Living in a 500 year old house

Our village home dates back to the middle ages, in an ancient bastide town with fortified walls, honey-colored buildings, and views of the stunning countryside down below.  I've never lived in a 500 year old house before. It's an experience all its own.

I imagine every 500 year old house, especially when the previous owners staked their claim for several decades of those years, needs a little TLC.  Ours is no different.  After months of searching online, I fell in love with this place because it is airy and open and versatile and in an amazing locale.  It has an "American kitchen" - meaning the cupboards and appliances were fitted and therefore not up for relocating with the sellers as other kitchens are wont to do.

Medieval village houses pose their challenges - nothing is square of course, things have been updated in seemingly random ways.   In our case it started to feel that pretty much everything we touched fell off or broke in our hands (see every hilarious-yet-heartwarming movie about falling in love with and renovating a house)  - but because they are made of solid stone originally, to withstand war and the elements, they are also amazingly resilient and forgiving.  You can kind of take a sledgehammer to just about any major structural component and see what happens.

We don't really know how old our house truly is because when the Nazis came through here during the height of WWII and the Resistance, they burned all the property documents.  Therefore, all houses in the village were "built in 1942." The cost and the sacrifice of the Resistance is everywhere you look here in the Dordogne.  The world has a lot to thank the people here for.

Our home opens right onto the street, it has a cave which is literally a cave, with dirt floors and dank stone walls.  And, we discovered, when we (OK, I) decided to take down one wall of plaster to see what was behind, a medieval sink hidden maybe for centuries in our living room.

Who gets to discover a medieval sink and perhaps a Knights Templar tool in their wall?  Wow!!  This is crazy stuff - and commonplace here in Perigord.  It's a world away from day to day life in the US.  The adventure of discovery in our very own house is a gift all its own.  Plus, because we moved into a house so long a part of the community it came with:

• Amazing neighbors
• An awesome although heretofore neglected cat
• Quirks
• Stories

I've loved what I've discovered and chomp at the bit to find out what's next.  More photos soon.  Stay tuned...