We have recently passed our one year anniversairy of moving to France and whilsts we did achieve some stuff in the house, sometimes it feels rather like we didn't. Back then when we got here, we said seven months is plenty of time to turn one room into livable space with proper heating so we could survive a winter in a house that is not really made for winter stays. But, as it turns out... we were wrong. It wasn't so much for the lack of trying, but all the roadblocks along the way.
Administrative hassles for my non-French husband
One thing we noticed straight away, as we arrived just before the general elections in France: the mood has changed drastically compared to the years before. Particularly towards foreigners. Of course Brexit did not help either. But whether you are married to a French national or not doesn't really matter. The problem is, that this country boasts their values of "liberty", "solidarity" and "equality", but when it comes down to being reasonable all three qualities are quickly thrown out of the window.
First my husband has been 'forced' to attend French lessons, again - there is no problem with that, but the 'how' is the problem. He can't do them online, he physically needs to attend them in a place that's about 40min drive from where we are, as we are rather remote. We only have one car, we have a child that needs to go to school. If my husband takes the car, I cannot take the child to school. We had appointments to attend, administrative, but also medical appointments (i.e. to register, etc.). But for some reason they are deemed to be all unimportant, French lessons are more important! It got to the point, that the organisation that is hired by the foreign office to teach foreigners French, starts sending out threatening e-mails. Worse: in French! At some point I asked nicely to get at least some important emails/information bits in English, at which point I was ranted at, that government staff can't speak all languages of the world. The arrogance is just unbelievable. With the same sarcastic tone I pointed out, that English is not "all languages of the world" but in fact the internationally accepted and recognised language. The least one would expect. And I then asked that now that we got the sarcastic pleasentries out of the way, whether we can actually get some answers and help. Anyway, this causes us - still - a lot of trouble. It also does not seem possible to do the courses elsewhere as 200 or 400 hours needed to be attended. We asked whether there are other locations with more reasonable hours. Yes, further away! So far OFII or in particular IFRA have been an absolute nightmare and uncompromising in this regard.
Costs
We expected the cost of living and renovations cost to be higher than what we are used to, but some of the stuff is just ridiculous. Whilst we of course chose the remote lifestyle, there are some things we did not anticipate. For example, we have no big car, so often we need to order bigger items to be delivered. I get that delivery fees in a vast country with loads of small settlements have higher delivery fees, but when shops like Leroy Merlin request a 99€ delivery fee for a roll of cable, you wonder whether they are taking the piss. Another shop offered deliveries for 35€ and whilst it is a big DIY shop, it looked like it was a private hire, a guy just dumping the stuff in the back of his car. Unfortunately in one instance these were our insulation boards, so the styrofoam got heavily damaged. Others have prices by distance, which is OK, unless you are - like us - less than 5 km from another village but the delivery fee suddenly drastically increases. There is no way that a less than 5km drive (petrol or time wise) would warrant such a price hike.
So in the end we have been trying to safe as much money as we can, unfortauntely that means delays trying to find other delivery options, or collecting multiple orders or even asking others to help transport. At some point my brother borrowed a trailer in Germany to bring furniture to France and whilst he was around we basically used him as our 'man with a van' (except that it was free!).
Clutter... so... much... clutter!
There was and still is a lot of stuff in the house that needs to go. We knew that. But we didn't know how much it actually was. My grandfather's and uncle's workshop alone were three trips with a huge trailer, I'd guess about another 10 trips by car and then also neighbours who picked up soooooo much stuff to either burn (so much wood) or repurpose. Then there was my grandfather's old sawing, planing and milling machine. Pure steel, I recon it had at least half a ton. No one wanted it, the museums had no space (it was built in the 1920s), it was too heavy to get out of the house, and we of course have no use for it. We needed it out before the new doors were installed, as they were set to be 15cm higher in order to be able to add insulation and screet to the floor. Months went by and no solution. But two days before the new doors were installed our neighbour was so kind and helped us drag it out. He spent so much time on this, bless him. And then, by chance, one of the windows installer's dad was interested in the machine and he head the means to pick it up. On the same day, what a luck!
And still, every time we go on the loft we wonder why most of this stuff was even kept (rusty barbed wire... plastic covers for the garden which just dissolve to dust when touched, etc.). To date I think we removed less than a quarter of stuff that no one wants or has use for. There is some really good expensive wood, that of course we'll keep!
Moving things in the house from one corner to the other
It is a big house, but we literally have no space. One of the issues being the fact that my aunt of course still has the right to live here. But she still hasn't quite established the fact, that there are rooms which belong to us now and that we want to renovate. That includes the workshop and the room that she uses as a gardening shed. Even after we started emptying it to make space for our stuff and to start renovations, explaining that we think it will be our new kitchen, she instantly reclaimed the room, wanted new shelves here and there and a new table so she can do gardening tasks on it. It still hasn't quite sunk in to this day it seems. Only when she sees all the work that has been done already, she backs off a bit. But it's hard work, we fight for every centimeter.
Then we have the problem that many items are too big to be put on the loft. The loft has a bendy staircase and it's quite tight. Even with small furniture we struggled quite a bit. Fire wood is still stored on the loft, most of it we burnt now in our wood stove as we have no heating. Then one task is done, in order to access the other half of the room, everything needs to be moved again. Currently we have massive plasterboards in the way. To finish the ceiling we need to move them to another room (not possible) or within the same room. My aunt was so kind to offer some space in her apartment but realisticly anything we put in, we don't hear the end of it (it's in the way, it's ugly, she can't clean, she can't walk, why does it have a light, the LED will take too much power, but it is her apartment, she lives here, etc.pp).
