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chabanes restoration/renovation

The following is an illustrated record of the Restoration/Renovation of Chabanes (a stone farmhouse dwelling since the 1670s but used as a hay barn for the last sixty or seventy years), completed in the autumn of 2019 in the Glueyre Valley in the Ardèche Department of southern France.

This renovation has been a decade-long project, with most of the significant masonry construction additions being carried out since the spring of 2018. Perrin and I would like to thank Fernando Gonzalez for his creative vision, patience, support, perseverance, and enlightened guidance throughout this project. Without his knowledge and experience, this simply would not have been possible. His passionate immersion in the forty year renovation of the six buildings of the nearby hamlet of Les Tapies bears testament to his love and understanding of the vernacular language of the itinerant 17th century stonemasons who originally built the robustly beautiful and majestic farmhouses, barns, and ‘hameaux' of the Ardèche.

Fernando at Chabanes,
Spring 2019

We would also like to thank master stonemason Sébastien Bois, and his fearless team, Christophe Pereira,

tiler and all around craftsman and problem-solver extraordinaire, Messrs Mariac and Marze, ingenious carpenters, wise and intrepid plumber, Émile Bacconier, electrician Jérôme Dumas and his team, Guillaume Barras our solar engineer, Franck Croizet, pellet and wood stove supplier/installer, and Sabine Loulier and Sophie Volle at the Mairie in St. Pierreville. Thanks also to Jérôme Rouveyrol (Saint Jérôme) and Patrick Moulin, our brave “digger men”, roofer Monsieur Dumousseau, and Alicia Havond, our dear friend and neighbour for her banking expertise, as well as a host of devoted students and participants in the Les Tapies ARCH and Arts & Architecture Programs, who all have helped over the years, to design and build Chabanes! Et un GÉANT merci to the entire Chalancon family, for their constant and unconditional friendship, advice, support, LOVE

and inspiration.

We would also like to thank our friend and colleague, the sculptor, teacher and visionary artist James Perry,

who, from the beginning, could see what this stone shell of a building might actually become...

All in all, this has been a deeply profound and life-changing experience. We have loved throwing ourselves

headlong into it — we have never worked so hard or learned so much…

Chabanes as of February, 2020

Construction underway March 2018

The building soon after it was purchased it in 2008… that’s sculptor James Perry up in the kitchen window. Our side is connected to the neighbouring house, on the right, which was bought by a retired French couple in 2005, gutted and renovated...

My elevation projection drawing from 2017

South-facing elevation finished… last August, 2019… Each successive construction over

several hundred years can be seen here by the seams between each addition… I’m standing on one of three terraced areas below the house… this is where the septic system is buried and the leech-field is behind me…

Chabanes finished and seen in situ in the Vallée de Glueyre (with the black solar panels) from across the valley… We were lucky enough to find a local stonemason, a young man who loves working on these very traditional buildings… he and two other fellows raised the roof, mining alot of stone from the interior wall we had begun taking down years ago…

Summer 2016: Fernando Gonzalez's Les Tapies Arts & Architecture Design and Build team at work on the terrace wall restoration. A succession of these wonderful teams built a set of stone stairs, poured three cement floors, installed terra cotta roof tiles and did one heck of a lot of pointing… Each summer, they would start by clearing the previous year’s growth of vegetation, as nature relentlessly moved back in again to reclaim the site.

Terrace roof joists in place, Summer 2017

SÃ©bastien_Bois_and_his_team_of_masons_r

Sébastien Bois and his team of masons raising the third storey, April 2018

Central truss and then beams going in … late Spring 2018

Here, the line of the old shed roof can be seen… the building was built into the mountainside, as many vernacular stone buildings in the Ardèche were… this necessitates putting in “breathing walls” where the building meets the bedrock which have a cavity that allows the mountain to conduct water away from the interior…

Ceiling joists going in, Summer 2018.jpe

Sébastien, our master mason… and his team at work, March 2018

Ceiling joists going in, Summer 2018

Chabanes had been a dwelling since the 1670s but was used as a hay barn for about the last sixty or seventy years… the only way to really make something out it was to raise the roof (it had a shed roof), which we couldn’t afford to do until there was some inheritance which could fund it. That enabled us to have a proper third floor… The shell had been purchased fourteen years ago, a floor put in then, an interior stone wall partially knocked down, and a few other things done, but the really serious work only began two years ago.

The studio in progress…

The load-bearing walls here are nearly two feet thick...

Third floor after lime mortar rendering, walls going up... three bedrooms and a bathroom here...

Finishing work in one of the bedrooms, Spring 2019

Front door and window in progress… the previous door was exceedingly small. The kitchen window at right was one of a number of windows either knocked through or enlarged...

Front terrace before tiling… that’s been done now… while we’ve been gone, so we haven’t seen the finished space, which is now laid in travertine tiles…