The French House: Take Me Back to the Beginning
Welcome to the very first post on the French House renovations. For those of you who have not been following me for long, let me give you a quick recap. At the beginning of Covid (like right before Covid became a worldwide catastrophe and we thought there was just a nasty cough in China) we bought a house in rural France. Little were we to know that it would be years before we would see it.
the decision to buy
We have been travelling to this region of France every year for the last decade to vacation with our good friends who own a house in the area. So we know this part of France well and had been toying with the idea of buying a house for a few years. At the end of 2019 two properties in the area came on to the market - one was located off the same lane that our friends have their home and the other was in a nearby village about a 15 minute drive away from our friends. So while my husband was on a business trip in London, he went across to France for a day to see both. He took videos of each home so we could decide together which was the right house.
Initially I preferred house number 2 (the one we didn’t buy). It was a proper two storey maison with beautiful grounds, a completely weeded over tennis court, stables and a separate maisonette which would have been perfect for a second family to stay and have separate quarters. It was on the rise of a hill and had lovely views over the fields. But, it was big. It had far too many rooms for a family of 4 who would only be using it during holidays. We also thought we would want to reconfigure some aspects of the home to make it right. And it was more expensive. So even though I loved the old oak sweeping staircase and weeded over tennis court, we decided to take it out of consideration. I’m glad we did.
Instead we bought the farmhouse on the lane, a two minute drive from our friends. After all, one of the main reasons to buy in this area was to be near them, so the location of this house was a huge drawcard.
the farmhouse
The house is a former farmhouse and when the previous owners bought it, it was still just a small home with living quarters attached to a barn complete with cattle stalls, pig troughs and hay storage. It sits on the rise of a hill and has views across the land to the village beyond. The farmer’s field borders our garden with no fencing or delineation so you can literally just step into the field (typically chickpeas or sunflowers) from our grass. The previous owners renovated the property and converted the barn so that it adjoined the original living quarters. I don’t know when these renovations happened but I’m going to guess it was about 30 years ago judging by some of the interior design choices. It would have been a big renovation to undertake so it’s no surprise that some of the work is better than others - my guess is they probably ran into budget constraints to keep the whole project at the same standard. It’s understandable.
An example of the slightly chaotic fast moving videos I had to view the property through. I scrubbed slowly through these videos so many times to understand the space and take in the elements within the rooms.
second guessing and the Covid blues
I have to say I wasn’t immediately sold on the house - even once we’d bought it. I had never actually seen it IRL and only had these crazy videos to go on (my husband who took the videos was also chatting with the real estate agent who was showing him around, so he wasn’t maybe as focused on where he was pointing the camera as I might have been). In addition, the previous owners had squeezed the most amount of furniture and art into every room (think multiple beds per bedroom and stuff everywhere) so the videos showed a seriously cluttered, messy home full of furniture that has seen better days. So, yeah. It wasn’t love at first (video) sight. But I was excited about it’s possibilities…until Covid hit. From seeing the videos and buying the house, years went by and I really lost any sense of excitement - for this house and for life in general. Before we finally got our chance to travel to France and see the home in 2022, I approached my husband with a ‘maybe we should just sell it’ conversation. I felt no attachment for the home and had forgotten what it felt like to travel and be in this part of France. I honestly think I just felt detached from everything. Covid had zapped me of a sense of adventure and enthusiasm. Everybody was saying to me “you must be sooo excited to be seeing the house!” but inside I just felt really flat.
the big reveal
Luckily, my husband who is sensible, suggested we go to see the house first before making a decision on whether we wanted to keep it or not. All of a sudden, having voiced my concerns it felt like the pressure was off - and so with an open mind in April 2022, we set off to see the home. We stayed at our friends house because ours was just an empty stone building sitting in a field. The first morning we drove up to the house it was a warm and sunny Spring day, the sky was a brilliant blue.
Having poured over the initial videos eleventy hundred times over two long Covid years, I felt like I knew exactly what this house was going to be like. And it was exactly as I imagined. Nothing was a surprise - in that initial viewing I felt kind of calm - like I was finally seeing it with my own eyes and it was as I had expected. It felt reassuring somehow. All of my doubt just melted away.
And then I got excited.
