We bought a ticket for that night’s Brittany ferry from Pompey to St Malo and asked her to arrange viewings for the next day.
We arrived at our favourite café in the town at about 9.45 and tried to relax with a coffee, croissant and a pastis before we started to view.
Our conversation, albeit excited, was peppered with words like, restraint, caution, potential, long term, affordable, etc
The viewings started at 10.30, however as we met the estate agent he informed us that one had already sold (10K) the previous day, which as it turns out was just as well. It was too “in” the town for us and was a glum looking place that had a complex garden arrangement. The garden outside the house belonged to the person up the road, and our garden was 50 meters away on the other side of the road, with access through someone else’s garden via a shared lane. No Thanks.!
The next was adjacent to a farm and was an immense building.
If I am honest it filled me with dread at the sheer size and scale of the work required. I have owned cars smaller than the size of some of the stones in the wall and one of the main beams inside was 7 meters long, a meter square, but at a height of only 1. 5 meters from the ground!!
The overpowering smell of cow dung and the cacophony of cow noise from the farm immediately behind sealed the fate of this one, as did yet another complicated land scenario. No Thanks.!
The last, and the cheapest, was probably the most depressingly sad, little grey concrete box (with just the one tiny window) I have ever seen. I wanted to pick it up and cuddle it and say softly “There there, it will be alright, don’t cry”
It was surrounded by a concrete posted, shiny chain link fence enclosing a small patch of barren, poisoned looking land.
The whole place oozed woe.
Yes! OK on the positive side it did have a new roof and Yes! a coat of paint with some new window openings would have “freshened” it up, but it would never have “cheered” it up. Only a bulldozer would have been able to do that.
It’s one redeeming feature was that to one side was a lovely old tumbled down cider barn, with intact press, that did endear itself to me as a project, but overall the place felt and looked miserable. No Thanks!
The estate agent could obviously sense our disappointment and said that he did have one property that had been instructed the day before and wasn’t advertised yet, He said it was within our budget and only 3 miles away, although he didn’t know if it was what we were looking for.
As we were there for the sole purpose of looking at properties we said “Let’s go and have a look then.”
I have no way of describing or explaining to you why something instinctively feels right.
How you can look at a building and just know “Yes, I could do this”. That the “vibe” of the place is right, that the location is right, that the feeling of my wife crushing my hand with her grip as she whispered “Oh Bentley, look at this. It’s right isn’t it? as we pulled up outside after a beautiful drive up an old avenue of pollarded oaks
.This place already felt like home and we hadn’t even stepped through the door. We tried to disguise our interest as the estate agent showed us around, although this was difficult with my wife’s entire face beaming with a grin that eliminated the need for electric light, whilst holding my hand and saying things like “Oh Bentley it is just perfect” “Oh I love it”.
I was also grinning away and nodding at everything the agent said, asking questions like “how I would obtain planning” and “where are the nearest builders merchants”. (I doubt if you will ever see either of us in the world Poker championships)
What he showed us was:-
A double faced façade, half in beautiful old stone, and half in ugly, but practical, concrete block.
An earth floor kitchen (6M x 5.5 M) with some old oak beams almost fossilised with age, a raggy old fireplace and a view of the roof rafters 7.5 meters above and the old hay door
A concrete floored room with a view straight to the rafters above (6M x 4.5M)
The main roof was in fairly good condition and it was mainly dry inside.
A lean-to single story room at the back (not such a good roof and a bit dank inside) which was the width of the house (10 x 5M) with incredibly cobwebbed windows, what appeared to be an arrow slit and a 1.3 meter high doorway to the garden.
The main roof was in fairly good condition and it was mainly dry inside.
A lean-to single story room at the back (not such a good roof and a bit dank inside) which was the width of the house (10 x 5M) with incredibly cobwebbed windows, what appeared to be an arrow slit and a 1.3 meter high doorway to the garden.
.
The garden at the rear was about 10 meters wide and 40 long and sported cherry plum peach apple and walnut trees.
The land at the front was 10 meters by 6 and across the lane was 12M by 35 of grassland.
Adjoining us was a house to the right that had been done up and rendered (French style) with a resident elderly couple and to the left two half derelict barn/houses with a habitable looking house at the end of the row where an old lady lived.
No complicated land, garden or access problems.
No Fosse, no electric, no water and no occupants for 40 years.
We fell in love with it on first sight...
Back to the estate agents office.
He left us in his office to collect some forms to register us and make an appointment to give us a couple of days to ponder.
We had a conversation which is nearly verbatim below:-
“Do we really need to see any more houses?”
“No not really?”
“Is this one do-able for you building wise and does it feel as perfect for you as it does for me?”
“Yes to both questions. I have already come up with some ideas of how to do the back bit and I noticed that the large granite firestone missing from the kitchen fire is in fact standing up outside the house and that only three of the beams need replacing but we can reuse most of the old ones in different locations around the house and I thought that if we…..”
“OK OK stop. That’s that then, “BUT” before you get carried away with your planning and designs you must be conscious that this is a “joint venture”.
That means there is no place for you getting all “blokey” and taking over. “WE” have to agree on every step of every stage of the rebuild. From the materials and methods used, the lay out and how it’s going to look in the end. If it is not a totally 50/ 50 joint venture EVERY STEP OF THE WAY then it is a no go.
This is “OUR” project not yours and “you” are not the boss.
Can you agree to that?
“Yes I can live with that and wouldn’t want it any other way”
“OK then agreed, offer the man the money”
“How much”
“All of it”
“You’re a worse business person than I am”
“That place already seems like ours to me and we don’t want to lose it. We have been through this enough to know it ticks nearly every box we wanted and, it seems to be priced to market and is in our budget, so lets not muck about with the rather tawdry practice of bartering and haggling, just be straight, honest and go for it”
With that the estate agent returned brandishing forms and talking about taking some details and giving us a couple of days to think over what we have seen. He asked us what day would be convenient to come back in, and I replied
“We don’t need a couple of days and would like to offer the full asking price. Will you accept cash or a cheque?”
And that was the start of our adventure of renovating a ruin in France.
A musical interlude and the essence is in the chorus
You cant always get what you want.
But if you try
sometimes
you might find
you get what you need. Oh Yeah
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