A few weeks ago we got the permit from the Council to start with the ‘grattage’. This basically means scraping away the plaster from the walls, and the cement underneath.
For such an exotic sounding word, grattage is a thankless task – and especially for our stalwart builder Hakim, who has managed it pretty much single-handed.
The grattage revealed that our house is built of stone rather than brick, and with wooden beams resembling a Tudor construction.
In Morocco it is frequently claimed that treasure can be found in old houses – people used to hide valuables before fleeing in local dynastic disputes….sadly we have not yet found any….but we did uncover a fantastic old terracotta downpipe set into the wall, from roof to ground level, which is a kind of consolation.
