Our French farmhouse build thread.
Discussion
Here goes the whole other side of the story.
We had planned to move over to France in May for my birthday. This was of course hampered by the incompetence of the vendors’ solicitor. They had decided that our 1 hectare field was just a back garden even though not fenced. This should have been referred to SAFER who deal with land sales for agriculture. If they don’t sign off on the sale, farmers can complain and buy it off you at the original purchase price for up to 5 years.
Moving over a month and a bit later meant we also missed out on the S1 form from the government that only pensioners now qualify for. This is the reciprocating health agreement that means we are here without national healthcare. Easy we thought as cargeekswife (Mrs Neilsfirst) had lived and worked in Paris for 10 years and as such had the equivalent of a National Insurance number. Here we are a year and a bit later still fighting to get just health cover.
We started trying to get roofing quotes as we knew all the barns required replacement rooves. Having contacted 5 roofing companies we eventually managed to get only 2 come and quote. Of the 2 we guess one of them didn’t want the job as their quote was double the other!
We engaged an architect as recommended by our English neighbour. He was an Irish guy so at least I could converse with him. 2 months later after chasing him constantly we gave up and went with a local lady who does a lot with local councils. Plans were drawn up and approval applied for. The only part that they are interested in approving is the exterior so we could do what we want inside. Originally we were set to have just 3 bedrooms but with the space we had 4 fit in so are able to sleep 8 at once.
The planning office came back as were missing a piece of paper! Missing paper sorted out and approval was given for the 4 bed, 2 bed, studio and the main house.
Everyone here who is English are very quick to give advice, most of it can be discarded but one valuable piece of advice we did get was you will need a trailer. So with this advice ringing in our ears I started looking at pickups so I had the trailer with me at all times. Flight booked back to England and I spent 2 days travelling around the Midlands looking at Ford Rangers. Found 1 and headed back to France after buying loads of supplies to haul back.
The truck behaved well and arrived home at midnight fully loaded. Tried to park it up in the back barn so could leave it to the following day to unload. Damn thing was just a foot too long to close the doors. Emptied the contents into barn instead.
That’s July to September 2014. Now have to go and do some more work.
We had planned to move over to France in May for my birthday. This was of course hampered by the incompetence of the vendors’ solicitor. They had decided that our 1 hectare field was just a back garden even though not fenced. This should have been referred to SAFER who deal with land sales for agriculture. If they don’t sign off on the sale, farmers can complain and buy it off you at the original purchase price for up to 5 years.
Moving over a month and a bit later meant we also missed out on the S1 form from the government that only pensioners now qualify for. This is the reciprocating health agreement that means we are here without national healthcare. Easy we thought as cargeekswife (Mrs Neilsfirst) had lived and worked in Paris for 10 years and as such had the equivalent of a National Insurance number. Here we are a year and a bit later still fighting to get just health cover.
We started trying to get roofing quotes as we knew all the barns required replacement rooves. Having contacted 5 roofing companies we eventually managed to get only 2 come and quote. Of the 2 we guess one of them didn’t want the job as their quote was double the other!
We engaged an architect as recommended by our English neighbour. He was an Irish guy so at least I could converse with him. 2 months later after chasing him constantly we gave up and went with a local lady who does a lot with local councils. Plans were drawn up and approval applied for. The only part that they are interested in approving is the exterior so we could do what we want inside. Originally we were set to have just 3 bedrooms but with the space we had 4 fit in so are able to sleep 8 at once.
The planning office came back as were missing a piece of paper! Missing paper sorted out and approval was given for the 4 bed, 2 bed, studio and the main house.
Everyone here who is English are very quick to give advice, most of it can be discarded but one valuable piece of advice we did get was you will need a trailer. So with this advice ringing in our ears I started looking at pickups so I had the trailer with me at all times. Flight booked back to England and I spent 2 days travelling around the Midlands looking at Ford Rangers. Found 1 and headed back to France after buying loads of supplies to haul back.
The truck behaved well and arrived home at midnight fully loaded. Tried to park it up in the back barn so could leave it to the following day to unload. Damn thing was just a foot too long to close the doors. Emptied the contents into barn instead.
That’s July to September 2014. Now have to go and do some more work.
While waiting for the work to start in January I threw myself headlong into doing odd jobs around our house. First up was some more wiring. New consumer unit bought and plenty of research on how the French wire.
Having learnt how they wire I looked at what was currently in place. We had bought the house from bodgers! This will all be sorted out as time goes on but first up we had bought a new induction hob that required a dedicated 32amp feed. So I set about drilling holes for the 2 feeds I was running to the kitchen area and 1 more on the other side of the room. Off to the local DIY shop to get the wire and a drill bit to get through the walls. Drill bit was 600mm long, much more than I had ever needed in my life. 3 holes drill from where the consumer unit was into the hallway. The 2 kitchen leads had their holes drilled and were wired up. Now the bottled gas range could be removed and our new hob and oven installed.
