Our House is Not in Paris Read online

  Susan Cutsforth and her husband, Stuart, are 'ordinary' people living an extraordinary life. They both work full-time: one is a teacher librarian of thirty years, and the other, a middle-level clerk in the public service. But, as Susan recounts in Our House is Not in Paris, they own a holiday house in France - the other side of the world. And not only that, this petite maison required significant renovating, which they accomplished almost singlehandedly during their working holidays.

  Our House is Not in Paris is a story of pushing boundaries, aiming high and, most of all, taking risks. With humour, poetry and insight, Susan's story shows that you can do more than simply dream: if you work hard, anything is possible.

  Prologue

  This is the story of two ordinary people living ordinary lives that somehow became an extraordinary life. It is the story of how a teacher librarian of thirty years and a middle-level clerk in the public service, who both work full-time, bought a holiday house — a petite maison that needed renovating — on the other side of the world, in France. This is a story of pushing boundaries, aiming high and, most of all, taking risks.

  If I were writing an account that would be a bestseller, the classic opening would have been handed to me on a plate on our very first morning in our petite maison while the reader thought, Those poor deluded fools. Why on earth didn’t they know? The start of the bestseller would be: Oh my God! What have we done? The loud, constant roar of traffic was incessant and the dream was crumbling before our eyes. Within just a few brief hours, we started to discuss whether we would just put it straight back on the market or at least renovate the house, now that we were here, and try to make some money.

  The answer seemed clear-cut and, on my first morning, as I pushed myself wearily off the air mattress, and staggered out, Stuart’s first words were, ‘We have to sell. I’m so sorry.’ There is no alternative but to agree.

  However, we were already committed to renovating the house; we’d already spent a small fortune. There was simply no time to sit around reflecting or feeling sorry for ourselves. No, we immediately launched into our first day of work … and what a disaster it turned out to be.

  We were instantly immersed into our own version of what very much felt like a reality television show: How to Renovate a French Farmhouse in Three Weeks or Less.

  However, I need to backtrack to explain how it came about that an ordinary Australian couple from the other side of the world found themselves in the extraordinary position of buying a petite farmhouse, Pied de la Croix, in Cuzance, a small village in the Lot in south-western France.

  How did it all actually happen? How did it move from simply a dream to reality? For fourteen years, Stuart dreamt of owning a house in France. Whenever he returned to England to visit his family, he would buy magazines about buying property in France. Then, at the end of 2009, he started to research houses on the internet, still without any real intent of buying one but simply because he has always been passionate about architecture and houses and all things French. For a while, it was simply a pleasurable way of filling the hours and exclaiming over hundreds of beautiful French homes. One of the things about Stuart, however, is that he always needs a ‘project’. That could very well explain why, as soon as we seemed to have finished renovating one house, it became time to sell and move on to the next project. Mind you, when we spent six weeks in France the previous summer, I think the seed that had been planted began to show signs of life.

  Well, it must have done, because when I think about it, we did spend rather a lot of time looking in real estate windows and collecting brochures. Oh yes, and on the very last morning of our last day in Villefranche-de-Rouergue, we somehow found ourselves organising, with our friend Erick Hurault de Vibraye and an agent, to see a house. Actually it was quite close even then, as we spent a long time exploring the house, and as with most real estate we’ve ever seen — and there has been a lot — we could see its potential. However, while the price was attractive, it would have been an utter disaster: a French ‘Austi’. That is, it was far too similar to the house we were then living in, including all its inherent challenges such as a very steep block, no access and no parking. Not to mention the fact that it was extremely dilapidated. Mind you, we did go as far as getting a contract. I don’t know what we could have been thinking.

  As with many of the huge decisions in our lives, we can never remember consciously having a definitive discussion when the decision is made. It just seems to happen. This included getting married in Turkey: after a mere month we lived together, within seven months we were married and now, twenty years later, we find ourselves with a house in France.

  Yet suddenly, after about three months of idle internet browsing and examining hundreds of properties, the dream became a shortlist of real possibilities. It was about this time that Stuart started to seriously track the value of the dollar against the euro. Somehow, it was at an all-time high in our favour. Somehow, the dream slipped from fantasy to reality and Stuart started a list of properties in France for him to actually go and see. He went back to work on Wednesday after the Christmas break and asked his boss if he could have another ten days off so he could fly to France on Saturday. Once again, as with everything huge in our lives, it was all very, very fast. However, that always seems to be the way it works with us. The proviso was that he was going to be looking at houses with the understanding that he should only buy one if all our specifications were met. If there weren’t any that were suitable, we would just have to keep looking for one when we went together, as we had already planned our trip for June. Add to this, of course, that buying a ticket at the last minute was hugely expensive. Still, balancing the cost of a ticket against Well, I’ve flown all this way and taken more time off work; I better buy a house is something he needed to keep in mind. So, in just a matter of a few days, the ticket was bought, bag packed, car hired over the internet, hotel booked, phone calls back and forth to the agent, and he was on his way.

