The views expressed in this post may be deemed provocative. I stand by them.
To avoid any inference that I am pointing the finger, I will use the original shot of our French house. Well, about 2/3rds of it as street is too narrow and oddly angled to permit a full photo; so even when we finish the facade and make it gorgeous and maybe even desirable. we will never be able to show more than a glimpse of it. Ironic, no?
So, over the decade and more that we have worked on this restoration project I have searched my soul (and much of Europe) looking for just the right materials that will lift our house out of it’s hovel category and onto a more historically and aesthetically pleasing platform, I have bandied the word “reclaimed” around with abandon.
Our idealistic aim to use mostly reclaimed materials was initially compromised by a number of things; like finding the right colours, the right size, the right quantity of flooring and tiles and doors and other architectural elements. This is problematic, unless you have a bottomless purse and nothing else to do with your time than to search reclamation sites online and in person. But then, the more I thought about this act of replacing lost old, original stuff with someone else’s old, original stuff, the more the ethical considerations inherent in taking this route have begun to make me uncomfortable.
Where is this (finite) supply of old materials coming from ? Is taking a 300 year old tiled floor or acres of wood panelling , or a stunning 16thc door or a carved stone mantle or quaint country sink from another property actually ethical? Why is this stuff being stripped out?
I can accept financial need, if you can’t afford to pay your bills and someone offers you crazy money for that fireplace then, yes, of course you’ll take it. I can accept a builder acquiring some character features that the new owner hates and wants out of the place ASAP. I can accept rescuing old stuff from a property about to be demolished.
But what if your ” reclaimed” materials came from a remote rural farmhouse, stripped out and loaded under cover of night? What about the folk who buy cheap houses just to take the features out of them then leave them to fall apart quietly?
There is a beautiful old house visible from the road between Caracassonne and Limoux. I don’t know the story, and I speculate merely (so please do not use the comments section to lecture me), but on the frontage someone has painted words along the lines of “don’t bother breaking in here, there is nothing left to steal”.
If I found out that something I’d bought for this house had been sourced by destroying a feature in another equally old and equally worthy house ( and it was just serendipitous luck that my house has me to love it) then I couldn’t sleep at night.
I am indebted to Bizzyella for the link to this article“stripped village homes”
I respectfully ask you to think about it. That old door and that pretty old floor that doesn’t quite fit your space fitted perfectly where it originally came from.
So I will use new with pride and a clear conscience. Just saying.
Blog-sur-Aude 
Interesting topic! I hadn’t been aware of the practice of stripping old houses.
A couple of things:
Our kid went to a birthday party some years ago in a nearby village. The house was in the heart of the village and had been restored by the under-30-ish couple. They defended having kept the stone walls uncovered and the beamed ceilings. They said their friends had criticized them for not covering up the stone and making the ceiling smooth and white. Also for refinishing the parquet instead of doing something “industrial” and “épuré.” So one point is that there are plenty of people who simply don’t appreciate the old stuff. Let them buy newer buildings, I think. But on the other hand, if that’s what they want and they are keeping the heart of the village from falling to ruin then maybe that’s life.
Other point: during our search for a rental property, I visited a huge house in the center of Carcassonne. I had seen the for-sale sign, and then when I visited the Bâtiments de France, one of the architects told me about it, so I made sure to visit. I fell in love. There was a kitchen entirely of Caunes marble. There were real encaustic tiles. Marble fireplaces. It was huge–two buildings combined–and could have held 6-8 large apartments. As cheap as the sale price was, I did a quick calculation, and it would easily have passed €1 million to renovate, possibly more with all the BdF requirements. Result: it is on the verge of being condemned because the roof is open and it’s full of pigeons. I hope it would be stripped before being torn down–there would be some contractors who would go in and say it isn’t worth the trouble. Part of me feels that the restrictions (and resulting hike in costs) from BdF is preventing some landlords from doing maintenance that would keep their buildings from falling into ruin.
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One can only hope that someone will come along and love this house and it’s history so much that they will save it.
