when laying flooring, if it squeaks when you walk on it , well american floors just DONT squeak, the reason for this is that the beams are made level and then the boarding is GLUED and nailed to the beams and cross bracing.
Not a problem I hear you say, and we were happy to do this until I realised that no French diy store or builders merchant carries more than about 5 tubes of no more nails type glue and doesn't restock either (we wiped out the glue stocks of everywhere in a 70km radius of LE DORAT) I cannot stress this point strongly enough DO NOT DO THIS we have found out recently that if your floors squeak sprinkle talcum powder in the joints that squeak. Ours dont squeak but talcum powder is cheap and glue is NOT (I can only assume that glue is cheaper that talc in America).