Here is the same room shown in the video above upon my first viewing IRL with all the furniture and art of the previous owners gone. The green post-it notes on the floor are me marking out the size of the sofa and the rug. Between seeing the house in April and staying there for the first time in July, I had to get on quick smart to buy some furniture. So marking everything out and taking sensible ordinary room photos was needed.
the interiors
The interior of the house is predominately stone walls. The floors are terracotta tiles and some of them seem to be newer than others (the newer ones are not very nice). All the timber had been stained dark brown and the original beams are left exposed in many of the rooms. The walls that aren’t exposed stone, had been finished with a rough sweeping render (circa 1980’s) in a creamy stone-yellow colour. The lighting was…in one word, terrible. In fairness, it was largely just dated but also the position of the lighting was not great and lots of the rooms were really dark and gloomy because the lighting was inadequate. There are elements of the original use of the building in evidence throughout the house - in the entrance room there is a barn door high up on the wall and another opening enclosed with glass which I’m guessing would have been for moving hay. In another room there is a stone sink thought to be part of the old kitchen and a very low arched doorway that I can’t believe any adult could have comfortably passed under.
The kitchen and bathrooms are all fine. The kitchen cabinetry is showing signs of serious wear and tear and will definitely need replacing and the layout of the kitchen isn’t great (for example, there is no space for the fridge so it’s located in the laundry). Given the kitchen is a really good sized room, this is just a design error. Even though the bathrooms aren’t finished in the way I would choose, they are also completely fine.
Above are some examples of the bad lighting. The placement is just bizarre and completely ineffectual and on top of that, the actual lights themselves are not a good choice for the rooms they are in / and obviously they’re also dated. All in all not great. Also, note the colour of the walls - a kind of sandy colour with a gritty finish. Both of these elements were high on the list for things to remedy.
initial renovation decisions
During our first visit in April 2022 I made a list of all the things I would (ideally) change about the house. It read like this:
Smooth render all the rag rendered walls
Smooth render over some of the stone walls (one main wall in each of the rooms)
Paint walls and ceilings
Blast the ceiling beams to remove the dark timber stain and reveal the original timber colour
Replace the flooring
Paint all the woodwork from dark stained to something light
Remove the curtains
Replace the lighting
Renovate the kitchen
Add glass shower screens to showers
Install air conditioning in main bedrooms
Not a crazy list - but not a short easy one either. Whether we actually did the above works would depend on budget, availability of trades and ultimately, design direction. Some of it got scrapped pretty quickly. Take the idea to smooth render some of the stone walls. Initially I thought I should smooth render over some of the stone walls as lots of the rooms felt a bit oppressive with all that heavy stone bearing down upon you. But this point of view was flawed because I made the decision when the house was completely empty. By the time we had visited a second time in summer 2022 with some scant furniture, I decided against this - even a small amount of furniture softened the coldness of the stone. (Also, when I explained to the contractor - through a French translator - that I wanted to cover up some of the stone, you could feel the air rush out of the room. Without speaking the language I knew that what I’d suggested was blasphemous). OK. The stone stays.
how do you renovate a house in France when you don’t speak French or live there?
Good question. When we bought the house we engaged a couple who manage the property for us. They help with keeping the garden in shape, taking care of admin like local taxes, connecting utilities etc and check in on the property to make sure nothing is amiss while we are not there. Initially I thought I could figure out the interiors from my side and then ask them to coordinate with the tradespeople, but I realised in summer 2022 that that wouldn’t work - because some design elements have to be decided on while standing in the house (how high should a light fitting be fixed? which shade of white is the right paint colour etc). For that, you need someone with a design background. And as luck would have it, they had a contact for an Australian lady, Leanne, who lives in a nearby village and who is an interior designer. Brilliant. So, while it is my job to figure out the interiors, Leanne is my French speaking on-the-ground eyes and ears, helping me to decide on certain aspects of the house, coordinating quotes, speaking to the trades, overseeing the work, giving me advice and generally pushing me to make decisions. Thank goodness! I have no idea how I thought this was going to work otherwise. Clearly it wasn’t going to.
Next week: The first round of design decisions. Painting, plastering and lighting and the beginning of understanding French trades and how they work. The word “delays” comes to mind…