France - A Dream Home

[Thomasned]

Living in France is one thing desired by many individuals. If you want to live in France then you have to get French property. You can read the advertisement section of the newspapers which has the section of houses for sale in France. After making a suitable choice, you should research about the properties for sale in France. French property is now a days very much wanted also.

 

If you want to live in France and spend your life there you should select a proper house. French property is not cheap and you need to make a major investment. You must also know about the properties for sale in France at various locations. The houses for sale in France come in different prices depending on the location

[+ Tarte Gogo]

Living in France is one thing desired by many individuals. If you want to live in France then you have to get French property. You can read the advertisement section of the newspapers which has the section of houses for sale in France. After making a suitable choice, you should research about the properties for sale in France. French property is now a days very much wanted also.

 

If you want to live in France and spend your life there you should select a proper house. French property is not cheap and you need to make a major investment. You must also know about the properties for sale in France at various locations. The houses for sale in France come in different prices depending on the location

For each sentence here above, I felt like replying “just like in any other place in the developed world?”.

[+ Avalon]

I like this place

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaux-le-Vicomte

[+ Tarte Gogo]

I like this place

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaux-le-Vicomte

Avalon, did you win the lottery?

[+ Avalon]

Avalon, did you win the lottery?

 

The gardens were used in the series "Versailles".

[bigvalboy]

If you want to live in France and spend your life there you should select a proper house.

 

What does this mean?

[body2body]

I like this place

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaux-le-Vicomte

 

Vaux-le-Vicomte is a drop dead beautiful Chateau. It was built for Colbert, the Finance Minister of Louis XIV. He employed Le Notre, LeBrun, and LeVau to do the architecture, decoration, and landscape design. When the house was complete, Colbert celebrated with a lavish party that included fireworks, and a ballet created by Molière. The Chateau was so spectacular that the King accused Colbert of embezzling money from the Crown, and threw him into Prison. Then Louis engaged the same team to design Versailles.

The House is a short train ride from Paris (and a short cab ride). It makes a great day trip, and is not plagued by the huge crowds at Versailles, and is more stylistically unified than Fontainebleau.

[+ sync]

I like this place

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaux-le-Vicomte

 

A truly fascinating read. The use of optical illusion in the design and creation of the gardens is beyond amazing to me. I couldn't create an appealing planting for a window box.

[BaronArtz]

 

Not quite. It was built for Nicholas Fouquet, finance minister of Louis XIV. Colbert was his successor.

[bigvalboy]

French Chateau de Gudanes Rescued from Ruin

 

This Chateau was featured last year, with renovations now complete

http://www.chateaugudanes.com/

How many of us dream of owning and renovating a French chateau? A palace that was lived in by French aristocrats, where the rich, powerful and famous partied and where every room reveals a story from the past? Sometimes dreams do come true – read how a couple from Australia fell in love with an abandoned, unloved castle they saw on the internet and are bringing the incredible 94 room Chateau de Gudanes back to life…

 

Karina Waters is from Perth, Western Australia where, in what “feels like a previous life now” she worked in corporate and tax accounting and lived with her husband Craig, a surgeon and their two children. In 2011 Karina and Craig decided to buy a home in France. They had lots of French friends who on their first viewing trip in the region of the Dordogne did their best to come up with ideas for “what would suit an Australian family”. Karina and Craig spent a week looking at the houses their friends had chosen. Karina says they were all “renovated, clean and neat, ticking the box for a quiet life”. She returned to Perth “frankly disappointed”, her ideal home would be more “shabby chic, rustic, petit chateau style” and she hadn’t seen anything that came even near that description.

 

A year after the first trip, Karina and Craig returned to France, they had all but given up on the search but their 16 year old son Ben had seen a property on the internet that caused them to miss a heartbeat. An unrenovated chateau in the Midi-Pyrénées area that looked like something out of a fairy tale. They flew to Paris and drove 700km to view it.

 

 

And what a history it has… A castle has stood on this site for several centuries. The first one was destroyed in 1580 during the Wars of Religion in France. Fantillon de Sales, the Catholic Lord of Gudanes was besieged in the chateau which was badly looted and all but demolished.

 

The castle wasn’t rebuilt until almost 200 years later, when, in 1741 the Marquis Louis Gaspard de Sales who was known as “The King of the Pyrénées” decided to set up home there. An influential nobleman whose mother Marie Antoinette Miglos was one of Louis XIV’s aristocratic spies, he commissioned the prominent architect Ange-Jacques Gabriel who designed the Place de la Concorde, Paris and the Petit Trianon, Versailles. The construction was completed in 1750 and De Sales hosted grand parties in the chateau, lavishing money on guests who included prominent intellectuals and artists like playwright Voltaire.

 

The chateau escaped destruction in the French revolution and was purchased by a local family. Some of the rooms have retained wallpaper from the days of the Empire. There are frescoes and murals, fabulous fireplaces, a stunning central stair case, darling dormer windows, metal work, vestiges of century’s old paint – the beautiful faded colours harking back to the days of its glory.

