Wednesday 26 September 2012

The house we've been waiting for

Well we've been to see it at last. And really it's as we were expecting. Which is a good thing :-)
This (on the right, not the bit with the fence on the top) is the roadside view. You come in at upstairs level. Nobody uses the big door with the steps, just the little one with little panes. Underneath the grey crepi (plaster) is beautiful yellow stone and probably more openings just filled in.
 
Then, through the paned door you descend down newish stone and wrought iron stairs (bit disappointing, hoping for old oak) into a hall. The doors to the left are the sitting room and straight on is the kitchen. (Here's where we find out that the camera has run out of battery!)



 
If you don't go downstairs, to your left is a series of little rooms like this off a corridor. All rooms have polystyrene ceilings and some have added cork tiles. Oh joy.
 

 
Oh and pine panelling is rife too. But each of the little rooms have this view. Surprisingly none of the rooms have the view down the valley we were expecting but have a view of some of the rest of the town (a part called Au Bout du Monde!)
 
 
And the garden is spectacular. (I promise to have pictures when we go back Sue.) In the house is an aerial shot of the garden in its prime. Palm trees, ornate balustrades down three terraces, immaculate potager, superb. 
 
And the piece de resistance is the immaculate stoneclad fireplace. Why, you may well ask, in a house of such beautiful local stone do they need to clad a fireplace in slate??


 
On this level there is an enormous plastic conservatory that extends all along the house about 3 metres wide. It can just be seen on this photo. Halfway down the left hand side about an inch in with row of brown windows (ground level on the other side) and conservatory below. Full of an ancient prickly pear whose trunk is too wide to get my hands round, whose roots must be somewhere?? What it covers up is the fact that all the rooms on this level have lovely double arched doors.
 
 
What a lot of work. Everything to rip out. But not too scarey. Yay let's give it a go.  Just have to agree a price......................

17 comments:

  1. Lovely...well, it will be when you've finished, but all the bare bones are there.
    The garden sounds as if it will be spectacular, while the double arched doors have me drooling.

    It reminds me so much of our househunting days....the horror on finding a full French makeover of....as you note, pine panelling, polystyrene tiles and every bit of original stone covered as if it were something obscene...and the delight of being able to chuck it all out and bring the house to life again.!

    Fingers crossed for the haggling!

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  2. Thank you Fly. We took a friend with us as well as the agent and she spent her time chatting up the owner and is off to see her new friend tomorrow.............

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  3. I see you've got French negotiation skills well covered...

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  4. Well done Rosie. As you say, a lot of work, but it will be well worth it. Good luck on getting it for the right price x

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  6. Three hours of french negotiation later, we have an offer in but lots of family discussion between brothers that don't like each other to go...............................

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  7. Wonderful! The house is just bursting with potential, Rosie, and its location and garden are to die for. Here's hoping the brothers' wish to see the money trumps their inability to get on with each other.

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  8. Oh I hope that the price is agreed on and that all goes as planned. It looks like you really have a hit on a good place to make your own here. Take care diane

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  10. I'm trying to set up the word verification thingy. Not much luck so far.

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  11. I thought maybe if you shut it down it would save the settings??

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  12. Rosie, are any of the "interesting offers" appearing on your blog itself, or just in your spam folder? I'm subscribed to this thread and I haven't had any spam come through by email to me.

    However, since the author of a blog doesn't see the word verification on their own blog, I'll post this comment and find out whether he change has worked.

    Speaking personally I really hate the current word verification system as I find it very hard indeed to read and often have to try 3 or 4 times before I can find a combination I can deal with. Sigh....

    Let's se what happens.....

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  13. It's working, Rosie, so you can probably take off the moderation now.

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  14. Perpetua. What I'm getting are emails telling me what a wonderful blog I have and why don't I visit their suspect blog. All in weird English. Or yesterday I was offered sexual massage in London! None of that appears on the blog, just in my email so maybe none of this is necessary. And I agree with you about the word verification. I'll leave the bit where I moderate and remove the word verification for now. Thank you for replying.

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    1. Rosie, I think we all get those, but it's rare they make it onto the blog itself, as Blogger's spam filter is getting better all the time. I find I get a little run of them and then nothing for ages and I've had word verification off since the beginning of the year. So far I haven't felt the need to moderate, but I'd rather do that than inflict word verification on people.

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  15. Just to keep you up to date, we're still waiting for a response to our offer................. and still excited about the latest one :-)

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