Fighting banalisation, one paint chart at a time
This week, the challenges of renovating an old house, plus a recipe for merguez sausages and Puy lentils that would delight any builder.
I always considered it ludicrous that people give their cars names, genders, but this might be because I don’t drive and have no more affection for the car we own than for a taxi I hail in the street. But this house, somehow, feels female. When the men came to drill holes into her façade to anchor the scaffolding, the sound of the drilling made me anxious, like I should apologise to her somehow for this monstrous indignity. I felt the same sense of, “It’s for your own good, you just wait and see” as I do when I take the dogs to the vet.
…that first lockdown felt endless and the combination of hating banana bread and having a limited passion for jigsaws meant I was often a loose end.
A couple of years ago, before we even owned the place, we called a local builder who has a reputation for being good with old houses to come and give us a quotation for the renovation. He said he would be happy to come. “I know your house very well. When my father arrived here from Ireland more than thirty years ago, your house was the first one he worked on. We’ve always known it.” That sense of continuity feels good. He has old drawings and photographs of it. He also confessed in the past few years, he has done five quotations on this house for people who flirted with owning it and were eventually put off by, well, everything.
I think I told you I used to stalk this house on the village webcam when we were still living in London. I also used to trawl the internet for any crumbs of information about it - that first lockdown felt endless and the combination of hating banana bread and having a limited passion for jigsaws meant I was often a loose end. This is how, at some sleepless hour of the night, I came across a photograph of the house from the 1900s when it was quite new, on a local Facebook group. Beneath the picture, there was speculation that it was for sale, that it needed a tremendous amount of work. One woman said, “I hope that the buyers won’t massacre it! And especially will not add those terrible rolling shutters which are so ugly on old houses.” Someone else was furious about the possibility of air conditioning units on the façade.
The concern has not abated with our arrival. In our first week, my husband was working in the garden when an elderly English woman introduced herself to him: “I want to come and look around your house before you ruin it”. There is also a certain kind of English resident, who has trodden this path before you, who can’t wait to tell you what you’re likely to do wrong, as though the concept of “house” is a brand new thing you may not have not heard of before. The French don’t do this, possibly because many of them seem to prefer nice modern villas in a quartier recherché on the edge of town, with central heating, pools, garages, and a view of the lagoon.
Anyway, just in case I was about to make a terrible error of judgment and cover the place in stone cladding, à la Vera Duckworth of Coronation Street, I acquired the 64-page document from the town hall about the suitable decoration of houses. It opens with a punchy Victor Hugo quote: “The façade of a building also belongs to the viewer”. There are maps, diagrams, colour charts and copious illustrations of doors and door knockers of note. There are pages and pages of not just suitable colours, but also suitable colour combinations for walls, doors, balconies and windows (nothing too dark, nothing too bright). There are dire warnings against “banalisation”, the ironing out of period detail with unsuitable paint, UPVC windows, doors from the big DIY chain stores, modern ironwork and too much cement. And, most thrillingly or perhaps terrifyingly of all, it is illustrated with real houses in the village. It reminds me of those fashion dos and don’ts columns which used to be a popular feature of women’s magazines – photographs of ordinary people just going about their business, their faces blurred out, being praised for the jaunty tying of a scarf, or condemned for an inappropriate legging. In my detailed reading of this document, I noted our house appeared on page 27 (example of front gates) and page 36 (example of a suitable shade of green for ironwork). No criticism detected. Yet. Imagine the ignominy of being found guilty of banalisation so soon after unpacking one’s pots and pans? Once more unto the paint charts, dear friends, once more.
No banalisation, not on my watch.
Is it surprising I was plunged into paroxysms of doubt? It was even worse than when I had patches of 20 different shades of cream painted along the hallway in our London house. (My husband: “For Christ’s sake, just pick one! Stop going on about the light, I beg you.”) Here, choosing colours for the façade, windows, shutters, wrought iron balconies, metal gates and railings is made complicated by the Belle Epoque tiles above the windows which lead some people to call it the Piano House, if your piano keys are a mash up of rectangular sunshine yellow, pine green and wine red tiles (nothing too dark, nothing too bright). I realised I was straying into “my diamond shoes are too tight” territory here, but I asked my friends to pray to Our Lady of Farrow & Ball for me, and possibly light a candle if they had a moment.
I tried to describe to our builder how I want the house to look, but really what I was describing was how I wanted the house to feel, which is something you can’t put on a blueprint. I read an interview once with the famous society decorator, Alidad, on Sotheby’s website where he said, “I’m there to create a home and a home consists of a look that has evolved over many generations. For example, your great-great grandmother bought this piano, your great grandmother pulled this wall down and brought the chairs from upstairs to downstairs, your grandmother did something else and your mother changed something else.” Our builder looked sympathetic (I don’t know, it could have just be puzzled, but I’m an optimistic sort) when I explained to him I wanted the house to look like one family has always owned it and loved it and it had just evolved. I wanted everything to work, to be comfortable, but I didn’t want anything to look too new, too “done”. No banalisation, not on my watch.
Merguez sausages and Puy lentils
The wonderful thing about merguez sausages is that they impart their wonderful, spicy flavour to everything you cook with them.
I cook the lentils ahead in this recipe before adding them to the sausages because I don’t want the mixture to be soupy and it is hard to predict how much liquid they will soak up – it slightly depends on how old they are. So cook them, drain them well, then add them. Sprinkling on the lemon zest with the feta, chilli flakes and parsley right at the end adds a real brightness to the whole dish.
Serves 6
For the lentils
250g Puy lentils or other green lentils
750ml chicken or vegetable stock
The leafy trimmings off the celery (below) if you have them, but not essential
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