That is amazing!!! I can just imagine all the lil life stories this home has to tellš
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Very beautifulā¦ looks like it should be in a Home & Garden magazine
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Well my hall made it onto the Farrow and Ball inspiration website! So you never know!
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Very tasteful Brian, you will have so much fun, and hard work of course, in designing your home here.
I have noticed that during the last 10 years the French have become very much more into decorating and renovating their homes. The style of papering over everything in sight, including ceilings, with garish designs has given way to more subtle blends and a large choice of paper, paints and fabrics.
I think this is due in part to āmakeoverā programmes that have become popular and have inspired people to become more creative. 
Itās the only paint I will use, as itās powder pigment based not acrylic based itās covers beautifully it will be great in our new french home as it will allow the walls to breath. The colour tones will go beautifully with the stone as well. Iām guessing you can tell Iām a gay man rightā¦ lol 
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Certainly a man with a lot of taste and ideas. Is your partner adept at D.I.Y too ?
I enjoy decorating, including tile laying (but not grouting), and have also built from scratch (in my partnerās house) a decorative wooden mantle with shelving, I used wood from wardrobe doors that were going dirt cheap in a āreclamation shopā. 
Yes he is Ann so we should be a good team, well if I can drag him away long enough from his two greatest passionsā¦cheese 
and wine 
!!
It sounds like you are pretty handy at the DIY yourself! 
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He will be in paradise here then, so many cheeses, so much wine, so little time 
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Very pretty!!!
Hi Brian
What happens after thisā¦??
Are you āinā ?
Have you time to write a blog- I would love to follow the course of your restoration!
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Hi Franz, we have now completed the purchase and just starting tonplan and cost the project. I start work in June when I plan to go over for two weeks for further measuring up. I also hope to meet the roofer and get an estimate for replacing the roof so we know the sort of figure we need to get together to get the house watertight. Once we have that done everything else falls in to place. I also plan to tidy up the garden, prune the fruit trees as not touchās for 12 years. Recover the fallen tiles. Then see what else I can achieve.
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That should keep you busy.
Dear Brian
Thank you for replying so quickly. Your property looks idyllic- I can see the potential you visualized in it. We moved here full-time after the Brexit vote; both took early retirement and glad that we have our feet under the table now that things are starting to kick off.
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Hi Brian
Hi Franz Iām envious that you have managed to move across already itās looking like itās going to be around 4-5 years before David and I can make the full time move sadly.
Hi Brian
We were lucky in that we bought the house here about 5 years ago, with a view to moving when we (eventually) retired. We had a couple of years of letting it out as a holiday home, then the Brexit vote came along; we both chose to take early retirement and come out here, selling up in uK. In a way Iām glad Brexit helped us make up our minds and frankly, itās been easier to get round some of the regulations about residency (90 day max visit, six months total stay in a year) and car registration, at least up till now. Weāre both going to French lessons and my wife is looking at becoming a French citizen; frankly, itās just easier than applying for residency permits every 1/3/5/10 years. Iām luckier in that I inherited German citizenship from my father so the authorities are a bit more relaxed.
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So sounds like we are pretty much aligned on a similar journey to you. Though sadly we wonāt be able to rent ours as we are far from having a house in a rentable state yet. Iām planning to retire at 55 in 5 years I hoped to go earlier but the figures just donāt stack up at the moment. And David is only 35 so would be 40 when we come across so I need to consider his future also. We are also learning French so this time frame will hopefully allow us to become much more fluent.
Iām still getting my head around the residency rules and of course this could all change. We got PACād in France to help establish our profile there. We may also in time apply to become citizens but are a way off that at present.
So itās just ploughing on now getting the house up to scratch and hopefully in a semi habitable state over the next couple of years.
I hope you are enjoying your early retirement though.
That sounds like a brilliant buy! Are you still as happy with it? Iām sure you are! Spring and well, sounds good to me. Renovating rooves was always the first thing I thought about, looking at anything suitable, but for a place you love, any kind of temp home might do while you work on whatever had to be done. Almost any size of Timber garden chalet, can be insulated and made cosy, is my experience, I got one as studio, 20 years ago, and lined it with insulation, Snug as a bug, in the coldest weather, and still solid. It will outlive me!
Hi Janette, what a timely post on this thread, this weekend was the first anniversary of when we went out to see the house and put in the offer. So much has happened since we completed on the house in January and did our Civil Partnership (PACās)
with the Notaire on the same day. Since then Iāve been out several times and have had a lot of fun. We have had a few false starts with finding a roofer sadly. The first french artisan we thought we had hit gold with turned in to fools gold. He had a vested interest in the house, it was his grandmothers and heād grown up there, so we felt heād do a good job of it, but sadly we could not persuade him to give us the roof we wanted. Which was one that used a breathable membrane and one that we could easily insulate. The final straw was when we discovered his family had been in an 80 year war of attrition with our only neighbour, the local farmer who surrounds our land. And he said he couldnāt wait to start as it would annoy the our neighbour so very much! So we felt he had to go as the last thing we want is to start our own fresh 80 year war. Then another this time ex pat builder came and looked in detail gave us a ball park figure of around ā¬70-80,000 to do the house and barn roof. However several weeks later he came back and decided it was to big a job for him to take on.
But they have both turned out to be a blessing in disguise as we have now found an amazing guy and his team, to take things forward hopefully he has agreed to build a whole new roof on house and barn, with 6 veluxās and a dormer window in our bedroom, he will also do the pigsty roof and the workshop roof put new window openings and windows in the Kitchen and the barn (sitting room as will be) and repoint the entire house and barn for ā¬53,000 which is just amazing! And heās Siret registered and a full french tax payer etc. We could not be happier so now we have to get a French mortgage in place so we can hopefully get things underway in February, so very excited right now.
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