What we found under the floor

When we bought the house in 2019, it had been divided into eleven flats, and the stairs smelled of cabbage and damp. The ceilings had been lowered in the 1960s, the courtyard had been roofed with corrugated plastic, and there was a bathroom on every landing. Inês looked at it for ten minutes and said yes. I looked at it for two hours and said we should think.

The ceilings

The first week, the builders took down the lowered ceilings and found the originals above them. They were barrel vaults, painted with a faded border of leaves, and in perfect condition, because the false ceiling had kept the weather off them. That discovery set the tone. We stopped asking what we wanted to put in, and began asking what the house was trying to show us.

The things in the floor

The pine floors came up in places, and underneath them, in the dust between the joists, we found a surprising amount. A green glass bottle with a cork, dated by the shape to the 1790s. A child’s wooden top. A handful of tile fragments in blue, which a restorer matched to the panel on the stairs. A coin from the reign of Maria I, which we have not shown to anyone who might want it back.

Everything we found is in a glass case by the reception desk. Ask Rui and he will tell you where each thing came from. The bottle was under the third bedroom on the first floor, which is now an Alcove.

What we kept and what we changed

We kept the beams, the vaults, the tile panels, the stone stairs and the front door. We kept the pine floors, scrubbed and oiled, with the nail holes left in. We replaced all the wiring, all the pipes and the roof structure under the tiles, and we added a lift in the old well of the staircase so that guests who cannot manage stairs can reach every floor but the last.

We put in underfloor heating, because it was cold, and soundproofing between rooms, because it was loud. We added a roof terrace and a small pool because Inês said that a house on a hill without a view is a sad thing. We put in a hammam in the vaulted cellar, where the old wine store was, because the vault was too good to waste.

We stopped asking what we wanted to put in, and began asking what the house was trying to show us.

Why it took two years

Lime plaster has to cure, which takes weeks, and it cannot be hurried. The tile restorer worked for four months on the staircase alone. A neighbour objected to the lift, a second neighbour objected to the scaffolding, and in the winter of 2021 it rained for forty days and the roof was open for most of them.

When we opened in the spring of 2022 we had sixteen rooms, which is one more than we planned. The sixteenth is the Apartment, which started as a storeroom and which Inês argued was the best room in the house. She was right.

Things we would do again

Leave the nail holes. Keep the beams. Ask the neighbours first. And never, under any circumstances, let a plumber near the tiles.