(OT) Damn I'm excited.....new project!

[Lippyp]

Last week the wife and i drove down to southern France to look for a house to buy for a vacation/holiday home. After a week of looking at decaying gutted wrecks in pouring rain we found close to our dream place on the last day.

Its a 150+ year old stone farmhouse on three floors, set in nearly a hectare of field and wood, serviced by a rough dirt track. The current owner has started to renovate it, the roof is watertight but unfinished, there are no windows in the openings behind the shutters, two new floors, no staircases, the water and electricity is to the house but not connected and the ground floor is currently inhabited by sheep and has an earth floor! The main room has the original stone Evier or sink built into the wall and although the fireplace/chimney has been removed (it fell down!) there are still the original stone niches in the wall that was inside the huge fireplace where the original ocupants used to store their salt to keep it dry. This will get rebuilt.

There is no drainage, no bathroom and no kitchen so basically it is a shell. This is great as it was well under our meagre budget so we have money to do the essential works to make it habitable. It's south facing and has a stone terrace outside the front door on the middle level and I can just see us sat eating breakfast there and swilling cheap wine in the evening...heaven.

Loads of work for us to do but we have the opportunity to really put our own stamp on it. I know this is way off topic but hey I'm so excited!

Drove back on saturday, did 800 miles in about 12 hours in the wifes diesel Jepp Cherokee (Liberty) French toll autoroutes are just great!