 

 

It is an extraordinary building and there are great plans for it, though planning has been one of the hardest things Karina has had to deal with. Following a meeting with the Historic Monuments architect in Paris to explain her vision, documents were prepared, signed and despatched to various official departments. Karina waited several months, in the meantime attending intensive French language courses. She says the frustration of not hearing any news grew until she felt that they had “broken her positive spirit”. She took the difficult decision to inform the official parties that she was going to sell the chateau saying “I’m not feeling any love”. It was a bold tactic but, just five hours later, Karina received the go ahead to start work on the Chateau.

 

The first job in the chateau has been to clean out all the rooms, filled with debris for decades, left untouched, it has been a massive undertaking. Karina and Craig have learned that things can and will go wrong, that there must be contingencies. Karina says that she just “deals with the issues at hand. My mother used to tell me ‘let tomorrow look after itself’. People ask me ‘what are you doing, how long will you stay in France, are you going to live in France, how will you live, can you afford it?’ To be honest, I don’t know and I don’t worry about it. I do what I can one step at a time.”

 

 

Future plans for the chateau include possible commercial and cultural activities. Conference facilities, accommodation, weddings and a pop up café are being considered. Karina promises “It won’t be a typical hotel style setup but a unique experience”.

 

Restoring it to it the glory of its elaborate beginnings is not financially or physically viable. Karina says “It is what it is now. Buddhists used the term Wabi-Sabi and we want to apply that to the Chateau de Gudanes. Wabi connotes rustic simplicity, freshness or quietness, or understated elegance. It can also refer to quirks and anomalies arising from the process of construction, which add uniqueness and elegance to the object. Sabi is beauty or serenity that comes with age, when the life of the object and its impermanence are evidenced in its patina and wear, or in any visible repairs.”

 

In real terms that means making sure that they use the right construction materials to enhance the Chateau and respecting the geometry that exists in the building and the area. Each week Karina makes a point of visiting the town and dining at the bistro where the locals eat. Here she can meet with and update her neighbours on progress and sometimes enjoy a glass of wine and regale her new friends with an “Aussie song”.

 

From the first days when the Chateau cast its spell on the Waters from Australia Karina says “I am no longer half asleep but have opened my eyes to a different perspective on life. Over the past few years I have experienced the fear, doubt, hesitation in making the decision to buy a home in France. But we have signed the contract, picked up the key and now stopped worrying. We are committed to our decision and have no doubt it is the right thing for us to do”.

 

http://mymodernmet.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/french-chateau-hotel-chateau-de-gudanes.jpg

 

Edited March 11, 2018 by bigvalboy

[rvwnsd]

If you want to say the word bot in French you say bot just like in English.

[+ sync]

French Chateau de Gudanes Rescued from Ruin

 

This Chateau was featured last year, with renovations now complete

http://www.chateaugudanes.com/

How many of us dream of owning and renovating a French chateau? A palace that was lived in by French aristocrats, where the rich, powerful and famous partied and where every room reveals a story from the past? Sometimes dreams do come true – read how a couple from Australia fell in love with an abandoned, unloved castle they saw on the internet and are bringing the incredible 94 room Chateau de Gudanes back to life…

 

Karina Waters is from Perth, Western Australia where, in what “feels like a previous life now” she worked in corporate and tax accounting and lived with her husband Craig, a surgeon and their two children. In 2011 Karina and Craig decided to buy a home in France. They had lots of French friends who on their first viewing trip in the region of the Dordogne did their best to come up with ideas for “what would suit an Australian family”. Karina and Craig spent a week looking at the houses their friends had chosen. Karina says they were all “renovated, clean and neat, ticking the box for a quiet life”. She returned to Perth “frankly disappointed”, her ideal home would be more “shabby chic, rustic, petit chateau style” and she hadn’t seen anything that came even near that description.

 

A year after the first trip, Karina and Craig returned to France, they had all but given up on the search but their 16 year old son Ben had seen a property on the internet that caused them to miss a heartbeat. An unrenovated chateau in the Midi-Pyrénées area that looked like something out of a fairy tale. They flew to Paris and drove 700km to view it.

 

 

And what a history it has… A castle has stood on this site for several centuries. The first one was destroyed in 1580 during the Wars of Religion in France. Fantillon de Sales, the Catholic Lord of Gudanes was besieged in the chateau which was badly looted and all but demolished.

 

The castle wasn’t rebuilt until almost 200 years later, when, in 1741 the Marquis Louis Gaspard de Sales who was known as “The King of the Pyrénées” decided to set up home there. An influential nobleman whose mother Marie Antoinette Miglos was one of Louis XIV’s aristocratic spies, he commissioned the prominent architect Ange-Jacques Gabriel who designed the Place de la Concorde, Paris and the Petit Trianon, Versailles. The construction was completed in 1750 and De Sales hosted grand parties in the chateau, lavishing money on guests who included prominent intellectuals and artists like playwright Voltaire.

 

The chateau escaped destruction in the French revolution and was purchased by a local family. Some of the rooms have retained wallpaper from the days of the Empire. There are frescoes and murals, fabulous fireplaces, a stunning central stair case, darling dormer windows, metal work, vestiges of century’s old paint – the beautiful faded colours harking back to the days of its glory.

