We spent a week searching for our ideal home all over the Limousin area, with the help of the local team from VEF and realised that our naïve idea to find a bargain, only in need of a little DiY & a bit of tender loving care was not achievable for the budget we had in mind.
The viewing of more than a dozen properties ranging from €30-100,000 resulted in us discovering what many people before us and after have discovered; that you would have to gut most places and start from base with the basics.
Most properties would need to be completely rewired, heating installed and all the sanitation replaced, relocated or even installed for the first time and a kitchen installed. As a result we concluded that if we were going to pay for a place and have to GUT it, then we might as well look for something that was already an empty shell.
So our research continued and we booked for a second visit over the Easter break in April 2004.
This is the story of the Gray Family search for a home in France and the eventual conversion of a Barn in the Creuse that has now been turned into a beautiful home for our family to enjoy in the years ahead. The story of La Grange Grise gives an indication of our experience of doing so between 2006 and 2016. Also added are details and history of the subsequent purchase and work on La Maison Grise from 2013 and the renovation work started in 2016 on the house opposite our the Grange.