Finding Our First House - September 2008

South West Corner Of The Land Looking Ac

Front Of The Land Looking Up The Lane To

On our first trip to France we stayed at our friends barn just outside of Rochechouart in Haute Vienne, while we were there Gill & Mark introduced us to a couple of Estate Agents, the first of which was called "Mary" originally from Holland but with a French husband. We gave her our brief (which usually for any estate agent is completely pointless!). We made arrangements to view quite a few properties, however after a few days it became apparent that what we were hoping for and our budget were not the same, we were being shown properties that had been standing vacant for a generation, (I can't even explain the size of some of the spiders we encountered!), we eventually gave up with that particular Estate Agent, and were introduced to a guy names "Paul James", he owned and run a small bar called the "Soleil Couchant" but runs his Estate Agency on the side, again we gave him our brief and started looking at properties, again we seemed to be looking at houses that had been left un-maintained for a generation, at this point I must admit we were getting quite disillusioned. We had another viewing scheduled for the next day, so we decided to give it another try (although we weren't holding our breath), and unfortunately it was just another hovel, however on the way back the agent pulled into a building site, the site itself was deserted (it was lunchtime of course), he told us it would be OK as he sold them the site and they wouldn't mind us having a look, he then said "have you thought of building your own house?", well of course we hadn't, my wife Jill used to work as a credit controller and I was a musician and in IT, we ask him initially just to be polite what he thought the costs would be.

That evening after we had returned to Gill & Marks barn we mentioned it to them, I said to Mark that I had never laid a brick or block in my life and didn't know where to start, Mark told me that he would show me the next morning.

Well the next morning after a few cups of tea of course he started to show me how to build a wall, as luck would have it he needed to build a wall that would become Gill sewing room, so I helped Mark build the wall and by the end of the afternoon there it was, he said there you go it's straight and plumb and if you can build a wall you can build a house!!. To be honest we didn't need much convincing after looking at lots and lots of dismal little hovels, so a day or two later we made inquiries about plots of land for sale.

Our first appointment took us to a nice plot of land, but on further inspection it became clear that the installation of a fosse septique would have been problematic due to some very large boulders dotted around the plot.

Our next viewing took us to a small hamlet just outside of a small town called "Chabrac", the local farmer had divided some of his land to make building plots, and the one we were looking at was the last one, the plot size was about 3/4 of an acre, was fenced on one side (because that house was finished, and they has put up their fence-line), and it had 13 oak tree's at the rear of the plot, no fence-line on the other side (as they were still building, and that would have been our responsibility anyway), and the usual drainage ditch to the front of the plot, which made it a little difficult to park as it was a narrow lane, but it was a quiet lane so we were OK.

Jill immediately fell in love with the plot, compared to London this plot of land was huge especially for the price of €17,000, all the neighbours were French and seemed quite friendly, we decided to purchase this plot and immediately started the legal ball rolling :-)