The Naked Decorator

As the rooms were being finished, J and I were decorating and furnishing. I was given 'carte blanche' for the decorating and opted for neutral colours for bedrooms on the ground floor (rez-de-chaussee) and blues / lilac for the upstairs rooms. I have been in rooms that have been too 'busy' - I wanted to create a comfortable/relaxing environment.

During the early summer of 2003 it was very warm, and my dear husband 'stripped off'' to paint the sloping ceilings in the upstairs rooms. His nickname was 'The Naked Decorator', we must admit it caused some amusement among our friends when they found out. They even offered him some work!! Working in the nude has its advantages... less laundry to worry about!!

Once the rooms were completed to my satisfaction I designed and printed off some leaflets and so armed we went to the Tourist Office in our local town.....

I asked if they could display my leaflets on their shelves.... "Non!" "Why?" I asked, "You are not labelisee" they replied. What did they mean? I was at a loss what to do. They had a very kind gentleman there who spoke some English. He explained that I needed to be approved by either Gites de France or Clevacances before they could put my leaflets in the office. I asked what do I need to do. He said to leave it in his hands......

A couple of weeks later he came to our home with a colleague from Clevacances....They checked the rooms and facilities. The beds were tested (gently by hand I hasten to add), bathrooms given a thorough going over and decor checked.. They liked what they saw and gave me 2 'keys' and were then happy to advertise my business for me, (at a price!) ..... Hooray - I am legal, have peace of mind, and it is not as difficult as I thought it would be.

Next thing was to let the Tax Office know what I am doing. I became a 'Micro-Bic Enteprise' and that only took 5 minutes to complete the form after being advised by two very helpful guys in the 'Hotel des Impots'. I had heard of some stories about the tax office not being helpful at all but I have had nothing but help from them. Mind you, you do have to ask all the relevant questions because they do not volunteer information.

Work starting/stopping/starting..

The work on the house did not start until after the summer holidays 2002.

We did not realise that all of France went on holiday from the end of July to the end of August....so we had to wait, and wait.

First thing to be done was 'roof revision'. All the tiles were taken off, the beams checked and ny that needed replacing were replaced. The volige was also replaced in parts - most of it was good.
New under tiles were put in and a mix of the original and new were then put on. The tiles are 'U' shaped, the bottom ones are put U side up and the top ones upside down. And so the roof was done. In the process the grass outside the house was churned up to look like a sea of mud.

The electrics were the first interior things to be sorted out. The system we had came 'out of the ark' and was extremely inefficient. If I had more than one appliance on the go the whole lot blew fuses. Also the plumbing was started. We had worked out where to put radiators and bathrooms for the B&B. The plumber J-P was excellent, efficient and clean.

We eventually had pipes running round and up the walls all waiting to be put behind the dry-lining that was to go in. There was also miles of different coloured electrical cables running round the walls, poking out of holes in ceilings - hopefully it would all come together. Then came in the aluminium support frame for the dry lining. Sheets of plasterboard were cut and fixed and slowly but surely the work came together.

Trouble was, the guy overseeing the work had other jobs on the go...... It took 14 months for them to complete the job. It was overstretching our time and I wanted to get the B&B up and running..

Autumn/Winter

Over the autumn and winter months we were organising our lives out here, applying for our 'cartes de sejour', registering with the taxman, CPAM (caisse primaire assurance maladie) for health cover, getting to know our bank manager, neighbours and neighbourhood. And also getting to grips with the language.

We both had a knowledge of the French language. J had been attending night classes in French for a good few months and had quite a good knowledge although he denied it. I still remembered most of my 'schoolgirl' French as I had had around three years of strict lessons. It is strange how quickly the words came back... There they were filed away in the darkest recesses of my brain ready to be hauled out into the light again! I was surprised at how much was there!

We decided to wait for around six months before deciding what to do with the house, and whether to stay here or not. If we could survive a winter then it would be OK! (soooo very optimistic!).

There were a couple of English families in the village but we did not impose on them, our home was about 5k from the village and we only went there to see the mairie or go to the boulangerie, post office or pharmacy. We did not register with the doctor straight away as we had no health problems.

We met another English couple in a local supermarche. They had been here about three months longer than us and we found that we had a lot in common. They had retired out here and just enjoying the whole French 'thing'. The wife attended French classes one evening a week and we went along with her for a few months. We found that it did not help as much as the organisers thought it would. We decided that we would fare better with French television, local radio and also the newspapers - we were right!

