Restoring 400-Year-Old Stone Ceiling Roses In Our Castle Entrance

Ian and I have been trying to clean up the chateau moat for years, but it's an ongoing process. The walls used to have literal trees covering the stone, and neglecting this over time causes the walls to crumble. Now that we have new terraces, we want to make the moat walls cleaner. So Daphne and I love how these terraces look. This new stone looks amazing, but there's a little bit of a problem, is that they're very obviously fresh, and everything beneath it is definitely not. And so we had the idea of cleaning that. I'm sure if we want to use some kind of chemical like bleach, it would just brighten these walls immediately and make the job really easy. But because we have fish and a turtle, probably a Loch Ness monster in here somewhere, we just we don't want to use chemicals. If we're going to clean it, we have to use water. So I have a pressure washer. And the last thing I want is somebody coming to try to seize the castle and climb up the moat, but then stop and realize that there's all this moss and plant growth. That would be embarrassing. Obviously, I'm going to boot the guy back into the moat, but I don't want to hear him tell me that I need to clean my moat more often. Don't do that. Yeah, I'd say that's brightened up a bit. What's crazy is how much warmer the stone looks. Like, I just always assumed the stone was kind of a gray color, but it's actually got a lot of warmth to it. What's really cool is down there is the oubliette, or the opening of the oubliette, and it's something that I've never seen. But if I had a little waterproof camera, I would totally put it down there. Just see what's in the oubliette. I'm sure it's not treasure, right? But I am going to have to come back and continue spraying all of this wall because that's looking pretty rough too. Good progress for today. The most important thing is I didn't fall in. Not only have we survived season two of Castle Impossible. Just about. But we've added one to the mix. Yeah, you'll find out what all that stress was about. You're going to have to try and eat them up really quick. Yeah. Baby's going to come out with a hard hat and a pair of gloves. I'm pretty sure baby already started renovations in there. I'm pretty sure my liver is like all the way. I think there's going to be a lot of people who are curious about your house in Normandy because that's sold now. That's gone. We're definitely going to build. It's the only way we can get what we want. Yeah. I mean, the land's still expensive, but then I can build something to give us the garages we need, maybe have a nice workshop. So you're going to build a house from scratch? On the Isle of Wight. A tiny little island, very south point of England. Okay, so if we need a renovation emergency, we just got to let you know a day ahead? Yeah. Okay. A day ahead. Ideally, yeah. Okay. A couple of days will be good. We're going to buy the plot with the plans. Spoke to the architect and he's active for us to use the plans he's drawn up. Yeah, it's going to be a four bedroom, three bathrooms and a study. Very nice. It's a massive, the back of the house is one long kitchen diner and that all looks out onto the garden. I think I've got 12 days before the planning commission runs out. So I'll go get back, get the digger to start. So you've got, you've got less than two weeks to get started on it. And if I don't, you lose the planning permission and you have to reapply again. So what is it? So what are you doing next week? Like what is, what is step one of building a house? I am going to start the garages. Okay. Just so that works commenced on the plot. I've always wanted to build my own property and seeing what you do on YouTube is fantastic. And I'm going to literally try to set up a YouTube channel and try and follow the whole process, literally from the patch of ground to the finished project. Finished house. That'd be so cool. Yeah. I'm going to try. I'm going to try and see if I can achieve that. The build's fine. It's wherever I can. Yeah. It's just getting the camera to work. That's the hard part. Building a whole house is easy for you. There's nothing to that. All right. Well, we are looking forward to it. Yeah. So we have a few pedals that are missing. We've got this one that this one actually came off of and just fell. Yeah. It just fell. We found it on the rim over here. And then there's a few more that are missing pedals. I got to say, if only a few pedals have broken off over the last 400 years, then they've held up pretty well. Anytime we have guests at the Chateau, this like makes their jaw drop. Oh, yeah. No, I love like opening the doors for wedding visits. And then they're like, oh, wow. Yeah. It's pretty spectacular. But I was thinking we could use this maybe as a mold and try to recreate it and stick it back on. I was actually excited at being able to like chisel something out to fix these. Well, why don't you? Why don't we try different methods and then we'll see. Let the best man win. All right. Well, technically, it's two against one because there's two of you. Yeah. I pick the complicated one. Great. Well, we'll try different techniques. Let's see if I actually do it. All right. We have options. Okay. So in order to recreate this flower petal, I found this really soft sandstone. And these look like they were chunks that came out of the work they were doing on the floor because there were some really big stone that were used for that. And we like to save any scraps that might have a use in the future. So I did take measure. Those are the measurements. These are the measurements. I drew these to scale. And before you say anything, I realize what it looks like. These are flower petals. Okay. Get your mind out of the gutter. But yes, I know it's a bit ridiculous. Okay. Moment of truth. That's like 95% perfect. 94% perfect. It's going to work. I don't like this. I don't like doing this at all. This is scary. I didn't read the drying time on the epoxy package. I mean, that looks pretty good to me. Like, the paint color matches perfectly. Honestly, if I ask somebody to try to find the flower that I fixed, I don't think they'd be able to pick it out, which is exactly what I wanted. And I beat Daphne because she hasn't had time to do her petal yet. You got to get going on it though, because my baby's going to be here before we know it. We are overjoyed to have our baby boy, Adrian, happy and healthy and in our arms at last. We've been waiting many months to meet him face to face, and now we can finally welcome him to the Chateau. Daphne and I are always trying to learn more about the Chateau's history, and something that's been really helpful are old maps. And we saw in one map from the 16 or 1700s that the Chateau forest was really well developed. There used to be all these walking paths, and even the canal, which is now very overgrown, was once this elaborate water feature. And so we like the idea of slowly bringing the forest back to its glory days, because it is a beautiful space. And so today, I'm gonna go do some clearing up in the backyard. We've got a bridge. Since we're on the far corner of the property, I actually found the water inlet, which also looks pretty cool. Now we have a new place to explore. When Daphne was a child, her grandfather would always take his Defender and drive around the paths of the forest. So now that I'm opening up more of these old walking paths, it's just giving us that much more to explore with our little Adrian, who I know is gonna love this because this is like a safari ride. Maybe I don't have to take this tree out after all. Earlier this year, we partnered with a wildlife rescue to release brown squirrels into our forest. Recently, they've rescued an injured swan that needs a new home. Come little swan. Come join us on the lake. Once he got on the water, he seemed much happier. It's nice to have a swan back at the lake. It is nice to have a swan back at the lake. He looks happy. He does look happy. He's dancing around. So now we just, we can come back every day and feed him some duck food. Yeah, we have to find a spot that we want to feed him from. Okay, well, we'll come up with a real name. Yeah. Just not Adrian, because that one's taken. Yes. Shall we go home? Yeah. Thank you for watching. If you've enjoyed this video, then please consider subscribing. And if you'd like to support us and get exclusive content, join us on Patreon. I think that's it. That's good. Let me just make sure it was recording. Did you press the red button, Ian?