Rustic House Design in Portugal, part 2. Photos of our process of restoring an old house in the Serra do Açor mountains. The existing stone farmhouse was at least 200 years old when purchased, and was in need of a full makeover.
Part 2 of our Rustic House Design in Portugal blog series begins with this photo – the old farmhouse interior, which shows 6 relatively small rooms in the main section of the house, adjoining a central hallway. Most of the wood was rotting and had been eaten away by insects.
The old keys to the doors…
The first project was to gut the building – to take out everything including all the floors, the wood and plaster lathe walls and ceiling/roof, and removing the lime from the stone walls.
Fortunately many of the beams were still good, including some of the rafters, and they’ll be kept in place for the new roof. These chestnut beams and roof boards are at least 200 years old, so it wasn’t a surprise that many of them had been destroyed by powder-post beetles over the years and will need to be replaced.
This was the old kitchen after the walls had been knocked out. The stone walls were black, due to the tradition of smoking pork meat which hung from the ceiling, on an open fire with only a small window in the corner of the room for ventilation.
This photo shows the original xisto stone after the lime, or ‘cal,’ had been removed. Beautiful old xisto stonework that was mostly straight and plumb, and not needing much structural work.
The house, finally gutted except for the floors and roof, begins to show off its old xisto stone walls. These will need to be pointed with new lime.
While waiting for the construction crew to show up, we decided to go ahead with pouring the footings for the new stone patio on the second stone terrace, just downhill from the house.
Here is the house after most of the foundational construction work, painting, and stone pointing had been done. The electric lines and plumbing are now installed inside the xisto walls and wood and stone floors. The look is barebones and spacious, with everything ready for the interior woodwork to begin.
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