houses

A vendre

Posted on by MELewis

Would you like to buy a house in France? Ours is for sale. It’s a new build, bright and modern, overlooking a lovely view of the lake and mountains.

It’s what we call in French ‘une maison à ossature bois’. A timber structure or a wood frame house. It’s designed to let in the light, and the views, which perfectly suits our location near Lake Geneva. We fell in love with the idea after spending a summer holiday at a cottage in Canada. It had a similar structure, and when it came time to look for a new home, we discovered a builder in our area who specializes in this type of structure. And then we lucked into our lot. Just the right size for us, big enough to have a pool and a garden but not a massive amount of land to look after. And those views!

What did I learn after building this house? You can have too many windows. As beautiful as the views are, sometimes it feels like a fish bowl. And we’ve spent a fortune in window coverings. Also, with the rising temperatures, there is a definite greenhouse effect. Last year we had air conditioning put in upstairs.

And then there is the location. I truly love living by a lake, and in the country. That is not up for grabs. But as I work from home and we are at least half an hour from the city, it does feel isolated at times. It would be nice to be nearer a bigger town with a few shops and services.

Also, I realize that I could happily live in about half the space. And that if I have access to greenery nearby, I don’t need my own garden. In fact, there is little point in having a garden if you don’t want to spend your time caring for it. Which neither of us really does.

I never imagined we’d leave this house. It was just ten years ago that we decided to sell our first home near Lyon and move to the Haute Savoie. Back then we were both working in the Geneva area and commuting back and forth each week. But things change. I got laid off from my former full-time position in pharma communications just as we were breaking ground. Husband now works on the other side of Switzerland in Zug, a 3-4 hour drive. He’s away most of the week while I work freelance from my home office. As much as I enjoy having space around me, this house is too big for one person.

So, we’ve decided to sell our house and downsize. The breaking news is that, after almost 30 years in this country, I will be moving away from France. We won’t be far. Just across the lake, a few hundred kilometres east. Where they speak a different language, and a funny dialect to boot.

But first we have to sell our house.

A suivre.

Chez soi: There’s no place like home

Posted on by MELewis

I love how the French word ‘chez’ describes home. It even sounds welcoming: Viens chez nous. Come over to our place. And you don’t go to the butcher’s shop, you go ‘chez le boucher,’ ‘chez le boulanger,’ etc. You learn this one early in French as it’s a classic mistake to say ‘au’ instead of ‘chez’ when referring to shops with a person behind the name.

The concept of house and home is very dear to the French. And to me: I’ve always been a homebody. They call this being ‘casanier’ in French. I like having a place to hang my hat. This means I’m not a huge fan of travel and indeed, cannot travel light. My husband always laughs when I carefully unpack my clothes in hotel rooms; he’s perfectly happy living out of a suitcase. But for anything longer than a weekend, I pack a pillow and have been known to bring the toaster.

Ever since I arrived in France I’ve been like Dorothy, tapping her heels and saying ‘there’s no place like home.’

My first chez moi was in the seventh arrondissement of Paris, a one-bedroom sublet with a partial view of the Eiffel tower (you had to crane your head out of the kitchen window to see a bit of it sticking up over a neighboring rooftop). It was furnished in someone else’s taste (there was a lot of pink). We lived there for less than a year and it never really felt like home.

Fast forward to Lyon, 3ème arrondissement. Our family’s first home in France was a roomy 3-bedroom apartment on the rive gauche of the Rhône, not far from the business centre of Lyon. Long on old-world charm, it had dizzyingly high ceilings with crown moldings, antique fixtures and floor tiles, herring-bone hardwood floors….but was rather short on modern conveniences (the ‘central heating’ was a single gas heater, centrally located in the front hall).

Although we were only renting, we (read: my husband) scraped off several layers of flocked and flowered wall paper from every surface (including the ceiling) and repainted before moving in. We had no balcony but our bedroom window overlooked a treed inner courtyard. It was only a few blocks to the nearest park for airing kids and dogs. We stayed for five years – long enough to feel almost at home.

Next stop: home ownership. After so much time in the city, we were ready for some fresh air. For several months we searched for something we liked and could actually afford. In the end, we bought a piece of land in a small town half an hour outside Lyon, found a builder and chose a plan for our new house. Building was cheaper than buying an existing house as you got a break on taxes.

Our first house was a typical new French single-family home. It was a brick construction set in a small housing development (lotissement) where several other families had each built a different house. It looked out over les Monts du Lyonnais on one side and a small farmer’s field on the other. It did not have finished closets, kitchen or bathroom fittings. Those little extras are considered as part of the décor; most new houses here are delivered as empty shells.  But we had a roof over our heads and could really see the skies for the first time in years. I felt like I’d arrived in Kansas.

Small wonder I never wanted to leave. But the day came a few years ago when we decided to uproot (for absolutely, positively the LAST time) and move on. More precisely, 160 kilometers northeast.

Our new house is on the French side of the border with Switzerland (after so much time and effort integrating here, I wasn’t ready to abandon la belle France). It’s located in another small town in the countryside, overlooking Lake Geneva on one side and the Alps on the other. We also built this house, buoyed by our first experience, equal amounts of optimism and, perhaps, foolhardiness. It’s similar in many ways to our first house – but on steroids.

It’s an A-frame wood structure with a lot of glass – based on what some call a ‘flat-pack’ or prefab home but customized and built by a professional builder (neither of us being handy with tools or implements other than those used for cooking.) It was a much bigger project – this time we were able to get a built-in kitchen and finish the closets. Even after a year and a half, we’re still working out some of the bugs.

As lovely as our new home is, it took me awhile to get over our old house. The one where our kids grew up, where we struggled through the lean years and put down roots. But I’m finally beginning to feel chez moi. Now that I’ve unpacked the toaster.