DATS - Fall is upon us & old cat

"Jb boin" (jb-boin) 10/18/2020 at 23:20 • Filed to: Down At The Street, Kiwi, Catlopnik, fall foliage, Fall, Autumn, Autumn Colors, DATS

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Still relatively green (sorry f or the poor quality, is was getting late and a phone is not a proper camera ), love the red maple flashing in the middle  :

And Kiwi gets old, he is getting really slim :(

Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available > Jb boin 10/18/2020 at 23:28

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An absolutely stunning view! That’s one beautiful landscape with the fall colors coming in.

I'm confused and worried by how see-through this house is. Abandoned perhaps?

smobgirl > Jb boin 10/18/2020 at 23:28

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Hi Kiwi 

Jb boin > Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available 10/18/2020 at 23:39

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Of course not, you can see that the bottom has been redone not too long ago and that there are new roof tiles in the middle :)

Don’t know the exact reason why they didn’t do a proper closed attic but it could have been cheaper or to preserve it how it was (was probably some sort of barn before or used to dry some grains ) and not needing the extra space up there (and an attic with big wooden beams at like 1m from the floor sucks, it’s what we have in our house).

To give you an idea, it’s possibly   older than the oldest house in the USA ( ~1640), i don’t remember exactly which century ours is supposed to be but it’s most certainly older.

barnie > smobgirl 10/18/2020 at 23:47

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Yea, check out that ear. Old guy has had an adventure or 3. Handsome still.

jminer > Jb boin 10/18/2020 at 23:51

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Beautiful view!

We have an old cat too that’s started to lose weight, never a fun thing. Ours is almost 15 and got a clean bill of health 2 weeks ago at the vet, but a few days ago really stopped eating and his energy is way down. I’m hoping he’ll perk up in a day or so but when we’ve been through this with old critters before it’s almost the end.

Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available > Jb boin 10/18/2020 at 23:55

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Are you sure it might be that old? Possibly the foundation and walls but those walls look pretty good for 400 years. What confuses me is that even the eaves under the smaller rooms that project from the main mass on the ground floor also are open to the elements.

It is true I’ve seen barns constructed like that so it seems the most likely scenario but it’s pretty tall and narrow for a barn.

In North America you simply don’t get inh ab itable residences like that even close to that age. Anything over 150 years old is REALLY OLD and aside from the occasional indigenous structure like the Etowah Indian Mounds near me you don’t get things even approaching the age of that one random house/barn .

And I also live in a place where very few structures survived the Civil War. You get a few ruins of pre war mills, some trenches, and the occasional house that survived but those are pretty uncommon and are usually museums. There's not one structure left standing in Atlanta from before the Civil War and the Zero Mile Marker post used to be the only surviving pre war artifact that hadn't been moved but then they went and moved it.

jminer > Jb boin 10/18/2020 at 23:55

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Wow - that’s a solid reminder to keep things in perspective. A single house is older by far than our entire nation.

Jb boin > smobgirl 10/18/2020 at 23:57

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He would respond with his Chartreux semi- muted voice, not the same as those two but somewhere in between :

Jb boin > Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available 10/19/2020 at 00:15

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I t’s possible that that basic structure h as been here for a very long time (it has the walls made with rocks so it’s at least a century old i would say and the way the beams are arranged is also not modern as you loose a lot of possibly usable space ) , there could have been additional openings since then or changes to the roof or even floors added .

For example in my mother’s house (the one i am taking the picture from ) , part of the wooden beams in the attic have been changed recently and some parts have been added to ensure that the solar panels would not risk breaking anything and some additional windows have been added but the base walls are still quite old (and around 1m of width at some places) .

The two houses on the right and the one on the middle are also quite old, you can see that the house in the middle has been redone to look modern but the openings makes you know that it’s not.

And t he second house on the right which was a barn until ~10 years ago, you can clearly see around two of the lower windows that they have been added recently.

Jb boin > jminer 10/19/2020 at 00:19

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I have a hard time remembering exactly when we had him but he is also at least 15 years old.

jminer > Jb boin 10/19/2020 at 00:29

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I know old ours is as we found him as a kitten 2 weeks after my wife had a major back surgery. They became inseparable as she was basically house bound for months on limited activity so they bonded strongly, he is very much her cat and doesn’t particularly like me.

Most of our critters have come into our lives around major events. One cat the summer before we got married, a dog the spring after we bought this house and another cat right before the death of a close family member.

Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available > Jb boin 10/19/2020 at 00:47

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I noticed the modernized one. It’s quite interesting how they’ve done it. Modern roof structure and probably floors on old walls and foundation.

Other house seems similar enough that I believe the repurposed barn part. Amazing how sturdy those old houses were built with solid stone walls and heavy timber frames.

I still find it to be an odd choice to maintain the open attic space when modernizing the house. The top on in particular you can see has a usable amount of space up there as the ceiling isn’t exactly where the stone wall ends. True those beams get in the way but you could probably even stand up in the middle portion. Perfect for storage.

Interesting bit about the solar panels. Were you replacing some beams original to the house that had become weakened with time? Or mostly just adding extra support to bear the extra weight?

My childhood home was built around 191o so is pretty old by US standards. It was more of a working man's house but it still has some cool old details you wouldn't see anymore. Even if the coal burning fireplaces aren't exactly practical. It is set on a foundation of solid locally mined granite that gives it a good bit of personality. Those steps can be a bit treacherous though in wet weather. 

Jb boin > Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available 10/19/2020 at 00:55

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Some beams have been replaced, some other added but even the ones replaced are probably not as old as the walls.

I might take pictures next time if i think about it.

Some old pictures where you can see the roof+solar panels from outside and also the houses on the street :

Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available > Jb boin 10/19/2020 at 01:02

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Ah yes, that tile roof doesn’t look ideal for supporting some heavy solar panels. Makes sense that most of the wood elements would have been replaced in 400 years.

These stunning vistas are doing nothing to help my wanderlust. The view of the mountains in the background is amazing. So this is all on top of a mountain?

Jb boin > Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available 10/19/2020 at 01:13

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On the other side of the valley, the “peak” that on the right that looks like a tooth is “La dent de Crolles” (the Crolles’s teeth), Crolles being the city on the valley at the bottom of it that we can’t see on the photo.

The house itself is close to the valley, like 200m higher, the village goes up to ~3000m (but no roads there).

A picture took from higher in the village (you can see the spot it’s taken from on the OP photo, where there is a small post near the top of the photo) where you can see the house and Grenoble on the background on the right :

ps:

To give you a better idea of what it looks like from the other side of the valley, it’s somewhere on the right at 1:13 on this video :

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > Jb boin 10/19/2020 at 06:12

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Awww...

Handsome old fella, hopefully he gets over what's causing his weight loss and sticks around for a bit longer yet!

Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available > Jb boin 10/19/2020 at 09:52

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Interesting how the village winds its way up the mountain and the streets are sort of terraced in some places to deal with the elevation change.

That one old church on the left is stunning. Very pictures que.

The Alpine A110 video is cool too. So they just happened to choose a nearby spot for their beauty shots?

Jb boin > Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available 10/19/2020 at 10:07

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Yes, the pilot is from around here, not sure exactly where.

A s a mater of fact, Olivier Panis, the former F1 driver is from Crolles which i was talking about earlier .

Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available > Jb boin 10/19/2020 at 10:14

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When I was looking around in google earth I could see Crolles is quite a large city with this one older village cut off from the main town by a mountain. It’s interesting how its location in a valley isolates it from the large city below. I imagine the two areas have very different feels.