Our first sight of our home-to-be

This is what we saw on our first visit, when we fell in love with the place. (The real estate agent had lost his pictures of the house, so the pictures below are ones he took the first day we visited. We didn't have a digital camera at the time.)

This is the house:

If you turn around from this picture, the view is countryside. No other houses are visible, although you can see twinkly lights in the distance after dark.

The owners, the Garnauds, were away, so the gray-green shutters were all closed. Starting at the left, there's a porch, open on the right side, standing in front of the not-too-old house, circa 1900, with its attached stable behind and to the right. Apparently, the stable was pretty derelict when M. Garnaud bought the property about 20 years ago. We think he lived in the house part while he renovated the stable, which is mostly open space on two floors.

The old house part has the kitchen on the ground floor and the master bedroom on the upper floor. (The tiny window ventilates a crawl space above the bedroom.) The master bedroom had a small room built into one corner with a big pink sink. The door to this looks like it came for an old railway station or other official sort of place; the wood is carved, the hinges are engraved -- a bit beat up, but quite fine to see. (This look has caused this roomlet to be called the Tardis, because it does look quite like an old phone booth.) In each of these rooms, a narrow door communicates into the rest of the house

On the ground floor of the old stable bit there's an entry (with the main door on the right side of the building out of view), the living/dining dining, plus the WC and bathroom. Shuttered French doors (yes!) lead onto the terrace. The the WC and bathroom are now joined into a single room, with only one door into the living room. For unknown reasons, the French seem to like to have the toilet in a room by itself, with no sink, so you have to walk into an adjoining, if you're lucky, room to wash after using it. We saw this repeatedly in houses we visited.).

The next floor, we call it the mezzanine, is mostly open, with a small bedroom in one corner and a "dressing" (that's a proper French word for walk-in closet :-) in another corner.

Kitchen

Entering through door behind porch on the left, you find the kitchen. The door straight ahead leads to dining/living area. To the left, out of picture, is a fireplace holding a wood-burning stove. To the right is the sink.

Living room, looking up the stairs

Here you see Ed standing on the stairway. (He'd already been walking around downstairs muttering, "This is it!") The open door under stairs leads back to kitchen. You can see here how thick the walls are. The door above, on the landing, leads to the master bedroom. The light at the left of the picture is from the open terrace doors, after the shutters had been opened. The living/dining area is on two levels, like our Fideliolaan house. You can see the railing separating the areas.

On landing (above kitchen door), looking down into living/dining area

You can see the fuel oil burner that heats the body of the house. The bright area behind the orange curtains is the entry. To the right of that is the door to the WC, now gone; you can just see the edge of the door to the bathroom.

Mezzanine, looking toward stairs

This is taken from the back side of the house, looking toward the stairs. The door to the master bedroom is barely visible behind dried flower arrangement (on landing where previous picture was taken). The small bedroom to right.

The plat

Here's a not-so-good image of the plat showing the property. Our two plots are outlined. You can see the small square house and the old stable backing onto a larger barn. There's a fence at the end of the long narrow piece of land, separating it from the bit below. We facetiously call that part the South Forty, although the whole bit of land is only three-quarters acre.

At the lower right, notice that the road splits. The part going down to the left (as you look at the plat) swings around under the South Forty and forms the lower boundary.

Another picture of the house

Here's a photo we found on the site of another real estate agent, taken on a sunny day in July or so when the house first went on the market. The shutters are all open, which makes it much more cheerful.

See why we like it? If you look at the house on the left, just to the right of the kitchen porch you'll see a small oval window. This is a typical window that you'll find above an old sink, which is still present on the inside. The sink is just a large slab with a shallow depression leading to a small drain hold in the wall. M. Garnaud has made a small glass window on inside of the oval window and a small shutter on the outside.