We went back to the UK in the January of '02 to meet our 1st grand-daughter. She was born just before Christmas '01 around 3 weeks early. We had arranged to go back in the January and couldn't change our travel arrangements. Whilst we were there we approached an estate agent and put our house on the market. We reached the decision that we would need to sell in order to update the property we had bought. We had consulted with a local builder (French) and had plans drawn up to change the interior of the house. It also needed completely re-plumbing and re-wiring and the artisan we had chosen could do the whole job for us using sub-contractors. We had the devis and it was affordable.

Now we just had to wait for the start date.............

People, showers, water, floors, gas etc!

Whilst our daughters were here during August '01 we noticed a very strange phenomenom. When someone had a shower at the far end of the house, waste water came up in the kitchen and flooded the floor. It was not from the toilets I hasten to add, just bath/shower water. The kitchen sink seemed to evacuate without any problems... It seemed that there was either a blockage in the pipe outside or that maybe the fosse septique was full and backing up - but there was no obnoxious smell.

We located the fosse septique with the aid of our elderly neighbour - he prodded a place with his walking stick which turned out to be dead centre of the lid! We dug out the ground that covered the fosse and looked. There was a large concrete lid with a ring in the top..... We called on our local farmer and he arrived with tractor, hook and chain and lifted the lid. There were around six men stood around the hole, looking down, scratching their heads and sniffing. They all nodded to each other, pas de probleme! c'est bon. The lid and soil were replaced and everyone departed....

What next?? At least the kitchen floor was now spotlessly clean, every day!

J decided then to dig out from the outer kitchen wall, approximately where the down pipe went through the wall. He found the exterior pipe and dug away following its course through the grass. It went down deep, deeper and deeper, had a left hand bend and then started to rise.... There was the problem. J lifted the pipe, about a 4ft length. It was extremely heavy. What had happened was that the pipe had sunk in the ground and over the past 25+ years had slowly calcified inside from all the soap etc used (the water here is hard!). The pipe was absolutely solid!!

New pipe was laid so that it all flowed in the right direction and we have had no problems since...

When we had been here around 8 weeks, we had been shopping and on return I came into the house first...I could smell gas, a very strong smell of gas!!

I shot into the kitchen opened the door and window and shouted to Jeff not to touch any switches - or light a cigarette......

The gas operated water heater in the kitchen (which came out of the ark!) had switched itself on but the pilot light had not ignited. The problem was with the sink tap that had too much water pressure. The tap had not been tightly turned off. So with the water pressure it had started the hot tap running but not fast enough to light the gas. A whole gas bottle had emptied into the kitchen area.

We called an emergency plumber who came and fixed it for us also turning down the water pressure.

Oh what fun living in rural France.........

No turning back

We arrived in July 2001 full of plans and ideas to run a Bed and Breakfast in this delightful corner of France in order to supplement my husbands works pension until we reached full retirement age. Little did we know what lay ahead!

In 1999 he had been made redundant from his job of 25+ years and it had been a dream since 1989, after our first visit to France, to retire out here and for me to run a Bed & Breakfast - no way was I going to be one of these English ladies just taking in the air, coffee mornings, wine etc… I needed to work at something. Early 2001 we went to a French property exhibition in London and met a few property agents, English as well as French, and gave them our criteria for property. Only one agent (French I hasten to add) came up with suitable properties - right to convert to Bed and Breakfast accommodation and with or near a lake or river (we have anglers in the family).

Our ‘place in heaven’ was found during our first visit in March 2001. The property was about 1k off the main road down a long curving lane. It seemed to take ages to get to it. When we left the agency it was raining and thoroughly miserable, when we arrived at the house the sun broke through the clouds. It was serendipity, happenstance, an omen, I don’t know which but I do know that when I saw the house after walking through the undergrowth (of which there was a lot) that the house was just what we were looking for.

The house was in need of some renovation. Unlike some properties we had seen, it had a roof as well as walls, and as a bonus, mains water, electricity and a telephone point. It was just, well, in need of updating. The house originally consisted of a pair of 18th/19th century farm cottages with cattle sheds at the back. It had been converted during the early/mid 70’s to holiday accommodation for a large French family. Yes, it was pretty basic, and as they say out here - a stone tent! The previous owner left a lovely kitchen table, but took the two benches that went with it, an old sofa and armchair (the sofa had a mouse’s nest in it), a couple of double beds and three child beds that came out of the ark, some bicycles in various sizes, a couple of cupboards that fell apart when moved, a very old fridge, an electric 2 ring hob, a boat and a full set of weights and bench (in what became the Boat Room). And we had to pay extra for this lot….

