REAL LIFE


The McKenzies’ ‘petit château’ in Charente – a


charming farmhouse they discovered by chance


their sale had completed. We loved their style. The time frame to get our


holiday home habitable was just five weeks! Phase 1. Create a bathroom, bedroom and makeshift kitchen. Improve the exterior of the house – particularly the shutters and drive. Phase 2. Add an internal staircase, with a bedroom and bathroom upstairs. Get the barn reroofed, stop the hangar leaking. Sort out the garden. Phase 3. Add a fosse septique. We are not builders. I am


a retired practice nurse and Neil is a retired car dealership general manager. Neil is a doer with boundless energy. We have common sense, ideas and (after 35 years of marriage) work well together. I became the gopher, painter, paper striper and researcher. Neil planned, demolished, plumbed, fitted, tiled, pondered and replanned. We employed a French


electrician, a roofer for the barn and staircase and a French company to make some wooden shutters. They painted a set blue for me when the weather was cold. The rest of


“My retirement plan had been to relax, read and drink chilled wine, but we ended up working 10-hour days. We loved it!”


and pink dilapidated bathroom. The potential second bedroom and bathroom would be located on the first floor, but at the moment they were accessed via a rickety set of stairs in an attached barn that badly needed reroofing. There were two open hangars


that we visualised as a covered area for eating, hot tub and car; and also rabbit hutches, which would become storage for logs or other items. Weeds had taken possession of the drive, and the electrics and plumbing needed revamping. Friends we'd got to know over many years holidaying in their lovely gîte, were in the process of selling up and offered us their gîte to stay in for free until


the work was down to us. My retirement plan had been to relax, read and drink chilled wine, but we ended up working 10-hour days. We loved it – it was our dream.


MONEY-SAVING DECOR We recycled when we could. The kitchen island worktop is a door from the attic just waxed, with the bolt hinge and writing on it just left on. A ladder from the attic is displayed on a wall and decorated with fairy lights. I painted three chandeliers we bought secondhand for £45. All the furniture other than


the four-poster bed and the settee is secondhand and then painted. The chaise longue and dining chairs we


 An old door from the attic was repurposed as the kitchen island worktop FRENCH PROPERTY NEWS: July/August 202341


It was dilapidated when they bought it, with shutters that needed painting blue


Open hangars ripe for conversion; the alfresco dining space outside the house


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