Hitting the ground running

G's visit to France in October 2011 was a blur of activity. His first weekend, he spent with his second cousin Jill and her husband John, in their beautiful home in the Dordogne. A soft landing indeed.

G met Veronique, the agent, first thing on the Monday morning and asked for permission to access the barn during the week, in anticipation of the actual exchange of ownership later in the week.

During that crazy week, G found time to meet with Thomas Moore, an English builder with whom he had exchanged a few emails. Thomas was able to provide a strong post to hold up the rotting huge oak lintel over the barn doors - obligation-free! He and G discussed our embryonic ideas for the barn, and intimated that it would be the kind of job he would happily take on. He and his wife live in a similar barn not far away.

Thomas's wife Eleanor would prove to be an invaluable resource. She prepares plans for submission to the Mairie and, being bilingual, is able to smooth all sorts of bumps in the road along the way...

G also found the time to speak to the Mairie in Chabrignac regarding the permis de construire, and the powers-that-be in Vignol about the fosse septique and came home with the requisite forms for both. He also measured and re-measured the barn, inside and out, so that we could begin to design the renovations.


On the second last day of his trip, G met with the agent, finalised the last-minute paper work, and then drove with her to Terrason to meet the vendor and the notaire. At last, the paperwork signed, the barn was officially OURS! G went to the barn immediately and texted me the news. I had been watching the clock and calculating his movements, and it was a wonderful shared moment of joy for us both, despite the time difference.

In his new capacity as home-owner, and wearing new gardening gloves and wielding new secateurs, G spent his last afternoon at the barn clipping back and pruning ivy. The apple trees were cloaked in it and the ivy had started up the outside walls of the barn too. He picnicked on the grass, with his back against the warm stone wall, ate an apple from our tree, and picked up one of the fallen walnuts to bring home for me.


Perhaps all the unusual activity at the barn attracted the attention of the neighbours in the petite ham eau of La Fromagerie, since, one by one, they found an excuse to come out of their homes and wave of peer in curiosity at the stranger. G met Jean-Marie, the adult son of the neighbours across the way, and he met his elderly mother, "Mme l'Echelle", as we would christen her (having borrowed a ladder from her husband on our first visit and not having been introduced).


We texted back and forth like mad things that day, and I'd seldom heard G sounding so happy.

...and then the wait

March-October 2011
We returned home to Sydney like triumphant warriors: exhausted but satisfied and with a whole lot of superfluous-to-requirements adrenaline coursing through the veins.

Family and friends tried to match our enthusiasm, peered at the photos of the property etc., but quickly resorted to wiggly smiles when the topic of The Barn came up.  Family, especially, seemed bewildered about the implications. Had we decided to move to France, then, or what was the plan? The spectrum of interest ranged from the faint to the moderate, with most people lurking in the lower reaches. When we spoke of our excitement that it could be something we could ALL enjoy one day were met with blank looks or shifted gazes.

In reality, this was always our dream, and no amount of wishing or shoving and pushing was going to make it a shared passion. Our kids, at least, were chuffed, even if they said they were chuffed 'for us'!!

When the dust had settled, and we'd received the requisite info from the agent, we arranged to pay the deposit for the purchase by direct transfer, and the sale was secured.

There began a long period of several months of waiting for the sale contract to arrive from the estate agent. We went from talking manically about the project and the barn to settling into a rhythm of daily life interspersed with the odd email or letter to which we needed to respond. During this time we asked questions about the property and began a long negotiation which would result in our swapping the field which came with the barn (and which was 'one field over') with the field right next to the barn, so that we would have a contiguous piece of land.

Needless to say, our written French was being tested all the time. The whole sale transaction was conducted in French, since neither the agent nor vendor speaks English. G is my hero; he handled the entire thing single-handedly.

We had been told that the sale was likely to take about 3 months and, allowing for the slow-down during summer, began to anticipate that the sale would be finalised in late August/September. With this in mind, G planned a trip over to France in early October to coincide with a business trip in Asia, and it seemed to us that this would allow plenty of time for the documents to be lined up for signature. In the meantime, we found some local English-speaking building contractors' names on the internet and began to make connection with them. Our reasoning here was that, since we live so far away from the build, we do not need another potential communication complication in the form of a French-English misunderstanding. Also, it would appear that the English contractors in France are accustomed to dealing with off-site owners and with keeping them up to date via email etc.

As it turned out,  the wheels only really began to turn when G's trip was imminent. Early in the morning on the day of G's departure, we got an email from the agent telling us that she needed my signature on a form that G would sign in her presence. My signature had to be verified by the French Consulate; noone else would do. I dropped G at work and raced across town to the French Consulate, where I had to wait in a nearby cafe until it opened. I was the first through those doors and managed to get the document signed and delivered back to G as he was standing waiting on the pavement for his taxi to the airport... Breathe...