Renovating a French House

Doing Up Le Parc de Lignieres

We found the house with the help of Sue Petherbridge (www.sueandco.com) who was recommended to us by Jonathan and Suzanne Grix, an English couple who run a lovely collection of Gites in Tourouzelle (see www.lamdv.com) one of which we rented out in 2005. We bought the house in August 2006 with a French mortgage from UCB and opened a bank account with Credit Agricole. The process of securing the mortgage was pretty onerous and very thorough; the principle used by the bank was to establish your ability to pay, rather than any multiple of your income. We were surprised by how large the legal fees were, but the legal side of the purchase was also relatively straight forward. The house had been owned by a Dutch family for over twenty years, and was obviously much loved by them; they were very popular with the villagers too as we were to discover later on. The house was habitable, but basic. The facilities were adequate in the house, but needed a lot of updating. The garden was full of trees and was very overgrown, with plenty of acacia everywhere many of which were covered in ivy. The renovation work was done by local tradesmen and us.

Phase 1 October 2006 - June 2007

View the photo gallery - Creating The Kitchen
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This involved a lot of work in the house and the garden. Every half term and holiday was spent at the house doing renovation work which was both exhausting and satisfying! Louise's brother, Paul-John Oliver, helped us enormously with good practical advice and brought energy to these sessions. During this period we were able to create one large dining and kitchen room, by knocking down an interior wall. We removed the old kitchen and replace it with a TV room, the 'Snug'. We rewired and redecorated throughout the house and Installed two new boilers giving plenty of hot water. We created a new bathroom out of a storage room on the first floor; and replaced all the furniture in the bedrooms with new beds and furniture Install TV and internet access.

Phase 2 February - June 2007

View the photo gallery - Building The Pool
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The focus of this period was to put a swimming pool in the back garden and to tidy up as much of the garden as possible. We also removed the yew trees in the front and rear gardens, and took out eighteen trees in the back garden and replaced them with some fruit trees. The swimming pool felt like an expensive gamble at the time, although it has been a firm favourite with everyone ever since. We planted a lawn around the swimming pool, fenced in the pool area and implemented an electric cover for the pool.

We put ourselves under a lot of pressure during both these phases in order to have the house to a good enough standard to rent it out to the first visitors from July -August 2007.

Phase 3 November 2007 - Easter 2008

View the photo gallery - Preparing The Gardens
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The focus during this period was largely outdoors. We put in several olive trees along the mini avenue in the back garden, carried out some repairs to the pergola and planted wisteria on the pergola stands. We benefited from having Louise's parents, John and Margaret Oliver, living in the house for nearly nine months enabling us to know what the house and surrounding area was like throughout the seasons.

During the period from June -August 2008 the house was almost completely occupied. Tim's mother, Jilly, took the house for the whole of September and, together with Tara and Edward Cassidy, carried out a fantastic conversion of the pool house as a surprise.

View the photo gallery - Redecorating
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Looking ahead: 2010 and beyond

There are still plenty of opportunities to expand and enhance the house and gardens. The house has a further two bedrooms on the second floor that we are looking forward to renovating. We will put an additional bathroom on the second floor too and the plumbing is already in place to do it. On the ground floor we want to convert the shower room to a utility room which will leave us with a much larger larder, and a separate utility room. The house has a very attractive, and quite deep, well in the front garden which we have covered over temporarily for safety reasons. We want to be able to see the well in due course. We are also planning to renew the fountain in the front garden, as well as the outside loo. In both the front and rear gardens we will put in more lighting. There is space above the car port for a games room, which are planning to create so that there is another set of facilities to the house, especially for teenagers. Much longer term there is the potential to convert some of the outbuildings into more sites, although we prefer the house and grounds to be rented as a single unit.

Tim & Louise Cook