French Renovation

[zbc]

Very tentatively looking at a property that needs a full renovation. It's about 150 years old and needs a lot of work but there are no significant restrictions in place about what I can do other than wanting to stay friendly with people in the village by not trashing it completely. It's local to me so I already know plenty of potential local trades but I'm wondering if anyone has any advice for the best way to manage this in France, working with a general contractor, architect, project manager or some other approach. Unfortunately I have neither the skills nor time to do much of the work myself unlike some of the amazing projects I've seen on here although there is a small outbuilding that I'm hoping to use as a learning project.

Hopefully I'll share a build project thread on here but negotiations are a little long winded. If it comes off it won't be before middle of next year so I have time to plan carefully for once.

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Thanks to all of you for your advice so far. I probably should have been clearer and said that we already live in France and near the planned acquisition. I was really pleased to see the "see the mayor" advice is that is what we tell people who ask us about living in France. I hadn't thought of it particularly in this context but would have done it at some point but I'll push it up the list now.

It might not be straightaway but I'll be in touch with those who offered as the project progresses. It's likely to be a renovate and extend but I like the sound of a Maitre d'oeuvre batiment but I'm happy to consider the other options. The building will almost certainly need new insulation and heating and I'm keen to look at options like Heat Pumps and solar panels, would the Maitre d'oeuvre have enough technical skills for that too?

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smifffymoto said:

Why do you want the property?
Do you want to move or do it up and sell it on. You could land yourself with some headaches and tax bills.

It's not an investment, probably the opposite. We moved ere many years ago expecting to only be here a few years so we bought a house that just works but has some issues. Now we've realised that we quite like it here so we're looking for the right house and we really like this one. Fortunately I think we can buy and renovate whilst we stay in our current house.

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AndrewCrown said:

ZBC

You have found a very knowledgeable group with your post.. esp with RdJohn, paulwirral, magoo, smiffy... who I have followed on other threads... very good advice.. from these chaps.

We're on French Renovation 2. Trying to apply all our learnings from Renovation 1.

Renovation 1
My thesis was that I haven't spent 20 year watching all the mistakes on Grand Designs not to learn from them... Like you, I can earn more doing what I do, to pay for professionals vs me messing it up.. costing 3x more and losing revenue.

We used an English architect, though deeply immersed (25years) in France...He drew up the plans, spoke to the Mairie and put the job out to tender... Mason, Electrician, Plumber, Tiler, Carpenter, Joiner. he managed the artisans and timing/ sequence, we met monthly and the project was delivered largely without any pain. RDJ.. I agree they are artists... but our building needed that artistry and he found design solutions, we hadn't even thought of. I spoke to 2 previous clients to understand his project management skills... they were fine... 4 years down the line, I still can't fault the overall job.
I guess it depends on the job... either way a Project Manager , architect or not is essential.

Renovation 2
Slightly different approach, we're doing this one in phases.. We're now sufficiently confident to manage various trades for the preparation. but will revert back to the architect model for the main job.

We also learned it is a good thing to get the immediate neighbours involved in some way.. show them round, show them the plans, stress the use of local artisans.. good for local economy etc. things are just a bit easier... no complaints when a concrete mixer blocks the road for an hour...we share odd jobs out to the locals: making shutters, bit of ground work, various repairs ... yes you can scrump my fruit trees when we're not there.. etc etc It all helps.

Both of these houses don't have an investment criteria or planned return..I do over spec them as they are retreats, a place to escape to.. The villagers have never seen a boiling water tap or a 4 post lift in the barn..

I think its going to be a good decade or so before the value breaks even with the restoration costs... for that reason ... it might be worth seeking out English, German or Dutch renovations..for sale locally to benchmark..

Thanks Andrew. Again all good advice and much appreciated.

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smifffymoto said:

I don’t know the full ins and outs but if you renovate and move into the new house,it becomes your principle residence,your old house becomes a maison secondaire which will attract tax if there is a capital gain.There will be a period of grace but how long it is ,I don’t know.
Like I said,I’m no expert.

I've researched this a bit and it is a year as long as the house is empty and on the market. On the other hand I think that we could keep living in the old house even if the new one is finished and only actually move out when it's sold, so effectively the new house would be the maison secondaire but then we'd move to it permanently. It would be a shame not to get the benefit of the new house but it's within walking distance of where we are now so I'm sure we'd get plenty of enjoyment from it still and hopefully not take too long to sell the old one.

[zbc]

Things are progressing and more details to follow including soon some pictures. I was a little vague before but the reason for that is that the building we are looking to renovate is the local school and there were some serious discussions going on at the Conseil to decide if they wanted to sell it and although I'm fairly sure none of them are on PH I don't want to take any risks. Meanwhile I have a little puzzle for you. As they've decided they will sell to us they have lent us the keys to spend some time in it and go look with some experts which we've started with. There are some beautiful cellars under part of the building but only part which I thought was odd. In part of the wall there are three little holes with metal blanking plates and I wonder what they are. one plate is missing and it has what looks like ash behind it. Could it be an old flue or similar from an old heating system and if so I wonder if there could be more cellar behind the wall?