Despite the roof and the pigeons.
My friend P has made exactly that leap of faith with her huge, old, pigeon infested but beautiful house.
I don’t think that she would mind me revealing that she and her husband know very well that this house will never be “worth” , on paper, what they will have to spend on it; but sometimes a return on one’s investment is less important than an opportunity to rescue a building.
A big shout out to all those prepared to do just that. Not enough of us, sadly, to save ALL these deserving houses.
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Not everybody has pockets deep enough, either, alas. I would like nothing more than to be the A+B Kasha of Carcassonne, restoring half-ruins right and left.
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Our pockets are far from deep, and we could not possibly afford a bigger project, but we are happy with our very modest house .
I stated right from the gitgo on my blog that it is possible to rescue an old house on a low budget if you are prepared to put some work in yourself.
We are proof of that!
I think we are very much in a minority here though; I know hardly anyone else who has bought a humble house here with our overall budget as a top line.
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I know what you mean. We also renovated on a tight budget, but we hadn’t collected the pieces in advance as you did. Lack of foresight. Anyway, no amount of love and willingness is going to allow most people to shell out a cool €1 million to fix up a place (the building I mentioned needed all new wiring and had not a single bathroom or toilet). It’s really too bad because it has tons of potential.
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This is a very interesting post!! I think you’ve made your point very well – I’m all for preserving original features in old buildings. In the first house we bought we were lucky – nothing had really been stripped out except for the furniture. The second house was so beyond restoring, that we went for a modern look – the floors had to be replaced anyhow, and there was nothing much that could be rescued. The fireplaces were not original (re-made in cement in the 40s?), the flues rotten as were the windows, the floors sloping and sagging etc. Once the old furniture was cleared, the extent of it became clear, and we had to go down a very different route than originally planned. The one original feature was the staircase, and that has been restored, but apart from that we’ve not got any original features. The new tiles and even floors do make life a lot easier though – no regrets there! I kind of lost my thread though – when we bought our first house, there were so many little hovels for sale, and hardly any of them had much in them that would have been worth preserving (sweeping statement arlert!!). Stone sinks, kitchen fireplaces, a few old(ish) doors, but most of it not good quality. There was (and still is) a guy in the village who sells reclaimed materials – mostly roof and floor tiles now, and other bits and bobs. 25 years ago, he’d go in when a house would be demolished, saving the corner stones, window surrounds, tiles, beams, sinks, even old toilets – anything worth saving and saleable. At the time, I thought it was a great way to recycle and to keep things out of landfill. Then a friend bought a large old house, which had belonged to that guy, and my opinion changed. Literally everything possible had been lifted, and the house had lost its soul! All that said, the blame isn’t only with the reclamation guys, a lot of French homeowners do a very good job of getting rid of old original features – and often those features don’t find a new home, but end up in the skip… So I’m very divided over this, but apart from the odd floor tile, to replace a cracked one, I’ve never bought reclaimed materials.
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Thanks for your comment, and the interesting example !
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Finite, yes – but France has an enormous supply of decorative arts in what regards home materials. If you think about it a small region like the Dordogne alone has over 1000 chateaux. Add to that the manors, maisons bourgeoises, hotel particuliers. Not to mention that most homes are essentially living organisms. In most period houses one finds signs of changing times and changing tastes.
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It does have a good supply now, but France will go the way of the UK in a decade or so.
All the good, old, original stuff there has been systematically stripped out since Victoriana came back into vogue in the 1960’s.
There are interiors magazines and books full of suggested sources of reclaimed materials in England; now Scotland is being targeted for the fashionably old.
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Yes, but all that means is there are cycles. Things get removed, then re-installed in other homes where they become part of the structure. Regency, for example, has been in style many times after the period was over. And Regency items/features have come and gone with those trends. So these objects end up having a life of their own.
If a painting can change hands, why not a mantelpiece?
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I agree re cycles in style. What I don’t agree with is denuding an old house of it’s treasures to flog on under the guise of reclamation.
