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Quercy
During our house hunting expeditions we fell in love with the white houses and barns of what was the ancient province of Quercy, in the South West of France. The white limestone buildings typify the region and the stone is just beautiful. I hadn't realised that limestone was used to build the pyramids in Egypt, so it's been used as a construction material for a long time and seems to have lasted the tests of time. Our farmhouse was built of limestone in 1832, a little later than the pyramids!
The white outer wall does tend to suffer from a build up of mould if an area of wall is subject to a lot of water. This can be due to leaky guttering or in our case where old stone sinks have their outlets onto the walls below. Be reassured, we don't use these old sinks but they are are a wonderful piece of architectural history and make a great talking point in several of our rooms. On the outside of the wall the stone drain of the sink protrudes and the whole area around it seems to collect any rain, overtime the mould grows. You can just about see the area I am referring to on this less seen, east side picture of the house. The sink outlet is just to the left and down a bit from the bolly (the open window area).
Having spoken to several people, we now have an action plan to remove the mould. Someone suggested using bleach to clean it as I guess the mould is similar to the build up you sometimes get in showers. Our first plan however is to use the Stihl pressure washer, bought in the summer for this very reason and tested with great success on the patio! It was a wedding anniversary present to ourselves and we couldn't resist a bit of removable graffiti for our facebook page!