The Leap

2009 we leave UK shores on our adventure….

we head for the south of France & the Cote d’azur, we play for a year living a lifestyle of Luxury Villas and fast cars, bloody good fun but little in the way of substance & only takes a year before we’re looking at each other bored, we’re in need of more stimulation.

It’s definitely a year we needed to do  in order to get it out of our system and to know its not the kind of life we’re after.

nice to be able to look back though

this was swapped for 20 acres and 5 buildings, the oldest dating back to 1650. this particular building (pictured below) is the one we really fell in love with & has not been lived in for 100 years (or not by humans at least)

the plan is to renovate the two houses & convert two of the three barns to Gites whilst the third (and largest) barn will become a gymnasium with internal pool for guests, all Gites will be 1 x bedroom luxury dwellings with their own hot tubs. the conversion / renovation will be sympathetic to their origins & retain as many original features as possible.

we are carrying out all the work ourselves along with a JCB for the real heavy stuff 🙂 the only tradesman we’ll be using will be an electrician.

The rest is on a wing & a prayer…

as you walk through the door (walls already taken down) black charred beams to left from open fires and smoking meat, open fire to other end of house, must have been cozy 🙂

fireplace to left  is so oversized with its beautiful stone supports shouldering a massive oak lintel

to right another less grand affair which will become a cooker hood within kitchen

stone sink with drain through wall to spout outside, a lovely feature that will stay

12″ square oak beams throughout will remain exposed

upstairs has some fantastic beam work that we’ll keep exposed as much as possible

that’s one of the buildings & the most beautiful, to say that we were  excited about bringing her into the 21st century is an understatement, typing this now and reminiscing still gives me butterflies to be honest…

the plan is to convert upstairs from an attic to a luxury bedroom with en-suite & add 2 x velux & 2 x dormer windows, downstairs will be all open plan for kitchen living area.