A painting, sculpture, tapestry, or a beautiful piece of furniture is not part of the fabric of a building. A floor is.
I knew this post would be divisive.
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Not quite the Middle-East conflict in terms of divisiveness 😀
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Ha! You pedantic little pedant you…!
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Now I have to own up to reclaiming the floor from a Victorian school building to use in an 1830s restoration I was doing in Berkshire. But in my defense, it had already been taken up and was offered. I guess that is the nub of my own sensibility …. but maybe I’m just trying to stroke my perturbed feathers back into place 😉
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Yes I too have reclaimed stuff…!
I have owned old houses. So I looked for old fittings and materials; fireplaces, tiles, chapel furniture, doors, because they were old and beautiful and available. But something clicked in my head a while back, it was just a question of how and when I articulated these newly formed thoughts and whether I put it out there for discussion on this blog or kept it for a dinner party debate with reno-buddies.
When the link Bizzy sent me dropped in it chimed with my thoughts & I decided that I would file that as “signs and portents” and that I would “post and be damned”.
Which, essentially I have been.
Many, many people have read this post. Few have ” liked”it.
I would deem it contentious, but what is the point of this blog if not to bare at least some corners of my soul!?
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Don’t you love blog stats 😉 the all seeing eye that lets you in on who has read and moved on because they don’t have the heart for debate. Which is what you have invited. I dont see you damning those that disagree but you are too intelligent for that. For me it is a debate that does need airing. I sight as my last example the house that my ex-husband and I shared. It was repossessed. He had not lived three for nearly 3 years having left the children and I high and dry but the house was in his name. He travelled over from Ireland and removed the beautiful brass door knocker which was shaped like a fish. It in many ways defined that house and when I saw what he had done, I broke down because it was as though he had broken her poor face. That was part of the fabric of a house – wall covering,s rugs, tapestries and paintings will all come and go as fashions and tastes change but the bits that make up the bones and the skin of the house, those should really be sacrosanct. But then – as you know, I was always a dreamer x
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Me too, though the dark reality of life has seeped into some of those dreams.
I condemn none for their opinions, all are welcome to browse here.
I didn’t start this blog for self validation purposes, honestly!
I started it to try and clear my overstuffed head and to help me focus on this project.
It does help, a lot, actually.
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That’s the thing, as taste and technology change/evolve there’s bound to be changes. And that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. The house we’re in now has one room with late 18th century panelling and an early 18 century mantelpiece. That room opens onto another with 20th century Maison Jansen panelling and a period Louis XVth mantelpiece. In that fireplace there used to be a belle epoque wood-burner which we replaced for a more efficient version by Burley. Every generation that’s lived here has made changes and the result has been quite wonderful 🙂
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I’m not advocating against change or improvement.
We all (houses and people) should move forward, absolutely.
Maybe I articulated my thoughts poorly in this post; what I was trying to articulate was my increasing unease with the stripping out of old houses to sell the contents onto other, wealthier old house owners, and whether that constitutes a legitimate striving for historical authenticity or a contribution to the unthinking destruction of one house for the beautification of another.
I’ve bought this stuff myself in the past so I am pointing no fingers.
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I understood 🙂 I think it’s a reasonable point. Just that in the big picture, we have to factor in there’ll be people who don’t do things well – and on the other hand some who do extraordinary work. So it balances out.
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Yes, we are such a rarity, we EXCEPTIONAL stylists….!
