Since opening our doors about a year ago, word has started to get around about the Chateau de Lis (pronounced “Lee”). I’ve given a lot of tours – even to a group of adorable random teenagers who had the courage to knock on my door one afternoon and ask to look around. (Please don’t tell anyone I admitted to doing that, it won’t be a thing anymore, I’ve just gotten waaaaayyy too busy!). I’ve heard pretty much the same questions over and over, so I thought, well, maybe I could share some of the answers to those common questions right here. Some answers were are kinda’-sorta’ addressed in my first entry, but I can expand a little with some background info.

“How old is this place?”

This is normally one of the first questions people ask when touring the Chateau for the first time. They want to know who we bought it from, has it been in the family for several generations, etc. As I mentioned in the first post, 17 years ago the land was nothing more than a deconstructed berry-farm-turned-overgrazed-cattle-ranch, hardly a blade of grass to be found. As we began to research the kind of house we wanted to build, the one word that continuously emerged was “classic.” We wanted a timeless look and feel.

John and I have not traveled extensively in Europe. We’ve been to Europe twice, and I went a third time with my parents, years ago. But honestly, a few days in the Loire Valley, or viewing the stunning castles in Portugal, and a bit of England and Scotland is really all it takes to fall in love with classic architecture. These stories these buildings could tell! Those structures, constructed without building codes and overseen by inspectors will still be standing long after our comparatively modest chateau is uninhabitable. Much of what we have accomplished here, particularly in the details, has been adaptations of our travels and google searches that suit our own sense of design. We have done what an artisan might have done 300 years ago.

We explored Victorian, Craftsman, English cottage, and other classic architectural styles. One day as John was pouring over images, he came across a French building with steep rooflines that flared slightly at the bottom, and that one, almost unnoticeable-to-anyone-else feature was the inspiration for the Chateau. From there, everything else flowed, from the shingles that had to look like real slate, to the 12” thick walls, to the “crumbling” stucco over rock, to the real limestone everywhere.

We had our challenges with subcontractors learning how to make things look “300 years old,” that was the mantra – we didn’t want perfection, we wanted the house to be interesting, a place of almost endless discovery: we wanted it to have character.

One of the surprising elements we noticed years ago in old European estates and castles is that very few of those buildings look the way they did when they were originally built, and they were often a mix of architectural styles in the first place. Over hundreds of years these structures with their successive owners have undergone many renovations and additions as needs and interests evolved. Wealthy estate owners traveled, and they brought back with them a desire to incorporate various themes into their estates that were original, themes from Egypt, Japan, China, and other places in Europe. The more you study old buildings, and read their stories, the more apparent this becomes. With that in mind, we felt a little freer in our design, both inside and out, to incorporate elements that we just happen to love, but were not necessarily in keeping with the classic French chateau.

Today, when artistic professionals or prospective brides and grooms tour the chateau, they see different things: some see a Tuscan estate, others a medieval Scottish castle, still others a country French chateau. That is on purpose.

We are delighted that our creation is giving our guests the feeling of being out of the normal world, and that they might have stepped into a place that is possibly outside of time. So many who have toured here are incredulous that such a building could be constructed to feel so timeless.

Thank you! That’s exactly the experience we are hoping you have!