The pictures above show the state the house was in on the day we visited, believe me, it looked worse in real life! The one on the right is the main house, and the one at the top shows, (just), in the top left corner the barn to be turned into holiday let.
We went back to the agents office that same evening and drew up the initial contract. We all agreed on a finalisation date, provided this was good for the sellers too, 2 months later. The sellers lived 45 minutes away, and as it turned out we never actually met them until the final signing. The kids were excited, in a strange sort of way. They were going to have a new home with a huge garden in a lovely village, except that they couldn't envisage what it all would look like after renovation, which is normal for kids. We went back to mums simply buzzing!
The next 2 months were very busy. The first thing was to register the children at the village school, we did this as soon as possible. When we got there we were greeted by the head teacher, who was very excited as it was the first time he had had English children at the school, he ushered us into a classroom. We were later to find out that it wasn't A classroom, it was THE classroom. There were 22 pupils at the school, (not including the infants, about half that), and that was the only classroom. In fact, the head teacher was also the teacher for year 1, and the teacher for year 2, and the teacher for year 3, and the teacher for year 4 all in one classroom! It reminded me of that program I used to watch as a kid "Little House On The Prairie", remember that one? He had one square classroom and each year was divided between the four corners, and he would start one corner off on their work, then move on to the next and so on, and so on....He literally spent the whole day going round in circles, but we were later to find out what a good teacher he was.
Next on our agenda was the plans. We had agreed that the gite would be a priority to start to generate an income, so long as our house was habitable it could come second. My husbands parents went back to England for the time being, and my husband set to planning the layout, with my input, of course. It was not an easy job and as you can imagine the plans changed weekly...We had a new idea, or hadn't thought of something, it would be two smaller gites then it would be one big gite. We had to do it all ourselves as we couldn't afford an architect. We spent days surfing the Internet, looking at what sort of other gites were on offer, and how much they let for, looking at furniture and the cost, setting up a budget of how much it was all going to come to. And of course we had to get the planning permission rolling ready for when we signed the contract. You have to be very careful in France that you are very thorough in your research and allow plenty of time for official paperwork, and believe me there's plenty of it, or it could come back and sting you in the tail..............
No comments:
Post a Comment