The reality of restoring an ancient façade in France

What do you do with a messy façade that has been patched up more than once over the course of a hundred years and is now a mishmash of original and additional elements? 

This one had a bit of everything wrong with it. It had begun life as a pattern of neat horizontal lines of grey stones, interspersed with generous amounts of ochre lime mortar. 

Now some of the stones were missing and others had been covered up with cement. 

The off-centre doorway had once been a handsome entrance but several of the bricks in the frame were missing or exploded. 

There was an exposed end of a massive oak beam (supporting the upper floor inside the house) that was not in the ideal place but could not be moved or covered up. 

Smoothing out mistakes

Worst of all, there was a large and very ugly irregular lump of concrete, whose reason for being there was mysterious.

The temptation was to spray tastefully coloured render all over this collection of weary elements and smooth it out. Plenty of façades have been smartened up by this quick and easy method.

However, I like things kept authentic and there was something both charming and honest about this façade: it told you its history openly. 

Better to face the challenge of tidying it up than to take the easy approach of hiding it.

I took a “before” photo to compare with at the end, but also as a reference in case I took a wrong turn with the restoration. 

Brush-off by a bat

Then I commenced a close examination of every square centimetre using a stone chisel and a brush. 

From this point on, I collected any falling debris with the intention of re-using the original sand for its natural colour.

You have to be brave when attacking such a façade. Deconstruction precedes construction. Every loose or questionable pebble or lump of mortar has to go. 

Inevitably – I was expecting this – as I started chipping away larger holes than were at first apparent began to appear. 

That lump of concrete turned out to be the improvised solution to a problem: it was there to fill in an animal’s nest dug into the mortar. When I got halfway through the offending block I saw an eye looking back at me from behind it: a bat had been using a hole as a hiding place. I gave it time to relocate before continuing.

The original animal which had been evicted by the concrete must have moved into the less conspicuous corner of the façade and excavated an even better warren for itself. It was a full 50cm deep and many of the stones were completely loose. 

Natural restoration

I removed a large quantity of bedding: leaves, bits of plastic and lengths of rough blue twine. 

Also while carrying out my inspection, a couple of vertical cracks became apparent and I had to decide what to do with them. 

In an ideal world I would have made sure they were not still opening by observing them for a year or two, and perhaps closed them up with a proprietary brand of elastic filler. 

However, I wanted to get on with the job and do things as naturally as possible. They were not too wide and I decided to clean them well and fill them with normal lime mortar. 

Once I had removed everything unstable, and treated the façade to a stiff brushing, I stood back to get a good look at my destructive handiwork, took another photograph for reference, and hatched a plan for the filling up and beautifying phase, which I will tell you about in a separate article.