Restoring a French château. (new: 300-day compilation video)

Escape to rural France

Great series on YouTube made by Dan from the UK, he's restoring this French château:



66 Episodes so far, he's uploading on a daily base.
Very interesting to follow:

I just bought a HIDDEN ABANDONED Chateau ruin

Follow the journey of the restoration and renovation of this amazing abandoned château ruin.
Built by a Russian industrialists and an up and coming Parisian singer,
host to hundreds of Jewish children during the holocauste,
owned indirectly by coco Chanel and burnt down in the late 1980’s .
A long journey tackled by one man.



Click here for the playlist, starting with #1

 

...thanks, I love these kinds of projects. Ahhh, to be young again, but my Kubota would've been on site first day...

 

One month later, Dan is making really good progress with the chateau.

He cleared the woods, put up two floors and today he posted this (daily) video:

A room buried two metres underground gets unearthed.

 

......

 

Good progress at the chateau!

We are moving UP onto the next floor!




Lifting the steel for the second floor, I set myself on fire.




Structural steels are complete

 

Very interesting

 

James, he's uploading new episodes (almost) every day.
Most videos are around 10 minutes long/short, so they are easy to follow on a daily base when you're subscribed to his channel.


Dan's making good progress now the floors are going in, in about 4 weeks he wants to put a roof over the chateau.

 

I got hooked on this after your initial post. Love the progress that he’s making.

 

Bill, at the end of every episode Dan always says: And I'll see you all.......tomorrow!

But sometimes he skips a day (like today) and keeps me waiting until 2 AM for the new episode, that never comes....
It's better to be in your time zone, because you're like 6 hours behind our time in central Europe, so new episodes will air in the early evening where you live.

I can't wait until he starts with the roof!


Until last year Dan was working as a gardener at this YouTube channel about another chateau.
In this episode he's leaving:

 

He's putting in floors before roofing? He should go back to school.

 

Could it be that the structural steel and other reinforcement was required to be in place before the weight of the roof could be supported due to too few structural supports? As you know, a roof, depending upon its design and materials, can be very heavy with the load spread across the joists to the exterior walls. They may have required improvement before the roof would hold.

I have not had time to watch all the vids, but this just occurs to me based on some work we did years ago after a hurricane.

Cheers!

 

Yes, the metal floor beams are required to keep the structure together. After all the chateau is a ruin that was damaged by a fire.

And the plywood he puts on top of the floor structure now is not the final flooring.

 

And it looks like he’s going to need to do some brick work up on the top before he can put a roof on. I believe he mentioned that the structure was also damaged by a tornado at some point.

 

Huge progress at Château de Chaumont:

Dan bought a yurt so he can now live at the château grounds, tall scaffolding is going up and there are more floors going in...

The race to get the YURT installed at the chateau.



These floors are going in quick now!

 

The château has its own Wikipedia page:

Château de Chaumont (La Serre-Bussière-Vieille)

Château de Chaumont is a château currently in ruins, located in Chaumont, straddling the municipalities of Mainsat and La Serre-Bussière-Vieille,
in the Creuse department in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region in central France.

The path leading to the château (rue de Chaumont) is in the town of Mainsat, but the building itself is in the neighbouring town of La Serre-Bussière-Vieille.

History
The château was built in the early 20th century by a Russian industrialist for his protégé Eugénie Bardet, a young singer from Creuse.

Children's home: a refuge for Jews (1939–1945)
From 1939, the château was rented to the charity Œuvre de secours aux enfants (OSE) ("Children's relief work").
From 1940, the history of the château is linked to the rescue of Jews during the Second World War.

The Creuse department welcomed approximately 3,000 Jews including 1,000 children between 1939 and 1945.
The OSE had three secular reception centres for children in Creuse, including Chaumont, directed by Lotte Schwarz.

The Synagogue de Neuilly, created in 1866 in the Paris region, moved in 1939 due to the German occupation of the city to Creuse as it was in the zone libre ("free zone").
In 1940, French humourist Popeck, then 4 years old, took refuge at the château until 1942.

Memoirist Fanny Ben-Ami and her sisters sheltered there for three years before the children were betrayed.
At the entrance to rue de Chaumont there is a commemorative plaque.

Fire and abandonment
When Bardet died, her heirs decided to sell the château.
In 1967, the château was sold to Jean-François Mironnet, steward of Coco Chanel, and his ex-model wife.

Chanel has therefore never owned the premises.

In February 1986, the building was destroyed by fire, with only the external walls remaining standing.
Mironnet's wife, alone in the château at the time of the fire, managed to escape from the flames by tying bed sheets through a window.

In 2017, the property was for sale on the French classified ads website Leboncoin.

In October 2022, Dan Preston, an English expatriate and founder of the YouTube channel Escape to rural France,
purchased the château with a view to its complete restoration.

 

Most Interesting !!

 

All is well at the Château de Chaumont, there's been a lot of progress:

I reached the TOP of the chateau, installing the ATTIC floor.



The biggest most AMBITIOUS project yet UNDERNEATH this chateau ruin.

 

...he needs something to stand on 4 stories up...

 

In this evening's episode Dan is starting to put the actual roof on the château.

This episode was uploaded yesterday (today for people in North America):





This is today's live stream, a new feature on the channel, next to the daily (edited) videos

Live from chateau de chaumont starting the roof.






The new episode about the roof will be uploaded in a bit.