Clive Kristen - A French Restoration: La Maison DEtre

Title Page

La Maison dEtre

Or

A FRENCH RESTORATION

Clive Kristen & David Johnson

Publisher Information

First Published in 2013 by

Andrews UK Limited

www.andrewsuk.com

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published, and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Copyright 2013 Clive Kristen

The right of Clive Kristen to be identified as author of this book has been asserted in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyrights Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Authors Notes

One - The Reason for this Book

This ebook is an update on the previously successful paperback with the same title. The advantage of this format is to provide a document which the reader can therefore be confident is more reliable.

Magazines with an interest in promoting the French property market cling to clichs such as : It was love at first Sight, How we found our dream home, and even more improbably We never had a moment of regret.

And, to perpetuate this imbalance they rarely touch on :

• The dodgier sales methods of some estate agents.
• The pros and cons of using unregistered British builders.
• Language problems - using the telephone is the ultimate test.
• Health care - when top up cover is essential.
• Taxation - with national and two levels of local tax to consider. And this does not mean you can escape the long arm of the Inland Revenue.
• Bureaucracy - the French have, pro rata, more paper pushers than any other nation on the planet.
• The resentment of communities to foreigners, particularly those who speak little or no French.
• How Frances peasant economy can benefit your lifestyle.
• How to adapt to life in France. Or, why one UK family in three sell up and return to Britain within three years.

These seem, to me, to be pretty glaring omissions. In fairness, the better magazines, and certainly the broadsheet press, do run well-written articles relating to banking, health, taxation, and so on. But the advice is invariably, perhaps inevitably, generalised in a way that can become misleading. Our experience, at the blunt end, has often been thats not what we expected at all.

Take a visit to a French doctor. You know two things. Firstly, the EHIC card (which you have obtained in the UK ) provides reciprocal free healthcare throughout the EC for yourself and your family. Secondly, the French health care system is superior to the NHS.

However, this helps little in practice. Go to a French doctor with a minor ailment and you get the medical, heart, lungs, blood pressure etc., as well as questions about diet, bowel movements and exercise, Then you get the prognosis for each of the leading English contenders in the Champions League with pointed linkage to the number of French players each English club has on its books. Finally, you will be given a prescription and a bill. Both of these mean you hand over a wad of cash up front. This may not be what you had anticipated but its the way it works in France.

According to your circumstances you may get some of your cash back. Eventually. Well, maybe. French healthcare is good but expensive. It has created a financial black hole of the French economy. You pay your bills up front and you pay again in taxes. And it can only get worse.

Our plan was to buy and renovate an old building. We had limited funds but had recently brushed up our DIY skills. But that was DIY UK and this can easily get lost in translation. If you dont believe it take a closer look around a French builders merchant. I could identify around half the products and make a fair guess at a few more. But a closer look did nothing for my confidence. Some things look the same but deep down they are different. Take French electrics for instance. Very tricky. And, this leads to implications for safety, insurance, and imported electrical products. French plumbing is even more bizarre. Central heating, for instance, is driven by water pressure, not gravity. Pipe gauges and couplings are antediluvian - although a course in medieval architecture may just help.

Which takes us to the mystery of la fosse. We knew septic drainage was de riguer in rural France but nothing of the etiquette associated with pumping out 3000 litres of effluent. First, do not to rely on your neighbours noses to inform you the tank needs emptying, but do give them due warning when the man with the pump truck is coming. The aroma, as they say, wasnt built in a day.

We estimated that the restoration, working alongside a local builder, would take three years. That was about the only thing we got completely right. And, as we could only afford to work on one area at a time, we had to prioritise. We decided that the kitchen came first. Although that is not what happened at all.

Renovation does not come in discrete chunks. There is no point in digging up a floor for new cabling if three months later you are digging it up again to lay new water pipes. And, you dont know you need new water pipes until you have shifted tons of earth and concrete. And inevitably, as the roof is a lower priority, it will start to leak just as you have fitted your new units.

All this challenged our sanity. But there was massive satisfaction too. I became fairly competent as a plasterer ( of Paris ), a tiler, breeze blocker, ditcher, glazer, concreter, and gardener. Doris rubbed down everything else and painted it. And we saved a small fortune. With more reliable builders we would have saved a large one.

This then is the story of two people, old and wise enough to know better, who bought and restored their own mini-chateau in the middle of La belle France. It is also the story of the Maison DEtre herself - a property whose own character reflects her colourful past. Yes, we love her to bits.

If I was to write those magazine catch lines they would be Love at 16 th sight, How we found our ruin, ( no metaphor intended ) and Despite regrets and recriminations we would do it again.

David Johnson

Two - A Renovation Story

On December 2004 Justin Ryan and Colin McAllister of The Million Pound Property Experiment said We are entering an interesting time in home improvements. As increasing numbers of Brits are choosing to pay for time off and a quality finish, it seems that the thirst for DIY may be drying up.

At the same time Standard Life Bank also claimed that more British men were hanging up their hammers. Indeed, it was estimated that during the previous year householders had spent an average of 4,500 on tradesmen rather than tackle jobs themselves. A more startling statistic was that British men were prepared to pay out a fifth of their take home pay to tradesmen in order to buy more spare time. Builders, plasterers and window fitters appear to have benefited most from this new trend.

But whilst the DIY shed shops in the UK have found life tougher - and have diversified accordingly - profits from bricolage and builders merchants in France have never been greater. And yet there is no reason to believe that Frenchmen have suddenly begun to prefer DIY to football, rugby and la chasse - which sometimes may even include hunting. Indeed it is a phenomenon that the French themselves had not quite come to terms with although there are clear indications that immigration (which includes the 10,000 or so Brits who relocate to France every month ) have something to do with it.

I believe this may be true. And with good reason. A lovely rural property surrounded by several green acres in say Brittany can be purchased and renovated for say a total of 200,000 whilst a similar property and renovation in say Oxfordshire would cost at least three times as much - beyond most peoples means and dreams. Or put it another way. In France it is possible through a renovation project - which may well include some DIY - to build for a superior lifestyle in which the principal beneficiary is not the bank or building society. The incentive therefore to invest time, money and imagination in a project is also therefore greater.