Right now we have a bit of a conundrum with the plasterboards. They need to go up to the ceiling but first we need to install the fixings. We'd have to move them within the room to get the space, but we already broke one in half when we tried to move them. The same we have with the insulation rolls which are filling the other side of the room.
Artisans
The one really frustrating thing is getting artisans. There are not many and the few we have are either busy or unreliable. The most reliable one we've got is our electrician. He is a star! He's helped us so much, also with just information so we can save money and do it ourselves. He's been an amazing help!
A problem here are masons it seems. Last year we contacted several masons for work and most of them already said that work can only be done mid or late 2025. We agreed to get a slightly more expensive mason but a bit sooner. Now we were told it will be by the end of the year and somewhat I have the feeling that this won't happen either. In addition we constantly have issues with the wall, bits falling off, leaks, so little (expensive) repairs needed to be done, so basically we pay double as when the house wall is supposed to be renovated, those issues should be fixed then. But because it takes so long, we basically get charged for it twice.
Then organising them all to come here at a date in an order where the work can be completed. That does seem to be impossible as well. Particularly for the workshop it has been very frustrating. We were supposed to install a vent for the new stove, apparently a new requirement for burners in France. However, the guy only gave me a date to install the tube in the floor. When I asked whether that includes the new lining for the chimney I was told no. He then gave me a date 3 weeks later, but by then we already had the plasterboard delivery and the new ventilation tubing couldn't be put down anymore as the plasterboard fills half the room. As a result all other works like electrics, screet, flooring, etc. has been delayed until we find a way to empty the room.
Landscapers (we have a huge dead fir tree in the garden) basically do not respond. Two companies responded, one suddenly stood in front of our door saying that I requested a quote. No prior information or anything. It turns out he only showed up because he had to provide a quote for a bigger project nearby. As he was "nearby and early he thought he come here before". Only to be told that he can't get any machinery in our garden, it needed to be done by hand, he's not sure that would be "worth it". And I said that doesn't matter, I'd pay for it either way, that shouldn't be his problem. Just send the quote. Never heard of the guy again. Recently I found another company, the same one that provided our fire wood as they cut down trees by hand (as shown on one of their adverts). They said someone will get in touch. That was two weeks ago. After I sent them a message, that no one was in touch in two weeks, no answer anymore.
Unforeseen additinal repairs to the house
We seem to have rats in the house (or actually, now it's just mice by the looks of it) which removed all the insulation between our celing and the roof tiles. At times it was really hard to keep the apartment above 15°C and with a 4yo child you can imagine, this is no fun.
Then we noticed a water leak in the workshop. In the end a mason came, dug up half the of the ground alongside the wall. A "concrete pipe" which leads the water from the roof into the waste water cracked. As the concrete pipe was directly attached to the old stonewalls of the house the water basically seeped through the stonewall into the workshop. Now this problem was solved, we noticed there is more and more water coming through one of the new windows. And of course eventually with the recent thunderstorms and water buckets chucking down, the workshop was flooded. It turns out, not only the water pipe was cracked, also the concrete "container" in the ground where the roof water is being collected in had holes directly under the pipe which again lead through the stonewalls into our workshop. Luckily the water seeped through the cracks in the floor before it reached our plasterboards!
The house had two electricity meters of which one we got rid of and the other one we had the energy company here in France move to a more suitable location (at 2.2m height juster under the concrete ceiling is not reasonable we found). They moved that, and all was good (praise to ENEDIS!) but what we didn't realise: a cowboy installed a new bathroom boiler for my aunt and instead of connecting it to her circuit board, he installed a fuse right next to the meter and connected that boiler through a fuse but still right into the meter. So one day my aunt had issues with her apartment boiler, thought she can have a shower here... that's when we discovered it. Shocking! Even our electrician was shaking his head.
We also have two water supplies to the house which - for the time being - we cannot change. As we wouldn't know how to merge the two water systems within the house. However, the main water supply to the main part of the house is so old, that no one in my family knows where the pipes are. They've been laid by the original water supply company in the area, but they dug a 20m path around our house to my aunt's kitchen on the backside of the house and connected a water meter and the water main tap right next to each other. First of all, the tap canno be used properly because the meter is in the way (I'd have to pay for it to be moved!) but also they can't tell me where they've put the pipes down. Not even where they come from in the street. So this is something that we need to find a solution for as well.
On the loft we noticed that some wooden slabs are breaking through. Particularly in one area where the only thing between upstairs and downstairs are the wooden slabs, there is already a big hole. Someone tried to cover it by putting a bit of cardboard there (which is of course very safe). Luckily not in the workshop, but still a problem that needs sorting sooner than later.
Nothing is straight/levelled
Finally another issue we've noticed - occuring in all parts of the house and garden: nothing is straight/flat/levelled. For example with the workshop, we originally thought the floor is not levelled. But the more we measured and the more we used a spirit level in all sorts of corners, it dawned on us, that basically the floor is levelled. And that's it. Nothing else is straight. Not the beams, not the walles, neither horizontically nor vertically. So they need much more work (and workarounds) than anticipated. The same applies to everything else, i.e. the garden. We knew already that we are on a slop (naturually, if you are in the mountains), but then also none of the walls are straight, again... neither vertically nor horizontally. So anything we do either needs a complete renew or so many workarounds it's nervwrecking. Solutions to this are basically an ongoing thing, but we didn't anticipate how much this can slow us down.
There is more to come, but for now that's it. More in part three of my catching up! 😉