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I think the difference is a house evolving and developing and having the stamp of each owner placed on it vs the willful destruction of properties no longer loved (let’s face it French Inheritance Law hasn’t been helpful here … our maire spent 11 years tracking the rightful owners of an empty house in the village that they wanted to take on, renovate and lease to a family raring to bring an interesting and worthwhile business in – bees, by the way, not a drum and bass emporium 😉 … ) I think the point Gill is making is that we should not just go into a frenzy of reclaiming without some thought as to where the goods came from and what the knock-on is. I enjoy your remarks very much. Educated, I surmise 🙂
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I think that’s why we tend not to go to salvage yards, as the “finds” could be from anywhere. Luckily the “old-stuff” we found was already around the barn. The previous owners had a bit of a clear out and dumped everything outside under a temporary shed made of corrugated and old doors – which are now our shutters. What we cannot genuinely know the history of, we use new and age it. Nothing wrong with that. I think its a bit of snobbery to insist on perfect authenticity because that authenticity comes at the detriment of other buildings. A point in case is The National Trust – sorry supporters, but thats how they complete some homes – but at least they often state why they took those items. Make do and mend works too. We found some old chairs on the local skip – the wood turning will be used for the kitchen and bedroom for decoration. But I agree, you shouldn’t rip the soul out one building to satisfy the ego of another,
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Thank you for this information.
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Our Mayor has also taken steps to rescue some of our village houses to refurbish and let to families. I think this is admirable and only wish there could be a national programme to encourage such “rescues” right across France. If there are such programmes already in place, then I see little evidence elsewhere.
It’s good to encourage families into these struggling communities to support the remaining commerce we still have and to occupy and care for the critical heritage and history of these old buildings.
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Yes, our Mayor has done something similar. They have bought houses, done them up and leased them back to families wanting to move in who bring with them skills – we have a traditional toy maker and his family and a beekeeper who is making bee products – they have also been given shops in Rue Longue (which is not at all long), the main shopping street which they want to keep arty, craftsy, traditional rather than having anything less ‘pretty’ so this benefits the village. As the new folks make an income, part of it of course goes back to the village by way of impots. All hail smart thinking mayors who want to preserve the heritage of their locale! One of the side issues is tracing the owners, of course – in one case it took 11 years to find the lawful owner – the inheritance laws here are much to blame for the miserable state of so many houses
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It is, of course, impossible to know the provenance of everything but I do think people are far too greedy for their own notion of perfect and fail to question where something came from. Rather like buying on the black market in war time. For me, there is a place for finding old reclaimed things but I also feel that one should not shun new materials so long as they are sympathetic to the structure. In both instances, it is a matter of putting in the hard miles. With reclamation it is a matter of establishing the history of a piece and actually checking the facts not just taking the word of the seller, however reputable they may appear to be and in the case of the new, as you demonstrate so admirably and often, it is a matter of using clever techniques to ‘age’ materials if necessary. Overall, there is so much sad and neglected property in this beautiful country and the thieves and those that become party to the crime by buying should be wholly ashamed because in killing houses effectively whole areas die as they become infected with tragic eyesores. I felt this was a very needed piece of writing and I thank you for it and in turn Bizzy for the article in the NYT. Take a bow, ladies
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How do you know where this stuff came from? Of course the seller will tell you it is ethically sourced. Just as no mummies were harmed in the « rescue » of a Fayum portrait, etc. How do you prove it, either way? You are right on the ethics of the question, but then what?
When it comes down to it, you are talking about the ethics of buying stolen goods. Not ethical, of course, but how do you find out?
I have used old materials from other houses in just a few instances, where I put in a couple of 19th century light fixtures, purchased from reputable dealers. I count on them to verify provenance, though I admit that I haven’t asked any questions. By and large I have used reproduction items or classic designs still in production. It has just been convenient to do it that way.
I hate to think of what will happen to my house when I am gone. The wrong buyer will strip out the fixtures in the first week. I just hope that’s a long time from now and that, when the time comes, the right buyer is found. Right now I doubt that there is any defense against the kind of thing you are talking about.
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I suppose I am fortunate that, although my daughter does not share my tastes, she totally supports what I am doing here, as does my grandson, so there will be no “redos” on their watch.
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That’s good. I find that my contractors like what I do, once they see it. The trick is making sure folks see it, not just in monuments, but in regular houses, ones they can imagine owning. That makes all the difference. So maybe our houses are like stones in a pond. We may never see the ripples but maybe they are there.
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