During the holidays, we usually drive to another part of the country and rent a holiday house or what’s called a gîte. If the holidays last more than a week, we prefer to stay in the mountains, either in the east in Vosges or the southeast in the Alpes. If the holiday is shorter, we …
It was half way through autumn and I still had not found a jardinier or a gardener. For the past few months, I had been looking after the garden myself–weeding and pruning—I didn’t mind doing that. In the recent weeks, thanks to the frequent rains, I was actually spending more time uprooting dying plants and …
How naive we were. €500 for the initial overhaul of the garden. That was the initial budget, back in July 2021 when just moved into the house, we allocated to hiring a gardener to remettre ordre dans le jardin or do a bit of tidying in our little garden. Both Silviu and I were newbies (and …
I woke up to a wet, wet autumn Sunday. Through the window of my makeshift study cum bedroom window, I could see that it rained again in the night. Rain water droplets glistening on the leaves of the different types of flora in the garden, dressed in the finest autumn colours of red, orange, yellow, …
Never have I thought that I would have a reason to visit a tile specialist store, no, actually two stores, and in just one day. And spent more than two hours to boot in these two stores without being bored. That was what I did on the 3rd day of being a house owner in …
We have gotten the keys! We are now the official owners of a French house in Gometz-le-Chatel, Essonne, a little town of 2,500 inhabitants, about 30km south of Paris. It was on the eve of the French National Day that the house was transferred to our names—four and a half months after the seller (an …
This was our 8th house visit, and the last stop of our ‘Buying A House in France’ quest. We started our house visits in the middle of January 2021, amidst the Covid-19 pandemic, and it took us 2.5 months of active house searching before completing our quest. Mired in four months of French administration before …
After the 4th house visit debacle, we became a pair of more experienced house buyers. On the same day we changed our mind on the 4th house, we visited the 5th and the 6th houses. Would one of them, as the French would say, be un coup de coeur, capture our heart? The Cat House, …
4th House Visit It was the first week of February. We had been actively searching for a house to buy since the start of the year. However, we had only visited three houses so far. Our calls to real estate agents, hoping to make appointments to visit houses, were fruitless: either the houses had already …
Over four months from January to April 2021, we visited a total of eight houses. The following recounts three of our experiences. House Visits 1st House Visit On Saturday, 15 January 2021, we did our first house visit. Since it was our very first visit, we were super excited despite the gray winter sky on …