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Karina Waters: The moment that we stepped inside, the owner opened up the door. Straight ahead were mounds and mounds of rubble and dirt where three levels of floors and the ceilings had fallen down. There were weeds, and stinging nettles, and trees growing inside.

Dinah Cardin: How were you able to have vision when you saw this rubble, how did it spark your creative imagination to actually save it?

Karina: I look back and sometimes I wonder that myself.

Chip Van Dyke: Welcome to the "PEMcast," conversations and stories for the culturally curious. From the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem Massachusetts, I'm Chip Van Dyke.

Dinah: I am Dinah Cardin. This is Part 3 of our Historic House Crush series.

Chip: In this series, we've talked with architects, and historians, curators, and preservationists, all who have dedicated their professional lives to historic buildings and the stories they tell.

Dinah: These people are part of a larger community that we at PEM like to refer to as ''The Crushers.''

Chip: Crushers are people like Frank Vagnone, who blogs about his experience sleeping in historic house museums, or Joel Lefever, who not only runs a historic house museum in York, Maine, but also lives in a historic home.

Dinah: At PEM, we have an incredible collection of artworks, but we also are responsible for a number of historic structures, some of which have seen over 300 years of occupants come and go. There is no shortage of ''Crushers'' lining up for each one of our daily house tours.

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Chip: Today, our story is from perhaps one of the world's most famous historic house crushers. She has hundreds of thousands of followers on social media. She called us from her home in the French Pyrenees.

Karina Waters: To give you some idea geographically, the chateau is south of Toulouse, about one and half hours' drive south of Toulouse. It's almost between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean.

Chip: Back in 2011, Karina Waters and her husband Craig were looking for a place to live in the South of France.

Karina: We had this idea of just buying this little, small village home, maybe, I don't know, some pale blue shutters, close to a boulangerie where you can buy croissants and baguettes.

Chip: But they ended up with something else entirely.

Karina: We've driven through mountains and fields of sunflowers, and arrived at this little village, and went over a little stony bridge, and up to the chateau gates. Then, behind these beautiful iron gates was this beautiful neoclassical chateau just sitting there amongst fields of flowers.

Chip: When they stepped inside, they were stunned by what they saw.

Karina: When I looked through the vestibule down towards the rear of the chateau, I could see the sky where the roof had fallen in. I saw a tree on the roof. We were very limited on how far we could walk in because it was obviously dangerous.

Chip: It wasn't all bad news though. One room, known as the Salon de Musique, was fairly intact.

Karina: It's this beautiful gold embellished room with gold leaf, with all violins and musical instruments. There were just three rooms that were intact, just intact, I mean. [laughs] The other sort of 91, which I added up on the plans, were really just all just an internal implosion.

Dinah: 94 rooms in all. The Château de Gudanes was built in 1745 in the small village of Château Verdun. It's a tiny town, we're talking less than 50 people. Many of the people who live there are the descendants of cooks, gardeners and maids employed at the chateau throughout its long history.

Chip: In the 13th century, the property belonged to the Marquis de Sales. The story of this place reads like a retelling of French history. Seized during the French Revolution, pillaged in the mid 19th century, over the last 200 years several family crests had been raised above the main entrance. When Karina and Craig found it, it had been abandoned and in ruin for nearly 40 years.

Dinah: Karina, what is your relationship with the locals?

Karina: The locals, it's just fantastic. They are so grateful, with wide open arms, this village chateau is back. I remember the first time when we had the Catalonian builders, and we had this temporary power connected so they could work at night in winter.

I remember one night I drove up into the driveway and there was a light on in one of the rooms. When I arrived at the gates, there were all the local villagers who had come to see the chateau lit up at night. For some of them, it was the first time that they had seen lights on at the chateau.

Dinah: What is it like to live there? What's going on today?

Karina: Right at this moment, I'm sitting inside a historical monument, and I have to say it's a warm sunny day here. I have just finished tiling the vestibule, which is about 110 square meters. What I love about that is that the stones are really heavy. Like, each piece of stone is about 60 kilos. It's really heavy work.

Our builder refused to do it because he knew that it was just going to be too hard a job, but we did it in a way that we laughed the whole way through it. It reminded me of a quote from an English philosopher called John Ruskin, and he said that when we build, that we should build forever and that each stone that we lay will be held sacred, just because we've done that with our own hands.

Chip: Sounds pretty magical, but Karina explained that it hasn't been all roses. For instance, she doesn't have a visa so every three months she has to return home to Australia, and the troubles beyond that are numerous.

Karina: What it is, is that there's always this sort of constant red, white and blue tape here because you don't just get the red tape, you get the white and the blue as well.