Now to drill the last hole to feed the TV and other sound and video units. As the hole was further along the wall it turned out that the drill bit was not long enough. So the search for a longer drill bit starts. €60 for one 1 metre long bit. Onto Amazon UK and got three in varying sizes for £25 delivered to France and arrived within the week. Another hole drilled to take a feed upstairs so we could have sockets in our bedroom.
Having learnt how they wire I looked at what was currently in place. We had bought the house from bodgers! This will all be sorted out as time goes on but first up we had bought a new induction hob that required a dedicated 32amp feed. So I set about drilling holes for the 2 feeds I was running to the kitchen area and 1 more on the other side of the room. Off to the local DIY shop to get the wire and a drill bit to get through the walls. Drill bit was 600mm long, much more than I had ever needed in my life. 3 holes drill from where the consumer unit was into the hallway. The 2 kitchen leads had their holes drilled and were wired up. Now the bottled gas range could be removed and our new hob and oven installed.
Now to drill the last hole to feed the TV and other sound and video units. As the hole was further along the wall it turned out that the drill bit was not long enough. So the search for a longer drill bit starts. €60 for one 1 metre long bit. Onto Amazon UK and got three in varying sizes for £25 delivered to France and arrived within the week. Another hole drilled to take a feed upstairs so we could have sockets in our bedroom.
In October we are starting to think about winter. In the house we have 1 wood burner in our kitchen/living room. Our room sizes that we live in are 6.5 by 6.5 metres in the kitchen/living room, the same size for our bedroom and our daughters room is about 5 by 4 metres. Ceiling heights downstairs are roughly 2.5 metres but vaulted ceilings upstairs. We have no idea how much wood we will need to keep warm over the winter months. So we ordered 10 steres of wood, a stere being roughly 1 cubic metre.
This is delivered and moved by hand into the mini forge at the back. After this I ended up with strained elbows which still aren’t right. A couple of weeks later we borrowed an electric wood saw so we could cut it all in half. Much more efficient than a chainsaw but still haven’t bought our own one.
When winter started the house got cold very quick. We were keeping our living room warm and the bedroom benefitted from the chimney running through it and only have floorboards between the 2 rooms but then it went straight out the roof. As it got colder it got worse. We now understand the point of a 4 poster bed, very small area when curtains are closed to keep warm.
We insulated the ceiling of our daughters’ room and put curtains across the outside wall to retain as much heat as possible and placed an oil filled radiator in to maintain as much heat as possible overnight. As her room was in the single story part of the house we had screwed chipboard flooring to the joist and pushed insulation into the void created as there was no way to get above the room (or so we thought). Quick jump forward in time to nearly the end of winter where we were trying to plug as many draughts as possible in our bedroom. A wardrobe had been left by the bodgers and we traced a draught to behind this. We moved it to see where it was emanating from to discover a door way into the void above Millie’s bedroom! Red faced we hung a load of insulation off the top of the wardrobe and pushed it back against the wall. Back to the timeline of this instalment now.
We wanted to host Christmas for the family here, so needed to heat the future dining room for cargeekswifes’ parents to sleep in. I removed the metal facing from in front of the chimney to see what we had and what was living in our chimney. To my surprise it was clear all the way up. After recovering from the shock I dug a fire grate out from the garage and put it in place and lit the fire to see if it would draw ok.
What a belter it worked to heat up a metre and a half around it. The room though is 6 by 6 metres. A wood burner was required. Searching the classifieds and we found one about 45 minutes away with all the pipework too. We trundled off in the pickup to look at it and bought it. Thrown in on the deal were 100 prepped for eating snails and 2 large jars of raspberry jam. Result.
I wasn’t happy with the pipe work we received, and we needed to reduce the size by 10mm to fit up our chimney, with the stove so went out and got some more. After bashing 7 shades out of the chimney to remove all the years of bad maintenance I fitted the stove.
Now we could raise the temperature in the room to a decent level for sleeping. Unfortunately the 4 walls of this room give out to the outside, the draughty hallway, the garage and the workshop. A great Christmas was had by all and due to the cold the in-laws decided it was far too cold for their grand-daughter so we got her an air source heat pump (reverse cycle air con) to be fitted by me. Now her room is perfect all year round. This was also oversized so when we complete the house and she moves up to her new bedroom it can still heat or cool it.
After the in-laws left we viewed our rather depleted wood stock and had to go out and get another 5 steres to get us to the end of the cold weather. The rest of the winter was endured and work was starting in January so exciting times were ahead of us.
