11.29.09
House Grasse St Jean
Last saturday we visited for the first time the house of our dreams. It is the most charming place we’ve seen and we’re totally in love with this old house.
The house dates from 1840, has 110m2 living area and has a land of 5000m2 around (about half in front, half behind). A bit tricky to get the price to fit the budget, but we’ll try to give an offer quite a lot under the given price.
Yesterday we were there for a second visit, took photos, messurements and looked more into details. News from this second visit is: heating system is fairly new and could possibly be kept as is, as well as the water heater (chaudiere). They’re driven by gas and there is a gas ’sisterne’ outside.
I’ll show you the land. Lets start below the house. Here we have three wide bands of grass and trees.
Wine grapes 
And behind them you see a fig tree (figuier, fikonträd), and behind there a chicken house!
Then we’ll walk up behind the house:
All up to the big tree belongs to the property.
This is the house from behind. The view we see we will also get from infront of the house as soon as we’ve cut them a bit.
Next to the house, direction south, there is this terrasse with roof, perfect as dining place 7 months a year.
So, to the inside. There were no plans of the house so with our own meassurements we made up those plans.
[plans]
The main entrance leads directly into the kitchen.
This is the kitchen today.
Living room and dining area. The door you see is on the south side of the house.
Floors in kitchen and living room. I find them not very beautiful, but they have their charm, for sure. Even if it will hurt to destroy something old (probably from the twenties), I think we’ll change them to something more ‘calm’ but still keeping the atmosphere - not too modern.
The only toilet in the house is just above the stairs, and is 110*110cm. Never seen such a small room. But it works.
What you see here is what would become our dressing and bathroom. It’s in the part of the house to the left, added later. The crack in the walls, which you can also see on the outside is a bit worrying, but the most probable is that it’s been there for a long long time, and if the house could fall from it, it would already have happened.
Same crack on the outside, both in front and behind the house.
There are three other small rooms, but we might redo one into a shower room.
Next to the house there is a garage that could possibly (but illegally) be remade into living space, probably a living room with big windows where the garage door is.
The heater and hot water tank can be seen in the corner. On the back wall we can see the bare stones. If we’re lucky more walls in the house are made with this stone and we could make it visible on some walls.
View on the house on it’s hill, taken from the closest road. You hardly see it, but it’s there, a little bit below the middle of the photo.
Now, help us to hold all fingers and toes that we this dream comes true! And if you have experience yourself on old houses like this or renovation in general, don’t hesitate to share it with us!