We live
in Chateau de Bourneau, which is a French 19th century chateau
built in the French Renaissance style.
We are situated in Vendéen which is not very well known region of
France, a bit of a secret garden of France. And it's a beautiful,
beautiful, sunshine based country.
Although we're both scientists at the base, we're also hapless romantics.
We love history, culture of buildings and the history of France,
and there are so many beautiful chateaus and manoirs that are just left to crumble.
Like most of young 30 somethings we kind of wondered
what we could afford, and we looked at the price popes in London,
we were quite shocked! The price of property in France is very different,
so Paris, as any capital city in the world, very expensive.
But if you start stepping outside a little bit, you can come across real bargains.
Chateaus turned out to be a bit of a bargain.
So perhaps we could live our dream and find that property
that really speaks to us
and inject life back into it and save it for the next generations to come.
So that's sort of how the idea of moving
to France evolved into something bigger.
If we created the business alongside, perhaps
we would have that income in order to save this building.
This was actually built at 550 years ago and the original chateau,
was know by a lady who was called Jacquette de la Ramée
and she asked Louis, the 11th of France
was the king at the time, permission to build a fortified chateau here.
So it's really rich of history, and I I quite like the fact that it's a kind of
the first feminist who built this castle.
And then in the French Revolution, unfortunately,
it went into ruin while they eventually fell on the Moller family.
And the second son inherited the land here and the ruin and decided
to build this beautiful chateau that you see today, surrounded by a moat.
So we live on our own little island, it is
a bit unsual I guess, our living arrangements.
Living in a chateau is extremely expensive,
although it may be cheap to buy at the moment,
they require a lot of money
just to look at them. On a daily basis, something would break
and it's quite complex and expensive to repair, sometimes being antiques.
100% of our income through our holiday cottages or wedding overseas
at the moment re-injected in the maintenance of the chateau.
So we are talking about looking after the land the fixing leaks, replacing windows.
Anything is nothing glamorous, but it's the minimum
monthly spend would be €4,000 just on that.
Otherwise, I think as much money
as you can throw to those places, they would just absorb it quite easily.
Chateau costs can sometimes give us lots of surprises.
One of our big loves is, recycling and upcycling,
and it brings me a lot of pleasure to see these old forgotten items,
having a new life here and helping us
bring the chateau back to life and not ending up in landfill.
We've done everything ourselves in this room, including sanding, staining and polishing the floors.
Finding all pieces of furniture,
which some were from the chateau as well.
The beside tables, the beautiful dressing table.
So it's been a real joy to see these treasures back in their rightful place.
This piece of furniture was something we actually found in the chateau attic.
This beautiful dressing table was another chateau find, it was just abandoned in the attics here.
I love upcycling, and this a bed crown I made for a french table.
It's really lovely to bring life back to old forgotten things.
It's been a pleasure when we have guests stays,
I hope wow, I really love that stool or I love that chair
kind of gives me that little zing of pleasure because
that chair was broken and had a missing leg and was
found abandoned, but actually is 100 years old
and there is value in these objects and is not in landfill,
it's now part of a chateau.
It's just the two of us, we do everything ourselves.
Part of that is a choice because, although it is our job,
there's also that very gray line between
pleasure and work, which is actually a dream, really.