Daph's Next Venture

So if you’ve read the ‘About Us’ page you will see that we inadvertently became builders at the age of 22 and it took us two decades of slowly, but surely, renovating three chalets and building one from scratch. Unfortunately for me, that was just not enough for my husband. No rest for the wicked, I believe the apt expression goes. So after 22 years of living in Chamonix we now find ourselves living two lives; one in Chamonix and the other out West, 25 minutes from the Cote Sauvage and 45 minutes south of La Rochelle.
In 2022 our interest only mortgage ran out and we were obliged to sell Chalet Schuss so we could pay off the mortgage on Chalet 1802. With the leftover cash we bought Le Cailleau. It didn’t really go according to plan. We wanted something small, that we could do up, with a little Maison des Amis for friends to come and visit. Instead we fell in love with this beautiful, 17th century Masters House and it’s many ‘dépendantes‘. Luckily for us, it was ridiculously cheap for what it is, (I don’t think there were many others foolish enough to take on such a project), so we could just about afford it, but unfortunately the bank wouldn’t give us a mortgage, so with all the cash spent buying it Daph is currently keeping himself busy rendering the many beautiful stone walls. At 9 euros a sac it’s doable and there’s plenty to get on with!
Who knows how long this project will take us, but in the end we plan to do another holiday rental; two, two bed cottages, a three and a four bed farmhouse and the Master’s House.
Daph will renovate all the properties (while listening to thousands of podcasts at 2x speed) and I will turn my hand to the interiors, photography and ceramics. I hope to do as much as possible by restoring second hand furniture, making the ceramics, badly making the curtains, bedheads and cushions. I might even try to find some fun ways of using up that barn loads of beautiful, warped old wood that was left behind when we bought the place.
To be continued…. (for our lifetime, I suspect!)