Renovating & Maintaining your French Home
Joe Laredo
ONLY AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE EDITION AT THIS TIME
Renovating & Maintaining Your French Home is essential reading for anyone owning or planning to buy property in France, and the most up-to-date source of practical information available. It is guaranteed to take the headache out of modernising, extending or maintaining your French home – and, most importantly – will save you time trouble and money! Renovating & Maintaining Your French Home is the most comprehensive and up to date book about improving and looking after French property, and contains a wealth of valuable information that is not found in other publications.
Download the first 25 pages FREE now (including the Table of Contents), and see for yourself the wealth of priceless information this book contains! It's packed with comprehensive, up-to-date, accurate information, facts and figures, and 'insider’ tips, all written and presented in the ‘easy to read and understand’ style for which Survival Books are famous. Our books will save you weeks or months of research, answer hundreds of questions – including many you hadn’t even thought of – and help you avoid problems and save money!
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Extracts from the book…
Construction
French homes are built of a variety of materials, although most older properties are constructed of stone or brick with tiled roofs. The relevant materials and techniques are discussed in Chapters 10 and 9 respectively.
A special consideration is properties with a wooden structure (une ossature) lined with wattle and daub (le torchis): if you’re contemplating buying a house built in this way, you should consult an expert to check the condition of the walls and bear in mind the high cost of repair and maintenance (see page 186).
With regard to roofs, generally the steeper the roof, the more difficult (and therefore expensive) it is to repair and maintain, and the more likely the tiles are to slip and fall.
If it’s a thatched roof, consider the costs of maintenance, repair and eventual replacement (see pages 176 and 377) and also bear in mind that house insurance will cost at least twice as much owing to the increased risk of fire damage (in fact you will pay up to three times as much for fire insurance, which normally comprises over half of the total insurance premium) – that is if you can find an insurer willing to cover you at all (some won’t!).
When looking at a roof with a view to conversion into bedrooms, measure the area that has at least 2m of headroom to see whether it will be sufficient for your needs. Check whether roof trusses will obstruct it and, if so, whether they can be replaced with higher or lower beams or cut without reducing the strength of the roof.
Consider also how you will admit light to the roof space and find out whether you will be permitted to add skylights or dormer windows (see page 204 and Chapter 5).
Considerations
It’s still easy enough in most parts of France to find an old house going for a song (at least relative to prices in the UK) that’s in need of renovation, but there are a number of questions that are best answered before you’re committed to a purchase, including the following:
- Will you be able to obtain permission for the work you intend or need to do (see Chapter 5)? Although estate agents will have an insight into what’s likely to be acceptable to the planning authorities, the best place to obtain the necessary information is the local town hall (le hôtel de ville in a town or la mairie in a village), as regulations vary from commune to commune; an early visit is recommended.
- How much work are you qualified or experienced enough to undertake yourself? Bear in mind that foreign qualifications or experience may be largely irrelevant in France, e.g. with regard to electrical installation (see Chapter 15).
- How much time are you prepared or able to spend doing or supervising work? Bear in mind that trying to co-ordinate work ‘remotely’, especially from another country, can be a nightmare and, if you aren’t able to supervise work personally and continuously, your best laid plans can go seriously awry (see Cautionary Tales on pages 131 and 136).
- How much money are you prepared/able to spend? Take into account all your current and likely future financial commitments.
- How much is the work likely to cost – really (see Chapter 3)?
- How long are you prepared to wait for the work to be completed? Although you may have time on your hands, it isn’t always easy to find reliable local builders and other tradesmen who will carry out work for you within an acceptable time (see Location on page 29 and Chapter 6), so it’s worth finding out whether you will be able to do so before committing yourself to a purchase, unless you’re planning to do all or most of the work yourself.
- Do you expect relatives or friends to help you (and are they willing and able)? People may agree to help out of kindness or sympathy but, when it comes to the crunch, find that they have other commitments.
- If you’re planning to use a property as a retirement home, do you want to spend your retirement working on a house? Bear in mind that your health (or that of your partner) may prevent you from realising your ambitions. If the property has no central heating, think how you’re going to keep warm while work is in progress during the winter, and don’t imagine that winters even in the south of France are always sunny and warm.
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PRICE: £6.60 KINDLE EDITION
PUBLICATION: January 2012
EDITION: 4th
