If I recall your comments on earlier threads… your house sounds like one built for summer-holiday occupation… they are, of course, much cheaper to buy but not to run full-time.
It was a permanent home - it’s just because it was built in 1958 to minimum standards [if any]
the previous occupants must have been of hardy stock 
(I’d be interested to find out about 1958 “normes”… as we have some properties in the village which date from 1960… only a couple of years later… and they are decently built.)
Yes. You have to be hardy to live in this house. Or, as I have done over this winter, move an IKEA ‘Poang’ into the kitchen and live there. I dress for indoors as for a bracing day outdoors.
I have a temperature transmitter which has been telling me for the past 3 months it’s 8C-10C in the abandoned sitting room. It’s only 12.8C in there now. This is a downer because my photo editing rig, 60" TV, stereo and guitars are in the salon and I can’t sit there for the cold.
It’s ironic that I’m waiting for the weather to warm up to be comfortable in the salon. This means using the room when we have long light evenings better spent outdoors.
But maybe with one of those hoodies I’ll get the room back in winter … 
When I bought the place a comment on SF was “shoddy ‘modern’ French building”. And so it is! A.K.A. “The Plywood Shack”
You have 8-10C ? lucky you …
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perhaps you should have visited/inspected the property in the full chill of winter… before offering to Buy it… then you might have noticed the occupants wearing 47 layers and chipping ice off the windows…
Dad always chose our new home during the worst weather the UK could provide… never did house-hunting on warm, sunny days…
Indoors, that is ! 
[quote=“Stella, post:26, topic:47472”]
visited/inspected the property in the full chill of winter [/quote]
Chance would have been a fine thing. I was under quite abit of pressure to get sorted. I arrived in FR on 31/10/2020 just as Covid lockdown was really ramping up. Those were the days of that ‘attestation’ you had to have printed off on the day to explain why you were out and about. Agents were only doing video ‘viewings’.
I was incredibly lucky that my 12 day Air BnB turned into a 12 month rental as mine host realised that, after all his Xmas and N.Y. bookings cancelled, it was game over for the foreseeable future.
When I was able to get around and see places he kept reminding me that my rental would be over by end Jan 2021. I saw The Plywood Shack on a nice hot sunny day in late summer, moved in just 10 days before my rental expired.
I learned the hard way - €€€€ - that first winter, what trying to heat this place involved.
The ‘occupants’ by this time had been brown bread for about a year …
oh dear… just goes to show that any of us can make a bad choice if we are under pressure… 
Well, I’m OK with The Plywood Shack, really. Like anywhere it has it’s +++'s and —'s. The view is wonderful. even in winter
It’s peaceful and quiet. It faces south so I get the sun all day. The sound of the bells from the church is beautiful. I have done the place as I want it.
And it does strike me that perhaps we in the ‘developed world’ think we have a right to be warm when it’s cold and cool when it’s hot - the latter certainly the case in the USA.
The thing that I ponder these days is that the town and others in the region are, because of Operation Overlord and all that followed, sadly devoid of the sort of charm that towns and villages elsewhere in FR have that were not ‘sacrificed for France’.
There was an exhibition of photos and documents of Vire after the intense bombing of 06/06/44 - 296 aircraft just for Vire! On 07/06/44 the place was a pile of smoking rubble.
I’m re-reading Beevor’s account of the battle for Normandy and the descriptions of the fate of Caen, St. Lo, Vire itself are pitiful. Thank goodness it was established very soon after the landings that the Germans had left Bayeux.
Yes a lot of Normandy got absolutely pummelled - the Allies had such overwhelming air superiority that Bomber Command, the US 8th Air Force and 2TAF could do what they liked.
Also Monty was very fond of a very heavy preparatory artillery barrage, having been a junior officer on the Western Front in WW1.
I have lower temp than you in winter…indoors.
Agree with you about Poang. A tall armchair with ears is helpful.
I retrieved 2 of these from my defunct car this winter and found them really helpful in said armchair.
Even though it’s not in the description and they are indeed fantastic back supports in chair/car they also retain body heat and block draughts. (Cover is washable). Product 100366252 obtainable on and off for 8-10 euros. Try not to buy from Lidl.fr without a coupon or a freeship offer, unless shipping to a local collection point for 2 euros, otherwise they charge 5.
Lucky I’m not in the Jura, really.
Fair enough…
I was just a little concerned that you had unwittingly been “sold a pup” as your description certainly matches those small, somewhat elderly properties around here, which have never been intended for year-round habitation… most often found in/near picturesque woodlands and hamlets… frequented by extended family members, during school holidays etc…
so long as you are happy… that is the main thing… 
A plywood shack is nearly a sips built shack without the insulation 
This very thing happened to me once when I took my Trafic in for a CT - never forgot to put them back in again beforehand after that. 
It was a ‘favourable’ result, b.t.w.
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Plus it’s not a mod to the vehicle as the rear seats on the 307SW are very much designed to be taken out.
The 307SW is extremely useful in this setup. A van, in fact. I have a full size door in the back as we speak, ready to go to the dechet.
I always used to worry about potentially damaging the window glass, or big panoramic sunroof if something tall, when using mine to shift stuff.