21/04/2026
Following the theme of things at a chateau are never as straightforward as they seem…
When we decided to paint our front gate, it wasn’t just the choice of colour. We had to clean them first, which was not easy when the nearest tap was 500m away and we didn’t have a hose long enough to reach. After lugging buckets of water up the driveway several times, we had an offer from a neighbour (across the main road!) to connect our hoses to their tap since they were just close enough if we connected all of our collective hoses. What a timesaver that was!
With the gate being4 meters high, we also needed scaffolding which needed to be moveable to get in and out of our driveway. Total faff.
After the gates were cleaned and the old, chipped paint removed and sanded, came the painting. Having decided on black and gold vs. matching the colour of our shutters - we needed to test several versions of gold paint to get a bold enough finish.
After finishing the painting, we still felt like the gate was missing something. The pillars seemed empty without finials. We looked at different shops for something suitable and then it dawned on us that we had two stone pine cones sitting on the driveway. They always seemed out of place but were too heavy to lift 4 meters in the air. Not to be defeated, Sassan contacted a local crane operator who was willing to help us - hurrah!
Something simple took months to be completed, but it needed to be done. And I think we found a great home for the pinecones, which look like they’ve always been there.
