The House That Fought Back!

I love our new house in Cognac but this last week it has been testing my patience.  I often think of old houses as having rather quirky and sometimes temperamental personalities and this one is obviously no exception.  I think it's fair to say the honeymoon period is well and truly over and that it's time to get going with the renovations in earnest.  

The first "incident" occurred on Christmas Eve at about 9.30pm while we were enjoying a yummy supper lovingly cooked by my chef husband, Spike.   The slightly dodgy table centre that I had cobbled together with the trimmings from the Christmas tree and some bay branches from the yard was lit (thankfully Spike bought some red roses which improved my rather bedraggled offering).  We had the radio playing in the background and were feeling very smug that we had managed such a nice meal considering our limited kitchen facilities.

My woefully inadequate table centre

We were half way through the meal when the power box by the front door started making some terrible knocking noises so we rushed around the house turning off the computer and other electrical appliances before shutting down the power completely.  With torches in hand and thankfully candles already lit (being Christmas) we went around the house unplugging everything and turning off the switches of the numerous ancient Bakelite junction boxes that are to be found dotted liberally around the house.  Spike then tried to turn the power back on... nothing!

From a mobile phone we managed to get through to someone at EDF who said they would send someone round on Christmas morning to sort it out.  

Obviously by this time our dinner was somewhat congealed but in spite of everything we spent a lovely candlelit evening together in an eerily quiet house before retiring to bed.

A taste of the house's 19th century roots

Watching the little Christmas trees spinning around isn't as entertaining
as the TV but beggars can't be choosers!

After a restless night worrying that the electrics might be completely condemned by EDF coupled with a rather chilly start to the day due to our heating being off the lovely EDF man arrived and thankfully rescued us... ahhhh!  

With the heating roaring away and everything right with the world again we took the dogs out for a walk along the river and visited some friends for Christmas lunch (which was delicious).  

Boxing Day was blissfully uneventful and take-two of our Christmas Eve supper (thankfully Spike made enough for two meals) was a success and everything seemed to be back on track but the very next day we realised by the afternoon that the house seemed to be getting a bit cold.  Having inspected the oil tank we saw to our horror that it had run down to nothing. We'd only checked it a couple of weeks back but obviously our old boiler is a pretty hungry beast. Luckily we have second tank with oil in reserve so it was just a matter of transferring the oil over and voila we'd be back in business in no time... well apparently the boiler had other ideas!

The monster in the basement just refused to fire up again and we had to call out an emergency heating engineer.  Unfortunately he spent an hour poking around and looking bemused and finally whilst scratching his head in obvious confusion he said he'd come back with some spare parts in the morning.

That was a few hours ago now and it was while I wrote this post that a distant "woo hoo" emanating from the basement reached my ears so I knew to my immense relief that Spike has managed to get the old girl going (yes boiler's are female in France... talk about stereotyping!) so it looks like we are not going to freeze after all (hooray!).

The look of a triumphant
(or should that be slightly smug?) man!

These last few day illustrate my theory that houses are living breathing things.  The electrics are the veins, the water pipes the arteries and the boiler is the very heart and although as with people it gets harder to accept change as you get older I do hope that we can gently coax our dear old house into the 21st century without any more crises and that with a few carefully planned operations she'll (temperamental old houses are also female in France!!!) be as good as new.

Vendu!

I have been literally bursting to share the happy news that we have recently accepted an offer on our house.  It happened a few weeks ago but I wanted to make sure that the sale was definitely going through before I started bragging (I have been known to fall flat on my face in the past after becoming rather too pleased with myself!)

Our current home in the heart of the French countryside

Anyway, last Friday we sat down in the office of our Notaire (a sort of solicitor in France) and signed the Compromis de Vente which is a contract where all parties agree to the terms of the sale.  With French law the buyer then has a cooling off period of a week before they are well and truly bound by the contract to either go through with buying the property or to lose a large deposit (around 10% of the property price).

Now that I have covered the technical stuff the self satisfied gloating can now well and truly begin.  OK, so we were very, very lucky to get an offer on our house just three weeks after putting it on the market but we are particularly pleased that we avoided paying estate agents fees and sold it on the internet without spending a centime on advertising... oh clever ,clever me (I'm really asking for it aren't I?)

To be honest though because we received a serious offer so quickly it came as a bit of shock but we are now very excited about the move and after much toing and froing and a few sleepless nights we managed to eventually secure a lovely house in Cognac that we have had our hearts set on for the last 10 months.

Our soon to be new home in Cognac

The house is a major renovation project (as always) and in our favourite quarter of Cognac situated near the river and just a short walk from the lovely historical centre of town.  It's going to be quite a departure from the life we have now but I can't wait to have all the facilities that Cognac has to offer right on the doorstep.  

With all this excitement my brocante business has unfortunately taken a bit of a back seat but our move is scheduled for mid November so I will have time over the next few weeks to get back to the flea markets and start building up stock again for my Etsy shop.

So please keep your fingers and toes crossed for us that everything goes through without a hitch and hopefully in the future I can not only share with you our experiences as we renovate this poor, tired old house back into the beauty it once was but also keep you up to date on our adventures as we adjust to la vie en ville.