Tag French adventure

One year on at our French home

Steve and Carole 4 Comments

We celebrated one year in our house at the end of November. Life in France is good and we have made some lovely friends. Charlie has also made some doggy friends!

Since the summer, we have been working hard on the house, well I say ‘we’, I mean Steve! I can only assist with the odd bit of painting where I can be trusted and keep the cups of tea coming. Our first priority was to be warm this winter, so we had a ‘pompe à chaleur’ (heat pump) installed and some insulation on the walls and floor. We discovered that our exterior walls are one metre thick after one of the mega drills got stuck!

So, I am typing this in the warm! Our second priority being to have our lounge cosy and finally order some sofas. Our wood flooring is a lot warmer than the tiles. Here are a few ‘before’ and ‘nearly there’ photos!

Almost finished …..

We’ve moved upstairs to one of the bedrooms and added an en-suite shower room.

So, still some finishing bits, window to be painted white and these lovely tiles for the en-suite.

Next project will be the guest room as we have now bought the bed. Can’t wait to have friends and family over to visit. However, we bought the paint for the kitchen so maybe there will be two projects on the go!

We bought some garden furniture including sunbeds which took a while (days!) to put together and a well deserved beer was needed afterwards.

Finally, it’s been interesting to see what has flowered in our garden during our first full year and there are some fantastic plants that we can add to.

But next year will be about pots, pots and more pots!

I hope to be back motivated with a lot of blogging on our French adventures in 2024.

We say ‘goodbye’ to a very tough and sad 2023 with mum unexpectedly leaving us in May and life just isn’t the same, we all miss her so much. Especially at this time of year as mum loved Christmas!

Take care and I wish you a peaceful, healthy and happy 2024.

Home Sweet Home

Steve and Carole 1 Comment

Where has the time gone, my last blog post was October 2022 and now we are in March 2023!

So, just a short update. From the photo above, you can see we finally moved into our own house, just over five months after arriving in France. back in June 2022. A hectic time and moving in at the end of November meant it was best to unpack the Christmas decorations first! That helped take the pain away of yet more French admin, setting up utility accounts etc…. As I type this, we have just had our health cards come through (Carte Vitale). All that is left on the French admin list is to change our driving licences and then start the application for the residency visa.

But back to Loubillé, where we now live. Unlike our house in Spain, we have quite a few houses around us and we are a less than a mile away from the the centre of the village. Our nearest town is Chef-Boutonne, a ten minute drive and where the supermarkets, vets, banks etc are located. We have beautiful countryside everywhere, even in the winter months, so lots of lovely walks for Charlie.

We have started French language lessons but Loubillé life has been some what ‘on hold’ as sadly my mum has been very poorly and I’ve had to travel back to the UK a few times. I’m very pleased to say that she is now recovering very well.

At the moment, we are waiting on a start date from our builder to get some works done on our home. Mainly cosmetic as the house is in good order. But we do need more insulation as it is a cold house despite the huge wood burner. Plus we are getting a quote for a  heat pump, ‘pompe à chaleur’.

We have a large south facing garden that needs tidying and then we will wait a year to see what plants appear. I have so many ideas for a typical French garden! I already know we have many roses, honeysuckle, lavender and peonies plus right now a few daffodils. Also, plans for a kitchen garden at the side of the house. Steve is waiting to play with his ride on lawnmower!

A few jobs started in the garden including clearing tons of ivy!

Slowly we are getting a social life, meeting some lovely people. Everyone is so helpful. And with spring almost here, I cannot wait to be out and about discovering the area we now call home. And writing more interesting blogs, I promise!!

Au revoir et à bientôt!