  Off I went to work and anxiously waited for the phone to ring to hear about his progress. Several nights later, just before falling asleep, Stuart called to fill me in on his progress. In just a couple of days, he’d managed to see six houses — most that were on his list — and a couple of others that Kim Pearce, the real estate agent, had shown him as well. The one that he had practically bought in his mind before the plane even took off from Sydney was at the top of his list. We went through the pros and cons of it, and I woke the next morning to another call to hear him tell me that he’d bought the little old farmhouse! It seemed to be as fast and as simple as that.

  We later found out that it could have been very complicated indeed if there had been more than one owner. Apparently there can be a whole chain of people involved due to inheritance laws, and there can be up to twenty people involved in sorting and signing the documents. In fact, it can be so complicated in France that if one person in the whole chain refuses to sell, properties can languish uninhabited for years and years. Eventually they simply crumble and fall down, which is part of the reason you see so many dilapidated, abandoned old houses throughout the French countryside.

  Our constant desire to discover treasure had to be balanced with practicality when we bought the little house. The attic was so crammed with old furniture and junk that Stuart was not even able to see it properly. Much as we would have loved to unearth marvellous antiques among the junk, we decided that as part of the contract we would have it all cleared out before settlement. This was quite a hard decision but, in practical terms, clearing it would have consumed all our time on our first visit. Then there would be the problem of how on earth to get rid of everything. This is always hard enough at home, let alone in a foreign country. His only reques
t was that a rickety old ladder be left in the barn — one remnant of the past.

  All that Stuart undertakes is always underpinned by meticulous research, even in a foreign country. When he returned from his fleeting trip, I was able to see our petite maison properly in all his photos. What struck me most of all was the golden winter light glowing on the stone of the old barn. Everything was coated in a fine dusting of pristine snow and combined with the ethereal quality of the light; it all seemed truly magical. Indeed, the quintessential romantic dream of owning a house in France. The other thing that most struck me was the inordinate number of outbuildings. As we pored over the photos together I kept asking, ‘What’s that?’ and Stuart very casually replied each time, ‘Oh, that’s another outbuilding.’ The most astonishing discovery was that we had our very own bread oven — a whole building in itself. Then there were the pigsties and the ancient, rundown orchard of walnut and fruit trees. The land itself was enormous and covered in brambles. Inside, the shots of the attic were hard to comprehend: piled with a lifetime of abandoned household items, though sadly no treasure. Stuart told me that it was such an utter mess that I shouldn’t even venture up to have a look when we were there together, but I couldn’t imagine not fully exploring my new home once I arrived.

  Our shortlist was based on the list of requirements we had written when renting a house the previous year. At the time, this list was to be our criteria for future holiday houses to rent. There was no way we could have ever, in our wildest dreams, begun to imagine that, just a mere six months later, it would become our template for buying our own French home.

  One of the things I most vividly remember about the house we rented in Rignac, also in the Lot, was that it was perpetually full of flies. The idyllic setting of a country home in France is not always as romantic as it may seem from afar. The house was next to a farm, with extremely neglected sheep that we used to give bread to over the fence. However, the state of the sheep meant that our two-week sojourn was somewhat tainted by the fact that the house was perpetually crawling with flies. Hence, we made a note to ourselves: Do not be seduced by the notion of renting a French country house before checking how close it is to a farm. This became one of our key criteria, along with peace and quiet. Neither of these carefully noted points proved to be the case in finding Pied de la Croix. Both noise and flies were in abundance. So much for our careful research. My notebook also has a list of ‘desirable features to check for’: a dishwasher and washing machine; the garden and surrounds, for peace and quiet; and, most importantly, not close to a train or road. So much for all these criteria. Not only does Pied de la Croix absolutely not have a dishwasher or washing machine, there is also no kitchen at all. And, as for the criterion of not being on a road, well, what can I say? Our house is virtually on the road!

  Our Arrival in Cuzance

  The traffic was a constant flow from the moment we arrived — not of locals returning home after work or tractors with hay during harvest time, though there would be plenty of those in the summer days ahead. No, the traffic was an onslaught of enormous trucks, one after the other, carrying gravel and who knows what else. They were enormous, constant and very, very close to the house! This was not the quiet, rural village we had envisaged. Stuart had of course bought it in the depths of winter, yet, still, we were both perplexed — not to mention, extremely perturbed — by the drastic and dramatic change. I vividly remembered it had been one of the points I’d been most anxious to confirm in our phone conversations: yes, it was a quiet rural backwater. Stuart had assured me that it was a peaceful village road that did not appear to lead anywhere at all. Out of all our criteria, this was the one I remember being most insistent about. One of the things I value most is solitude, especially after living in Sydney where, if a plane flew overhead, any conversation on the phone would be drowned out. So what on earth had happened to his meticulous research?

  Even before our first evening, all did not bode well for what by now seemed to have been a very impetuous and romantic decision.