CELLARS (very dry)

MYSTERIOUS METAL PLATES

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Rushjob said:

The plates are access points to clean out flues - hence the ash

Thanks Rushjob that's what I'd assumed but do you have any idea where the fire would have been? Does it mean there is a furnace behind the wall and this is the easiest way to access the flue or as these are in the basement would the fire have been somewhere on the floor above and this was just an easy access place to access the flue above. And why would there be three? It's not a huge building just 100m2 or so on ground floor. I can't see it needing a huge furnace. I'm just nervous in case there are any well hidden nasty surprises ahead.

[zbc]

as requested. The small building at the back is also part of it. The main school room has the big windows and there's another building about the same size perpendicular to this but hidden behind it. Plan is to put bedrooms in the roof

Edited by zbc on Thursday 4th February 10:41

[zbc]

I might need to find a new home for it but I'd love to keep it. There are quite a few other schooly features that come with it such as the bell, think small church bell rather than front door bell and there's lots of interesting things inside that I think the commune will take like desks and old maps but I might try to bargain to keep some of them

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AndrewCrown said:

Merci Bien ZBC

Great to see...
what sort of condition is it in inside?

De rien AC

It was well maintained for a long time and was a school until 2007 but it hasn't had much care since then apart from the roof which they retiled as they knew it was a risk. Cellar is they dry though and there are no cracks. Beams are in a dreadful place for bedrooms in the roof though so I think that it will have to come off entirely and be redone but I think we can keep most of the ground floor arrangement

[zbc]

So we've started to get a few experts in for the main items and of course one of the biggest is the roof. We plan to put 4 bedrooms up here and there's plenty of room and headspace is good too despite the pitched roof but I'm wondering about insulation. As you can see from the picture it's just tiles at the moment. I had expected that we would have to remove the tiles, put on some sort of membrane and then replace the tiles which if course would have led to a lot of cost, not least for all the scaffolding but the roofer we spoke to said this isn't an issue and he can do it from the inside. Any thoughts?

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Fatt McMissile said:

I can't speak for your region and others will know, but here in Brittany roofing felt is only used under the slates if the roof has a shallow pitch, and it's usual to insulate from the inside, even on new builds. There are hangers sold to hold the insulation.
A word of advice - have as deep a layer possible of insulation of the highest quality installed between the sloping ceiling sides and the roof, it's difficult to add more after the ceiling's in place.
The style of the A-frame would be unusual around here, it'll be a nice feature if it doesn't get in the way of your heads....

Thanks Fatt, that's good to know and is very reassuring. I'm certainly up for as much insulation as we can and as I said in most places the height isn't an issue so I think we should be good. The A frame is quite unusual here as well and most of the discussion with the roofer was about ways that we can keep as much as possible exposed and integrated in walls as it is attractive and we don't want to hide the nature of the building. There are a couple of pillars to take out and then we should be clear for almost everything and there will be a couple of low points with the beams at about 1.8m in a couple of the bedrooms which isn't ideal but certainly livable. I'll try to get a proper set of pictures up soon and maybe time to start a proper thread.

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Thanks Magoo and Andrew.

Yes there are some joints in the purlings. The roofer had a good luck and thinks they'll be fine. He has some plans for some other specific reinforcements so I'm hoping he has this covered. During the initial look he had a good look for woodworm and found some limited evidence but none of it recent as far as he could see.

Andrew is the plan to fill in the space behind the new wood also with insulation? I presume the second picture shows the roof "after". The wall is very similar to what we've done here in our current house. We didn't do a full renovation but as we've redone various rooms we've normally used the steel railing and insulation slabs to improve what wasn't there and it makes a huge difference.

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AndrewCrown said:

Yes ZBC

What you can’t see is that on the other pitch we have solar Velux windows...well worth considering...no wiring...rain sensors and remote control opening/ blinds.

We had much discussion of these during our meeting, both the roofer and the person who is helping at the moment are big fans. Any thought on minimising rain noise with Velux windows? We have them in our attic rooms at the moment, albeit 20 year old ones, and they are very noisy if it rains hard.

[zbc]

I like the wood on the ceiling. Current house has wood everywhere, slight overload and reacting against it I was planning to cut back but with the white that looks really nice. I think our ceiling will look similar with partially exposed beams and as you say the rest hidden in the insulation so I might steal some of that - thanks. Meanwhile nothing moving here as the commune are still making up their mind and setting some ground rules for the sale.

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So despite the awkwardness of lockdowns we are still making slow progress and now have a verbal agreement to move forward which is quite exciting but I guess the hard work starts here. We also need to decide how to pay for it and whilst one option is to use a mortgage here which I'm working on with our bank the other option is to sell our old family home back in the UK. I know there are potential CGT implications in both France and the UK and that one can be set against the other. Ideally I'd like to find someone who understands the situation in both the UK and France rather than trying to bounce between two different advisors. I'll repost this in finance but I thought someone here might have some good contacts too.