Getting to know your house

This continues our blog about buying a house in France as expats. Our last entry discussed the completion of the house purchase.

We are in, it is done. So what now is there to discuss or share as an experience?

I could talk about all the shopping that needed doing, to get the things that we needed to setup the house as we wanted. But frankly that is probably too boring even for me to write about. So this entry is titled “Getting to know your house”.

Like an arranged marriage.

Buying a house can be exciting and also quite a strange experience. It is one of the commitments that most people make in their lives.

It is a purchase founded in hope, ambition and dreams. But it is also like making an arranged marriage, after initial introductions based on some photos and short descriptions, suitability was agreed and a commitment was made to start a life together in a few months time. All without really knowing what it will be like to live together. You have high hopes but no certainty.

What were the learning curves in this new relationship?

Kitchen Discoveries.

We were very lucky to buy the house with all of it’s furniture but unexpectedly we also gained a majority of the kitchen things. We had bought a few critical things to get us started, plates and bowls etc which turned out not to be needed. With the sellers moving abroad we had told them that they could leave anything that was not convenient for them to take. They took us at our word and we were lucky to gain much more than we expected. So first thing we had to learn was “what do we have and where is everything?”

Every thing we did for the first time started with a where or what question that we slowly answered.

Let’s make a drink, OK, where are the cups?

Let’s have lunch, OK, lets find the cooking knives, is there a chopping board?

What pans do we have?

How does the cooker work?

We have some left overs to store, do we have any storage boxes? All this discovery was actually quite fun. This lucky situation also led to a much smaller list of things to buy than initially expected.

Locks and light switches.

As night came we had to work out how to control the lights which was actually more complicated than expected. Some lights had multiple controls, some did not and some were just hard to find.

After a long busy day, you go to settle down for the night in your new house. We decided that all the critical unpacking was done and rested shortly in the new lounge. The TV was not setup, and WiFi installation was still 3 days away. Fortunately mobile internet and an iPad helped us wind down with some entertainment.

Oh look another switch, what does that one control? Answer, I’ve no idea, at least for one of the switches! Suspicion is that it should turn lights on in the dining room, as it is by the door into that room. We await specialist help to confirm that.

Learning the locks was easy as a key was left in each of the lockable doors. We labelled them and then had multiple copies made of each the next day.

Expats A La Toilette

Getting ready for bed meant quickly setting up at least one bath room with a toothbrush and towels. We had those things available.

In the morning came the first test. How does the shower work? First, how do you turn it on? Then how long does it take to get hot water? Then how hot is the water and how long does it last? The answers were, left twisting switch, quite a wait for the hot water to kick in but then it doesn’t seem to run out. Atleast not in the main bathroom. The bathroom attached to the master bedroom was different. Hot water comes as quickly but for some reason doesn’t seem to last as long. We are going to have to get some advice about that at some point and probably money will need spending. Still atleast both bathrooms have good enough hot water for now.

What A Load of Rubbish

After unpacking boxes, unwrapping several new things and various amazon deliveries, we had a lot of recycling.

After a week we had a full bin of non recycling.

After a little longer we had a collection of glass to be recycled.

Before all that we had a full small bin of food waste.

Over the last decade we have lived in multiple locations in the UK and Luxembourg and none of them had the same system for handling rubbish and recycling.

Our commune in France is part of the most challenging waste management system that either of us has encountered. Waste services in the Dordogne are handled by an organisation called SMD3 and I easily found several negative reports online about its quite rigid systems.

The first shock was that there is no home collection of any waste or recycling in our commune.

There are sets of bins in every community, those for recycling of paper, plastics, metals and glass are free to use by anyone. The special bins for depositing of non recyclable waste require a special card to use them. Once this card is obtained you scan it (or enter your personal code) to open the bins and be allowed to deposit 2 30L bags of waste. For a house in a rural location like ours, this requires driving to get rid of all waste.

Garden waste and larger items can be taken to a local decheterie (recycling centre). Again car required, which is not ideal, but to be fair a car is required for everything else so perhaps it is not entirely unreasonable.

Organic waste can either be composted in the garden or has to be put in non recycling. We hace a garden recycling bin but one that has filled up we will need to make a compost area in the garden or just put organic waste in with other waste. Talking to other expats, many just discard organic waste because composting is not easy, pleasant or necesarily convenient for everyone..

First morning learning.

Our first morning in France, it is almost compulsory to want a fresh croissant. Being in the countryside there is unfortunately no boulangerie within walkable distance. The nearest is pretty close, 2.1km away along the nearest main road and up a long winding hill. Fortunately the nearest boulangerie is very very good and well worth the drive. L’epi d’or 823 route d eymet, 24240 Monbazillac was very welcoming, had many gorgeous looking creations, nice croissants and a baguette with sesame seeds that I really loved.

Anyway, full filling my dream, I bought a croissant and enjoyed it with coffee by the pool on a sunny morning before getting on with house related work for the day. Wonderful, peace inspiring and rewarding. This was the kind of moment for which homes in France are purchased. Hopefully there will be many more.

The first croissant by the pool. A key moment for new house owners.

Shopping shopping shopping.

The final new thing needed, was to find all the necessary new stores. We new where one of the malls and super markets were because Karterina took us there the first day to arrange mobile phone, internet and do a quick first day shop.

Google quickly showed us where the other supermarkets and DIY stores were and all got visited over the next few days. Within the week we were familiar with major shopping locations, DIY stores and atleast one garden store.

Personal preferences started for form quickly, only one store did prepared croissant pastry in tins, one had better milk selection and one was clearly the biggest with most choice. Also we learnt that Hypermarché is pronounced “eeper marcheee”.

Bergerac area has everything we needed and it was nice to confirm that.

Setting In

We know had to focus on getting on with normal life, settling in and organising our new home.

The start was good, we were looking forward to growing into our new home.

Bonne chance.