 

 

It is an extraordinary building and there are great plans for it, though planning has been one of the hardest things Karina has had to deal with. Following a meeting with the Historic Monuments architect in Paris to explain her vision, documents were prepared, signed and despatched to various official departments. Karina waited several months, in the meantime attending intensive French language courses. She says the frustration of not hearing any news grew until she felt that they had “broken her positive spirit”. She took the difficult decision to inform the official parties that she was going to sell the chateau saying “I’m not feeling any love”. It was a bold tactic but, just five hours later, Karina received the go ahead to start work on the Chateau.

 

The first job in the chateau has been to clean out all the rooms, filled with debris for decades, left untouched, it has been a massive undertaking. Karina and Craig have learned that things can and will go wrong, that there must be contingencies. Karina says that she just “deals with the issues at hand. My mother used to tell me ‘let tomorrow look after itself’. People ask me ‘what are you doing, how long will you stay in France, are you going to live in France, how will you live, can you afford it?’ To be honest, I don’t know and I don’t worry about it. I do what I can one step at a time.”

 

 

Future plans for the chateau include possible commercial and cultural activities. Conference facilities, accommodation, weddings and a pop up café are being considered. Karina promises “It won’t be a typical hotel style setup but a unique experience”.

 

Restoring it to it the glory of its elaborate beginnings is not financially or physically viable. Karina says “It is what it is now. Buddhists used the term Wabi-Sabi and we want to apply that to the Chateau de Gudanes. Wabi connotes rustic simplicity, freshness or quietness, or understated elegance. It can also refer to quirks and anomalies arising from the process of construction, which add uniqueness and elegance to the object. Sabi is beauty or serenity that comes with age, when the life of the object and its impermanence are evidenced in its patina and wear, or in any visible repairs.”

 

In real terms that means making sure that they use the right construction materials to enhance the Chateau and respecting the geometry that exists in the building and the area. Each week Karina makes a point of visiting the town and dining at the bistro where the locals eat. Here she can meet with and update her neighbours on progress and sometimes enjoy a glass of wine and regale her new friends with an “Aussie song”.

 

From the first days when the Chateau cast its spell on the Waters from Australia Karina says “I am no longer half asleep but have opened my eyes to a different perspective on life. Over the past few years I have experienced the fear, doubt, hesitation in making the decision to buy a home in France. But we have signed the contract, picked up the key and now stopped worrying. We are committed to our decision and have no doubt it is the right thing for us to do”.

 

http://mymodernmet.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/french-chateau-hotel-chateau-de-gudanes.jpg

 

What a monumental undertaking. That calibre of ambition has to be admired.

[BaronArtz]

What a monumental undertaking. That calibre of ambition has to be admired.

 

The calibre of capital expense needs to be admired. Not only to restore it. That is just the heginning. Once restored, it costs a small fortune every year to operate and keep up a place like that ... No amount of wbi-sabi will change that.

Edited March 11, 2018 by BaronArtz

[body2body]

 

Not quite. It was built for Nicholas Fouquet, finance minister of Louis XIV. Colbert was his successor.

I stand corrected.

[+ Funguy]

I like this place

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaux-le-Vicomte

 

Heating is a bitch!

[BaronArtz]

Heating is a bitch!

 

Yes - in the Pyrenees, no less!

[TruthBTold]

OK, my chauvinism will show through. However why not live in Italy? As my previous post noted, "[y]ou can buy a house on Sardinia for $1.20 as long as you promise to renovate it within 3 years. Then you can sell it after 5 years. They also are selling some in the Puglia province. . . .

http://kdvr.com/2018/01/30/italian-town-selling-1-20-homes-to-lure-new-residents/." My grandmother used to tell us that that the French would still be eating with their hands if it were it for Catherine de Medici. Sure untrue, but who cares.

[+ Awwshuck]

"[y]ou can buy a house on Sardinia for $1.20 as long as you promise to renovate it within 3 years. Then you can sell it after 5 years. They also are selling some in the Puglia province. . . .

 

Might be a great place for me and mah family to retire to. They need any bakers?

[TruthBTold]

Might be a great place for me and mah family to retire to. They need any bakers?

 

Italians always need good bakers.

[marylander1940]

Might be a great place for me and mah family to retire to. They need any bakers?

 

Arkansas is cheaper, and Paris (TX) is closer, besides you guys need to keep the family business.

[+ Awwshuck]

besides you guys need to keep the family business.

 

And what, mah dear, is the family business? Talkin straight to the American people?

[marylander1940]

And what, mah dear, is the family business? Talkin straight to the American people?

 

The political industrial complex, you got paid good $ working for your dad's campaign and you even met your hubby there.

[+ Awwshuck]

The political industrial complex, you got paid good $ working for your dad's campaign and you even met your hubby there.

 

What you think is part of the "political industrial complex" is just plain ol fashioned grass roots democracy. Mah daddy stood (and stands) for the American people against them liberal ee-leetes. Ahm proud to have helped him. Any claims that Huck PAC dont do the same are just plain old lies!!!