A House on a Hill: Renovating a Cottage in France

Things have been crazy around here, mostly due to a huge project we undertook a few months ago--renovating a 400-year-old stone cottage in southern France (pictured right). It's become such a big part of our life that I can't keep it to myself any longer! Plus, I know if I don't document it here, it won't be documented at all; and I want to remember all the little details and nuances associated with renovating this old home.

I thought it would be fun to start regularly featuring posts detailing the renovation process from step 1. I may throw in one post per week, or perhaps more. We'll see how this flows...If any of you have done this before, please share any tips! Also welcomed are style ideas for the interior...I have less than a month to make some crucial decisions regarding such. Thanks in advance!

So here we go with Step #1: finding this cottage.

The Husband and I are big fans of Rick Steves Guidebooks. He's been there for us on previous trips and during our last family vacation we consulted his expert wisdom yet again. On the pages of Rick Steves: France, he mentions a lovely town in the Dordogne region called Beynac-et-Cazenac. The region itself sounds spectacular (if you love a good Medieval castle or two) and as an added bonus...family friendly.

We explored our options for lodging via VRBO and to our surprise, found a lovely home owned by a couple here in Utah. We couldn't believe it! What are the odds? The price of a weekly rental in this home was right so we booked a week. We ended up loving the home and at that point the wheels started turning. We thought, "if they live in Utah and renovated this home...we can do it too, right?" We always wanted to have a rental property as an investment, but overseas? Pourquoi pas?

During our vacation we fell in love with the place. It seemed perfect! Initially out of pure curiosity the Husband contacted the local agent (this is where a French-speaking spouse comes in handy) and arranged to see all 3 of the homes up for sale in this town. It's a tiny town :) All were lovely but only one was remotely close to our price range. What we did next, we found out later, is not nearly as common in France as it is in here in America and even a little taboo. We submitted a low-ball offer...big time. As in, we offered 25% less than the asking price. I gave it a 5% chance of success.

After submitting our offer, which also offered details as to why it was so low (i.e. major renovations needed), we left on a little rendezvous with our friends to Italy. We were having so much fun that we failed to check in with our agent as to the status of our offer. Although we didn't mean to act uninterested, this actually played out in our favor as we appeared to not care whether they accepted our offer or not. The owner apparently became scared to lose a serious buyer and came back with a "yes". We looked at each other with a nervous laugh and said, "what have we gotten ourselves into?". We had no idea...

Next up: the history behind this ~500-year-old stone cottage.