This is delivered and moved by hand into the mini forge at the back. After this I ended up with strained elbows which still aren’t right. A couple of weeks later we borrowed an electric wood saw so we could cut it all in half. Much more efficient than a chainsaw but still haven’t bought our own one.
When winter started the house got cold very quick. We were keeping our living room warm and the bedroom benefitted from the chimney running through it and only have floorboards between the 2 rooms but then it went straight out the roof. As it got colder it got worse. We now understand the point of a 4 poster bed, very small area when curtains are closed to keep warm.
We insulated the ceiling of our daughters’ room and put curtains across the outside wall to retain as much heat as possible and placed an oil filled radiator in to maintain as much heat as possible overnight. As her room was in the single story part of the house we had screwed chipboard flooring to the joist and pushed insulation into the void created as there was no way to get above the room (or so we thought). Quick jump forward in time to nearly the end of winter where we were trying to plug as many draughts as possible in our bedroom. A wardrobe had been left by the bodgers and we traced a draught to behind this. We moved it to see where it was emanating from to discover a door way into the void above Millie’s bedroom! Red faced we hung a load of insulation off the top of the wardrobe and pushed it back against the wall. Back to the timeline of this instalment now.
We wanted to host Christmas for the family here, so needed to heat the future dining room for cargeekswifes’ parents to sleep in. I removed the metal facing from in front of the chimney to see what we had and what was living in our chimney. To my surprise it was clear all the way up. After recovering from the shock I dug a fire grate out from the garage and put it in place and lit the fire to see if it would draw ok.
What a belter it worked to heat up a metre and a half around it. The room though is 6 by 6 metres. A wood burner was required. Searching the classifieds and we found one about 45 minutes away with all the pipework too. We trundled off in the pickup to look at it and bought it. Thrown in on the deal were 100 prepped for eating snails and 2 large jars of raspberry jam. Result.
I wasn’t happy with the pipe work we received, and we needed to reduce the size by 10mm to fit up our chimney, with the stove so went out and got some more. After bashing 7 shades out of the chimney to remove all the years of bad maintenance I fitted the stove.
Now we could raise the temperature in the room to a decent level for sleeping. Unfortunately the 4 walls of this room give out to the outside, the draughty hallway, the garage and the workshop. A great Christmas was had by all and due to the cold the in-laws decided it was far too cold for their grand-daughter so we got her an air source heat pump (reverse cycle air con) to be fitted by me. Now her room is perfect all year round. This was also oversized so when we complete the house and she moves up to her new bedroom it can still heat or cool it.
After the in-laws left we viewed our rather depleted wood stock and had to go out and get another 5 steres to get us to the end of the cold weather. The rest of the winter was endured and work was starting in January so exciting times were ahead of us.
I cant believe you have done 15 loads of wood! You need to insulate like crazy. I think most people in a similar situation will either fit a huge wood burner centrally to do the whole house or nominate one room to be a snug and just wear jumpers elsewhere in the house!
Great project though and very interesting to read about your journey. Do you have any floor plans? I can't really visualise how the interior hangs together.
Great project though and very interesting to read about your journey. Do you have any floor plans? I can't really visualise how the interior hangs together.
E36GUY said:
Wonderful project. Congratulations.
Biggest point of interest is that you apper to have got this far without a single whinge about French working practices! That is truly remarkable!
To be honest we have had great people in so far working on it. Really appreciate the lack of health and safety. The boss of the roofers told them, they can wear hard hats if they feel the need! Not much in the way of scaffolding on the project either.Biggest point of interest is that you apper to have got this far without a single whinge about French working practices! That is truly remarkable!
Gingerbread Man said:
Did the MX5 survive the roof collapse?
She did indeed! She took about half a tonne of roof tiles on the front end, but still managed to pass her CT (French MOT) in spite of the damanged bonnet, OS wing & OS headlight cover. Thankfully the windscreen was spared. I'm not sure what that says about the CT though...Pic of neilsfirst dusting her off after the calamity.
NorthDave said:
I cant believe you have done 15 loads of wood! You need to insulate like crazy. I think most people in a similar situation will either fit a huge wood burner centrally to do the whole house or nominate one room to be a snug and just wear jumpers elsewhere in the house!
Great project though and very interesting to read about your journey. Do you have any floor plans? I can't really visualise how the interior hangs together.
We are pushing to get the big barn done to move in there for the worst of winter!Great project though and very interesting to read about your journey. Do you have any floor plans? I can't really visualise how the interior hangs together.
Badly drawn floor plan below and pictures of the rooms as we viewed them before we bought the place. The 2 upstairs rooms sit over the kitchen(our bedroom) and the other sits over the hallway and dining room.
