Part 2 - Our Journey to make a new life in Haute Vienne

I remember sitting in an empty room (which was to become our kitchen) in our house in Chalus, with my head in my hands thinking “what have I done?”  We had just completed the purchase of our farmhouse and its associated outbuildings and that in itself was incredibly exciting but in the cold light of day, the demons of doubt descended upon me. These doubts occurred not because of the area, the house, or the people but because I am about as practical as a paper clip and approximately half as useful.

 

Thankfully, my Father-in-law Fred is a retired shop-fitter and knows an incredible amount about electrics, plumbing, and construction. In fact he appears to know everything about everything and on top of that is a confirmed Francophile.  Fred and Pat were and are, unbelievably supportive and enthusiastic and have thrown themselves into the project head first.

 

At the outset we spent a lot of time planning and determining what our priorities were and set about finding people to help with our project to convert the attached barn into a four bedroomed holiday home. Through necessity, given our lack of language skills we first of all sought out English tradesmen living in the area or English-speaking French tradesmen. The currency exchange rate was 1.45+ at that time and we got quite a lot for our money.

 

The speed at which we were progressing exceeded our expectations. We were away.....

First we had a new Fosse Septique installed at the back of the old barn. Secondly, we hired an architect to turn Fred’s ideas into plans and applied for planning permission which was considerably more straightforward and quicker than we had been led to believe. Before we knew it the planning permission had been granted and we were away. 

 

We hired an English builder and his assortment of merry men to demolish then rebuild the ancient barn. This was the only choice as the building was unsafe and would have cost far more to repair than rebuild. The barn was full of old belongings from the previous occupants who had lived there 30 years previously. We salvaged some of it to put in our house and instructed the builder to save everything and we would sort through it. Regrettably, most of it miraculously disappeared during the renovation. A real shame and a big lesson learned.

 

Within three months we saw the barn demolished into something that would not have been out of place on ‘Time Team’ and then subsequently rebuilt into a single story building with a new roof.

 

We also needed to get some plumbing work done on the house and this was our biggest mistake. We hired an English plumber recommended to us by some friends. He turned out to be unreliable, deceitful and duplicitous which was an unimpressive combination. Worse, we paid him most of the money upfront which meant we had little bargaining power once things went awry. Through persistence and pressure we got him to do the minimum that he had committed to and filed the whole experience under ‘lessons learned’.

 

To compound matters, we encountered a problem that we could not have foreseen. The Global downturn and its impact on our finances was a shock to the system but more importantly had a material impact on the £/Euro exchange rate. Job security became an issue and we could not sell or house in the UK for neither love nor money and worse our UK properties value was decreasing by the day flushing our carefully prepared financial projections down the toilet.

 

Looking back on that time, it’s easy to isolate mistakes and bad decisions but hindsight is a wonderful thing and when you set out on a project like that you literally don’t know what you don’t know. That may sound like a statement of the bleeding obvious, but if I had my time again I would spend as much time as possible talking to other people who had been through a similar project and would have done a lot more research through websites and forums. I would take up references on trades people even if that meant delaying things a little.

 

In early 2009, we mothballed the whole project and decided to treat the house as a holiday home whilst we waited for conditions to improve. The exchange rate was taking its toll on our finances and all of our original financial projections were rendered obsolete. I remember someone saying to me once that whatever I thought everything would cost would be half of what it actually cost. They were I’m afraid spot on. No matter how detailed and carefully prepared our plans were, everything doubled in price by the time it was complete.

 

We spent several fantastic weeks in France last year and really got to know the area. We made some great friends and learnt so much about France and the Limousin. Our language skills improved a little though we still have a long way to go.  We know the best places to buy things, great places to visit, fantastic walks and naturally the best lakes to fish at.

We have come to live and be comfortable with the fact that it may take a few more years than we originally envisaged to make our move to France permanent. We also appreciate that sometimes the journey can be as enjoyable as the destination and to quote an old cliché ‘its a marathon, not a sprint’.

 

In August 2009 we finally sold our house in Didsbury, Manchester. We are now living in a rented property and diverting our finances back into the project. The exchange rate has not improved much but we will cautiously restart the work in 2010 and we hope to have the holiday home completed by the end of the year, ready to receive our first paying guests in 2011. We think we will move to France permanently by 2012 which will give us more time to become fluent French speakers.

 

In the meantime, we will spend as much time in Chalus as we can, spending every holiday there and sneaking away for weekends, when we can. As far as we are concerned, our house in the Limousin is our home, for now we just have to spend an unfortunate amount of time in our house in Manchester. 

 
Posted by: Alan Leishman on 20 January 2010