Hidden Treasures

One of the interesting things about renovating an old house it that you never know what you might find.  More often than not you discover things that you really wish you hadn't like cracks lurking under wallpaper or rotten floorboards.  Thankfully, in our case, we were given ample opportunity to find all the horrors our house had in store for use before purchasing it 

This last month has been one of peeling back the layers and knocking numerous openings into walls in order to gain more light as well as a better flow to the layout. 

Can you spot the cats?

When I was in England recently my husband, Spike, was charged with the mission to knock through one of our bedroom walls into the room next door (our dressing room).   It was while he was doing this that he found a beautiful gold 20 franc coin from 1877 under the skirting board.   This coin is apparently worth in the order of 300€ but we have decided to keep it as a lucky charm (or for a rainy day!)

These coins were known by the name 'Génie' because the figure
depicted is the Genius of France inscribing the Constitution.

We did find another coin a little later but a 5 centimes piece from 1936 unsurprisingly doesn't have much value but we enjoyed researching it as an interesting find all the same.

The next interesting find was some faded wallpaper hidden behind a run of tongue and groove panelling in our downstairs hallway that was being removed to make yet another opening into our living room.  I think it's just beautiful and hope to find something similar but from my initial research such truly elegant designs don't seem to exist any more.

I just adore this gorgeous wallpaper

For our final find we had been wondering for some time why there were some wooden mouldings on the wall of our first floor landing so last week we decided to investigate further...

Spot the cat... again!

and look what we found behind some hardboard! These wonderful glazed double doors. The next dilemma was deciding where to use them because they now lead to our ensuite shower room and that could potentially be quite a spectacle for any poor unsuspecting passer by!  

The glass panels have been wallpapered at some point in their life with
the faux stone look we currently have on our second floor landing
(I will not be launching a worldwide search to replicate that by the way!)

After much discussion we decided that the doors would be ideal between our bedroom and our newly created dressing room which of course means more dust and disruption because the opening poor Spikey made when he found the gold coin will have to be made a little wider and substantially taller.  

It's unfortunate that we didn't find the doors before the opening was made but that's the nature of renovating an old house and we are convinced that it will be worth the additional work not least because having doors will prevent our naughty cats from getting into our dressing room and making a mess.  

The rest of the house will, of course, remain a haven for the cats and the little furry tumble weeds they inevitably leave in their wake!