Progress - Garage/Terrasse

November 2013

While the renovations inside the house were proceeding, the garage served a very useful function of being a storage room for lots of furniture and other items that needed to be moved out of the house while everything was being torn apart within the house. The garage was literally stacked to the ceiling with stuff!

November 2014

After the steelband members left in October, work could commence on the garage renovations, especially the seating area on top of the garage. Initially, this area was open to the elements and surrounded by a low concrete & tile wall.

The first job was to remove this wall to leave a flat open space on which a new structure would be built.

December 2014

After the garage roof had been cleared, the la Maison Facebook page went quiet for some time. I had indicated to Nico that I wanted a covered sitting area on top of the garage, but the design I suggested was somewhat generic. In early December, I got an inkling of how it would look when Nico emailed some photos of what he had been working on in the barn of Jean-Baptiste (our electrician). I knew that Nico had a passion for old French carpentry methods and styles, but I had no idea what he was planning for the garage rooftop. The attention to detail, and the absence of nails and screws, was something to spark the imagination.

By mid-December, the pre-fabricated frames for the garage roof were finished, and work commenced on their installation.

Work continued late into the night installing the rest of the frames, with assorted ropes and pulleys.

By next morning, all the frames and beams had been installed and the true extent of the structure could be appreciated. The traditional carpentry methods and styles make it an impressive structure, especially when it will later be clad with roofing tiles to match those on the house. A definite improvement on the existing structure, and much more in keeping with the appearance and style of the main house.

January 2015

However, a couple of weeks after receiving these photos, I received a letter from the Planning Department of the Moissac Mairie, saying that the renovations to the garage had not been given approval in the original permissions from the Mairie. They asked us to come talk to them within two weeks of the letter. I must admit that this took me by surprise, since I thought that permission had been obtained for all external works. However, Nico went to see the Mairie and explained what he was doing, and how, and it seems they were then happy with the traditional style of the renovations, which would not conflict with their general objectives of improving the patrimony of the historic area under redevelopment.

However, they said that we must change the design to conform with surrounding buildings; I hoped they wouldn't make us have it look like the structure on top of the neighbours garage! They gave various alternatives, like reducing the height of our pergola/Terrasse or reducing the height of the garage underneath. After Nico had explained that either of these options would impose headrooms that were below statutory requirements, they abandoned those ideas. After further discussion, they stated that the thing that concerned them most was the roofline on the canal side of the building, and that the flat frontage with protruding beams did not match the style of surrounding buildings along the canal. They suggested that if we softened that frontage by having a roofline that sloped up and away from the street (i.e. remove the gable frontage) then that would suffice, especially if we would also replace the new tiles on the Verandah roof with old-fashioned tiles (as described earlier). We regarded this as a reasonable compromise, and agreed to their demands. Nico then got to thinking about how he could make the changes to the frontage roofline, with minimum distruption to the rest of the structure.

May 2015

By May, Nico had worked out a plan, and started work by removing the posts and beams from the front half of the Terrasse (as you may have noticed, the name for this structure has changed over time, variously being called Pergola, Belvedere, Terrasse etc. From here on, I'll try to use the word Terrasse consistently). He then started re-building, by first installing some side-railings, that he had pre-assembled on-ground, and erecting some new posts at the front.

Within a couple of days, the redesigned Terrasse was starting to take shape, with a new half-post in the forward half of the structure, and new ridge beam inserted.

A day later, the new roofline really started to take shape, when the new beams and rafters were installed.

A view of the redesigned Terrasse from the other side of the canal, shows the softer profile of the southern frontage.

The wisdom of the Mairie's insistence that the frontage should be changed to blend with existing frontages along the street is evident from a different perspective showing the neighbouring frontage. It almost looks like these two buildings are on the one property surrounding one large garden.

Work continued with the fixing of lining boards to the top of the rafters, in brilliant spring weather.

The critical feature of the redesigned roof was the introduction of a half-height post, three-quarters of the way towards the front of the structure. The ridge beam terminated at this point, and two rafters then connected the top of this half-post to the top of the posts at the front corners of the structure, thus creating the sloped roofline at the front of the Terrasse. As always, the attention to detail was displayed by the rebate around the pyramid shape at the bottom of this half-post.

Over the next few days, while the weather was still good, work continued on the roofing, with the installation of battens for the tile-laying.

Once they got started, the boys worked like trojans, trying to get the tiling finished before a predicted change in weather.

Finally, late that evening, the tiling was finished, and the boys could enjoy a cold beer!

The view from across the canal showed that the tiles on the Terrasse matched the old tiles on the neighbours house pretty well. Another good decision from the Mairie, when they required us to change the tiles on the roof of the Verandah to match the tiles on the Terrasse.

June 2016

A final task on the Terrasse was carried out the following year, after the timbers has dried and shrunk a little, with the "bricking-in" of the spaces between the timbers in the half-walls. This is a very common sight in this region, and made the Terrasse seem even more authentic. Luckily, the son of one of our neighbours does this sort of work for a living, and did a very good job. We have often heard passers-by comment on the Terrasse, when we are sitting up there out of sight, as to how they had not noticed this "old building" when they have walked by in the past!

August 2019

A few years have passed since finishing of the Terrasse, and it has seen lots of usage over the years. We currently have tenants in the house, and while they were away on summer holidays in 2019 we returned for a week, living in the 2nd floor self-contained apartment, to check out how the house was aging. One thing we noticed was the ivy that had grown over the fence from a neighbour's yard, and virtually covered the Terrasse. While the ivy has always been a bit of a problem, it now has something new to climb all over. In itself, I don't mind the look of the ivy, but since we had put in so much work (and money) to build the Terrasse, we thought we should give it the chance to be seen. So a couple  of days work had the Terrasse re-appearing. More work is required to remove the ivy runners from the rendered wall. The timber in the Terrasse and the Rose Archway is weathering and starting to look even more authentic - just another way to fool the passers-by!