Millie's bedroom
Bathroom (hideous hole)
Stairway
Kitchen/living room
Hallway
Dining room
Workshop
2 more vats in the workshop that are level with the first floor. We hope to turn one into a bathroom and one into a loo.
Garage
Above the garage
Hangar
Maison d'ami
Big barn
Indoor swimming pool in back barn!
Our bedroom with the wardrobe hiding the doorway...
Other bedroom
Edited by Neilsfirst on Wednesday 21st October 23:51
The roofers turned up one cold morning at the beginning of January to start work. First up we had 2 guys arrive to start stripping the roof tiles off. The work commences on the big barn where it had a natural skylight due to a roof collapse. This progresses quickly but reveals that the beams were worse than they had imagined. Those years of the skinflint bodgers were to bite us on the backside quite a few times. Having languished in bed until Millie woke up (and she is not an early riser) for the past 4 months, we were now forced into a routine of getting up by 7 to open up the garage that could only be done from the inside. This changed my routine to showering at night so I could just throw clothes on and start the day. We kept on top of progress while supplying tea/coffee and biscuits, a result for the guys as they were not used to such luxuries.
Work progressed well and we forged a really good relationship with one of the guys over the 2 months they were here. He was always full of good advice and we had a lot in common. The can do attitude he had was great and really helped us along the way & he even fashioned us special ‘sharks head’ gutter down pipes. Unfortunately he had money problems and, as is so often the case, they must have seemed insurmountable to him as one day the guys turned up without him and told us that he had driven his car into the Charente river the day before. This hit us really hard and mixed emotions followed with the loss of what could have been. I’m not sure who was more upset; us or the dog!
Moving past this we needed to organise windows & doors to go into our barn to make it watertight. As per usual you request quotes from lots of people and a few turn up! One national firm and 1 local. We received quotes from both and started the decision process. We also needed an electrician. This we had a result on as 3 people turned up. The local guy quoted first and cargeekswife started negotiations. He was not very impressed with this and told us we could have chrome plated light switches but the price would not go any lower! The other 2 were town based guys and as such were not too happy about the 3 phase supply we had. This was not going to change to mono phase no matter how much they wanted it to. As luck would have it Millie had started at a local nursery and one of the dads there arranged for his step dad to come around and quote. He turned up in this!
Cargeekswife did not warm to him at first, but his quote was lower than the rest and included aircon to all the rooms except the living room. In the end the other 2 bowed out so we went with Wilfrid. The man has been an endless source of help when we are stuck doing things and is happy to tell us we are doing it wrong so end up doing a lot more work. There is only so much you can get from the internet, but I have got a hell of a lot from it.
Now we have caught up to where I stopped before digressing. Going forward everything should now be in synch.
Work progressed well and we forged a really good relationship with one of the guys over the 2 months they were here. He was always full of good advice and we had a lot in common. The can do attitude he had was great and really helped us along the way & he even fashioned us special ‘sharks head’ gutter down pipes. Unfortunately he had money problems and, as is so often the case, they must have seemed insurmountable to him as one day the guys turned up without him and told us that he had driven his car into the Charente river the day before. This hit us really hard and mixed emotions followed with the loss of what could have been. I’m not sure who was more upset; us or the dog!
Moving past this we needed to organise windows & doors to go into our barn to make it watertight. As per usual you request quotes from lots of people and a few turn up! One national firm and 1 local. We received quotes from both and started the decision process. We also needed an electrician. This we had a result on as 3 people turned up. The local guy quoted first and cargeekswife started negotiations. He was not very impressed with this and told us we could have chrome plated light switches but the price would not go any lower! The other 2 were town based guys and as such were not too happy about the 3 phase supply we had. This was not going to change to mono phase no matter how much they wanted it to. As luck would have it Millie had started at a local nursery and one of the dads there arranged for his step dad to come around and quote. He turned up in this!
Cargeekswife did not warm to him at first, but his quote was lower than the rest and included aircon to all the rooms except the living room. In the end the other 2 bowed out so we went with Wilfrid. The man has been an endless source of help when we are stuck doing things and is happy to tell us we are doing it wrong so end up doing a lot more work. There is only so much you can get from the internet, but I have got a hell of a lot from it.
Now we have caught up to where I stopped before digressing. Going forward everything should now be in synch.
IanA2 said:
Rutter said:
Neilsfirst said:
Forgot to say thanks to everyone for the encouragement. It is nice to share the story. Are you guys interested in just the build or all the trials and tribulations (frustrations) of the whole process?
Warts and all I reckon.Plenty of warts in my 1970s semi let alone with a build like this I bet!
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