  Pied de la Croix is just forty minutes away from Puymule, the petite hamlet where we had rented our holiday house during our first fortnight in France, when we had a ‘proper’ holiday. Then we launched into our renovation and off we went to Cuzance together for the first time. It was a Monday morning — and not the happiest of occasions, as we had anticipated. The grass was very overgrown and the day was cool and damp. The house simply looked very old and rundown; my overwhelming impression was how much work it required. It was by no means a picturesque country cottage. Instead, it had been half-rendered at some point so that the lovely old stone was half-covered in cement. The grounds were so overgrown that it was hard to even wander around — the brambles caught on our clothes and, to tell the truth, it was all rather dismal and overwhelming. Even Stuart wondered what he had done … and, it’s not like him at all to feel that way. He absolutely doesn’t believe in looking back or having regrets. However, the weather certainly coloured our emotions, and the enormity of what we had actually done hit home. We are by no means the first to buy a house in France as a holiday house — many other Australians do that. But, here’s the difference: most people usually pay and outsource all the hard work.

  We returned the next day to meet our Australian friend Dave at our village restaurant; he had flown in that morning to Limoges and hired a car. We had lunch and marvelled at the fact that we were all together in Cuzance. This was after recovering from the amusement of Dave turning up in his less-than-attractive hired Kangoo. It was like a big box on wheels; only the windows identified it as a van. Then all three of us were off to inspect our house, a two-minute walk from the restaurant. I had managed to hastily confide in Dave that Stuart and I had had one of the worst arguments of our entire marriage the night before, after we had seen our little house together for the first time and been overcome by the reality of what we had done. However, the sun was now shining and it all looked much brighter. Coincidentally, it had been Dave who took our Sold sign photos at Austinmer the weekend after we sold our house and, now, here he was in France, able to take another photo on the steps of our petite maison.

  Despite my initial misgivings after my first viewing, clouded by the damp and gloomy day, my innate urge to renovate immediately swung into action. While Stuart had talked me through the photos on his return and explained where he thought the kitchen could be located, it was clear to me that the room next to where the old stove and sink were would, in fact, be a better space to create a kitchen. I remember being sufficiently entranced that I even tentatively peeled a piece of the 1960s wallpaper off the room that I imagined would be the kitchen, just to see what lay beneath. And, so it would seem that there was an element of immediate bonding with the little farmhouse despite my very real feelings of Oh, what have we done!, I could certainly already see in my mind just how we could transform it. Similarly, Stuart had tried to prepare me, but it would be a long time — well, will it be ever? — before I could come to terms with the toilet being like a very small cupboard: no window and very, very petite indeed. The bathroom, while a decent size, didn’t have a window, either. I was hopeful we could cut through the stone. Maybe there had been an original one we could resurrect?

  After first meeting Jean-Claude Chanel from the village and telling him about how difficult I found it to have a bathroom without a window, in his usual fashion, he investigated straight away. Somehow he was able to find out, from one of his numerous sources in the village, that at some point in the history of the little house there had had been a donkey stable attached to the outside of the bathroom wall. Unfortunately, the thickness of the stone meant that it would be hugely difficult to cut through, not to mention prohibitively expensive, so it looked like my bathroom would remain window-less.

  I was entranced, too, by the width and rich dark colour of the walnut floorboards, as Stuart had told me I would be, while the heavy wooden shutters on all the windows were another typical French touch. I was also enchanted by
the smooth curve of the stone step inside the front door, hollowed out by generations of French footsteps. So despite my misgivings, once we left to return to Puymule I was picturing just how we could transform it all and yet retain its charm. And I knew that our footsteps would now add to the patina of time and the story that lay wrapped inside the walls of Pied de la Croix.

  With the sun shining on our second viewing, things were definitely looking brighter. There was, however, a huge shock to come later; one that nearly saw the end of the dream before it had even really begun. The traffic …

  Arriving in France

  Before I get to that moment of utter devastation, why was it that we didn’t go straight to Cuzance and our own petite maison? After the usual exhausting flight from Sydney, we arrived in Lyon to pick up our car that Stuart had organised to hire for the following six weeks. Mind you, this was after waiting an additional two hours at the airport, as, yes, our luggage was lost. Just what we needed after the interminable flight. As we arrived to collect our car I noticed a magnificent, sporty-looking car. In fact, much to my delight, it turned out be ours as Stuart had arranged it as a surprise. Amazingly enough, I had my camera ready to capture the moment. A brand new Citroën — it had only been on the market a week and it was absolutely superb. Everywhere we drove in France it attracted a lot of attention, and people even came up to us to enquire about it. It was all quite extraordinary to be foreigners with such a deluxe car.

  Despite being exhausted from our flight, we couldn’t get the keys to our apartment in Lyon until 6pm. So we had to wander around for quite a few hours in the damp and drizzle to simply fill in the time. Fortunately, the apartment turned out to be great, newly renovated, with a marvellous view of Lyon — especially the assorted rooftops — and a cathedral on the horizon. Luckily, our luggage arrived at 9pm, just as I was about to stagger off to bed. However, what was fascinating was that the apartment was on the top of a very old building, and there were 196 steps to reach it. It reminded us of our home in Australia in Austinmer and our fifty-nine steps to reach the house. A rather ironic touch.