I bought this old car, and I wanted to put it into my name, and I still haven't achieved it. I've been down for 10 goes because I don't have an invoice in my name. Everything's in the chateau name. I can restore a chateau, but I can't put a car in my name.

We have the French government who wants to make it into a hotel. They'll give us financial assistance if we do, but we have to move forward with our dream, not anyone else's, and not be led by the problems that occur all the time, whether it's from the historic monuments, whether it's from the local plumber who is making life a nightmare or something.

That's just how we have to be, and that's what we have to think every day.

Dinah: What is your dream for the house?

Karina: My dream is for the chateau to continue to go forward. I'd like to be the person that sets the foundation for my children and for my descendants, or anyone, whoever it might be, it might not even be my family, whoever it is for the future, that this place is here for a lot longer.

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Chip: Karina knew that what she had here was very special, and she wanted to share her progress with her family back in Australia.

Karina: I started up a Facebook site for the chateau, along with the little blogs that I did on WordPress. I think I had about 50 followers. Then one day I woke up and I had 6,000 followers. I thought my children had been messing around with Facebook. Then Craig said to me, "Oh, I don't think it's the kids messing around or playing a joke. There's an email from "The Huffington Post.""

Chip: The next day, she had 15,000 followers, and the following day 30,000. After "Vogue" got a hold of the story, Karina had no shortage of interest in her project.

Karina: One time I was on the train, and I heard two Americans talking. Then I heard them say, "Do you know where the village chateau is?" I said, "I know where it is because I'm going up there now." They came up, and they ended up staying for three weeks and helping me with the work.

Over this summer, we had many people come to stay. Everyone that has come up to the chateau under those sorts of circumstances has brought so much positivity.

Dinah: You've got four willing workers sitting here...

[laughter]

Dinah: ...plotting to come visit you.

Karina: [laughs] That's how it happens here.

Chip: Karina believes in including everyone in the process of bringing the chateau back to life.

Karina: We had a restoration workshop this year and last year. Two women from our local village joined us to share their grandmothers' and great grandmothers' recipes when they were the chateau cooks back in the 1800s and up until the 1940s.

They cooked three local dishes, trout, a rabbit stew, and a croustade de pommes, which is like an apple pie, all from the original chateau recipes.

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Karina: I feel like as the work and the trust that we have been giving to the chateau with the work that we're doing, the respect that we're trying to give, it's almost like that it's emerging itself and that its own spirit has been regained.

I know this sounds quite spiritual, but it's hard not to feel that way when you're in a place like this. [laughs] This is more than just a restoration of a building or of a chateau. Buildings are not just bricks and mortar, they have a history and they have memories. They're the keepers of these memories.

Whatever we endeavor to do in the future, passing on and sharing these memories and the past is really what is important.

Dinah: How do people find you? Obviously they can find you at the train station and follow you home, but what are other ways that people can find you? [laughs]

Karina: You just have to type in Chateau Gudanes or chateau in France. For a little while there, we were coming up as the number one chateau in France, but I think now we're below Versailles if you type in "chateau" in Google.

Chip: If you're interested in supporting Chateau Gudanes, you can visit the chateau's online boutique where you can find handmade products from the region, including scarves patterned in designs inspired by the chateau.

Karina: We've put our advent calendar up for this year. We have this beautiful chateau advent calendar that you can put on your mantelpiece. 24 doors that open up with little pictures of the chateau. The boutique is about just keeping the chateau sustainable.

Dinah: Karina, thank you so much.

Karina: Yeah, thanks Dinah, and thanks, Karen. I appreciate listening and Whitney and thank you for everything. My kids think it's so super cool that I'm doing a podcast.

[laughter]

Karina: They go, "Go mom, it's super." [laughs]

Dinah: Thank you so much.

Karina: See you. Bye. [French]

Dinah: Since we last spoke with Karina, the interest in her project keeps pouring in. The chateau recently won a prestigious Medal of Honor from a foundation honoring French and European historic presentation.

Chip: On the chateau's blog, Karina wrote a heartfelt thank you to those who have been "Believing in and recognizing our beautiful place on Earth."

Dinah: What would any of us have to believe in if it weren't for Karina and crushers like her who, when faced with rot and ruin, see potential instead of problems?

Chip: Fortunately for all of us, they are also sharing their unique vision with the world.

Dinah: There's a whole community of crushers sharing their stories online. An easy way to find them is by searching for the #HistoricHouseCrush on Instagram or check out the show notes for this episode where we'll leave links to some of our favorite crushers, connected.pem.org.

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