We Own a House in Provence
The house belongs to us. We are the owners. It’s ours.
What a weird feeling it was to open the gate with the key and drive through… and even weirder to have the gardener/tree surgeon we contacted suddenly drive in behind us! We walked about the property with him looking at things to cut back.
He’s coming back Friday to haul off the poisonous oleander bushes. The rest will have to wait until March ending. We’ll keep him and ourselves busy: the previous owner did no upkeep for years.
So the house. It’s in the style of the classic Provençal two-story “mas” or farmhouse… or was. Think character. Imagine you’re looking at the long side of a 200-year-old stone-and-wood rectangle. The front door takes you into the right two-thirds comprising the main living area. A winding stairway and wall that jut from the middle of the right wall effectively cut that into two, creating a design and layout challenge.
Pre-purchase pano of the living room, fireplace, and passage to the dining room
For some reason, the nearer half — which I’ll call the living room — has a raised wooden floor. The farther half has the same native tile as the front entrance, and a door leads from it to the back patio. On the left-hand corner — with a raised tiled floor — are the remnants of a kitchen, including a cheap counter, which we plan to remove.
Now for the left third. What used to be an adjoining barn was at some point converted into a house, with a kitchen and dining area plus a pantry/shower/toilet (all three in one) on the main floor. In effect, our house was once a duplex. A passageway through the meter-thick wall now connects it.
The dining area, with its taller ceiling and large window, is the brightest and nicest room in the house. Winding stairs were built from the dining room leading to one of two rooms on the “first” (your second) floor. Today with both houses united, there are five rooms total upstairs, plus a bathroom and a walk-in closet. A corridor runs right to left from the main stairway down the middle.
If any of this is confusing… yeah. We’re interviewing architects soon to help us figure it all out and see what’s possible. But we love it, quirkiness and all. It really is cool with its wooden beams and partially exposed stone walls. It’s so “temperature” cool, supposedly, that no A/C is needed in the summer. For cooler months there’s a fireplace next to the front door.
Under the original house is a cellar that once housed animals — in fact there’s still a huge horse trough along one of the walls. One room was used as a wine cellar.
The exterior walls will need work, but we’ll have to get permission from the town to do anything. As for the roof, it’s rustic-looking, which almost certainly means it will need replacing. As on many roofs in this region, a row of large stones rests along the edge of the terracotta. Tradition has it they keep the mistral from carrying off the roof.
And then there’s the pool. It works, we’re told, though no one really explained how. The walls are some sort of plastic. The cover has holes in it from a hailstorm a few years ago. So it’s far from perfect, but it’s a pool and we’ll live with it like this for the time being.
Location: we’re on the main road near the edge of town but easy walking distance from groceries, bakeries, eateries, and even the old center with its shopping and services. As I think I mentioned elsewhere, behind the property is a former railroad, which is now a long bicycle path that gives us even easier access to the downtown.
Next task is settling in and waiting for our stuff to arrive from the States. Well, to depart from the States. The ship was delayed, and the moving company has no idea where the container is. Stay tuned…