So we departed the UK on the 27th July 2001 after having a wonderful going away party with our family and friends. My dearest Dad couldn’t get his head around his daughter wanting to go to France (it’s full of the French you know!) but Mum was being her pragmatic self and just nodded sagely and wished us well. Sister-in-law wondered why we were abandoning our children (Er, they are all grown up with their own partners/spouses and of course, houses..) Our house in the UK was put into the hands of a good letting agent for some additional income whilst we decided whether it was a good idea to move in entirety, or not! La Belle France - here we come.......

We came through the channel tunnel and arrived at our new home in the early hours of the 28th July 2001. There was a mist over the river and it was so quiet that it was, well, just so peaceful, tranquil, otherworldly - how can you describe such an experience? We just sat and looked and (I think) both thought “Oh oh, what have we done??” My husband was having some doubts about the move - he was on medication for depression after losing his job and was having problems adjusting to not having a daily routine and being with me full time (Ho hum).

For the first couple of nights we stayed in our caravan, just a small one that we bought to come out with. Our first night was interrupted with the sound of an owl in the early hours. It was sat in the branch of a tree a couple of feet above us and kept us awake for a very long time. I found out later that it was a Barn Owl that lived in one of the hamlets barns. We also had a Little Owl that lived in the barn attached to the house.

Our cat was in a cage in the caravan when we travelled and the dogs were in the back of the car, harnessed just like a couple of kids, and much better behaved, at least they didn‘t say “are we there yet?”, “can I have a pee“, "I'm hungry" “I‘m bored“, etc. we just took short breaks, let them out for a drink and pee and back into the car and on we went.. When we got to the house we left the dogs in the house overnight but the cat disappeared. I was really upset that he wasn’t around, he had been a birthday present for me from my daughters. There was so much open space and there he was, gone, no sign of him at all. Our second night in the caravan and we were disturbed by frantic scratching sounds, oh yes, guess what, the cat had climbed into one of the cupboards under the seats and had ‘crashed’ out for over 36 hours. Our vet in the UK had given us tranquillisers for him for the journey and they didn’t kick in until we had arrived. At least he was safe.

A few of days after our arrival the furniture delivery company arrived with the first load of our furniture. We didn’t have all delivered, just the necessary stuff, a couple of beds, a few chairs, a fridge and cooker were dropped off and we were just waiting for the bulk. Within 3 weeks of relocating two of our daughters, a grandson and prospective son in law turned up for a holiday. For the start of their stay it was pretty basic and after a couple of days the rest of our furniture and effects arrived. They helped us with the unloading and sorting into rooms etc. not that there were too few rooms to put things into. We only had an average 3 bed semi in the UK and out here we had so much space. Imagine 4 terrace houses put into one. That was the volume of space we had to put our bits and pieces into.

And so we stayed, and enjoyed, and got to know the house and grounds. There were loads of trees, mainly birch, that needed taking down. I think that the final total was about 30. They grew like weeds and were competing for space, they were so tall! There was also a weeping willow that dripped aphid dew all over the place and a couple of pine trees that definitely needed to go as I am allergic to pine….My dear husband worked his socks off taking down the trees, and eventually there was light in the garden and the house. Whilst the daughters were here we took down all the Virginia creeper that had invaded the house, creeping through the shutters and attaching to the windows. So much of it, it was full of birds nests, spiders and all sorts of unmentionable creatures that we did not know existed. Marvellous, my instincts were right, the house was just as I imagined it would be once daylight was allowed to shine on it and enter the rooms.

I could see how it could be used to suit us as a B&B, the next thing was to work out the conversion….

Decisions

We first started coming to France in 1989. As we lived in the South East of England it was a very easy trip for us... We did not need to travel by air, we just had to drive onto a ferry and off at the other end and we were in another country.

For us it was in the beginning of our 40's that we first came out here. We fell hook line and sinker in love with the place. We came with our friends George and Mary, George worked with my husband and like us. they had never holidayed here before, maybe a voyage to Calais for some cheap wine but only a day trip but that was all.

We had booked to stay in apartment in Carnac, South Brittany and our voyage here was an over-night one on the Duchesse Anne, an ancient ferry run by by Brittany Ferries. We travelled south from the most delightful port of St Malo through unknown territory. We arrived late in Carnac, found our apartments, booked in and then looked for a place to eat.

We found a delightful bistro and with our 'school' french ordered our first proper french meal... Wonderful.

J. and I thought then that we would love to live the rest of our lives in France. To us it seemed a home from home so we started making plans.......