It can be difficult to find stores near you in a foreign country. Your common knowledge of simple store names just isn’t there. If you’re renovating a house in France, depending on where you’re located, this is where you’ll find your building materials: DIY Stores (French equivalent of B&Q or …

How to Renovate in France on a Budget So you’ve bought your fixer-upper in France. The romanticism of Peter Mayle has snared you into the dream (or perhaps my blog?). You’re not a millionaire but you’ve got essentially a ruin of stones to work with. At least that’s a start. …

Contributor blog post by Vaucluse Dreamer: The last 2 days have gone by in a blur of builders, rubble & dust, but it’s been worth it. Having got rid of the hideous pellet burner (affectionately known as Growler) back in August, we’d been keeping our fingers well and truly crossed …

Here are a few pictures of the before and after renovation of our living room. Can you believe the difference? The locals are, unfortunately for us, still so curious that I’m often confronted with a face pressed against our window… But thankfully, everyone seems impressed. Next we’d love to renovate …

Our Kitchen before and after the renovation If you’re interested in the full Before and After of our house renovation here in Provence; voila! The kitchen, when we first bought the house, was entirely brown. The last time the house had been renovated was in the 70s. The ceiling was …

Well, it’s missing some art on the walls, and a few finishing touches. This is the result of the upstairs room from our renovation in Provence. Behold the Bedroom Reveal! I just love the stairs. Blue wasn’t planned. It just seemed to happen! The high ceilings make the room feel …

We still haven’t hung any art yet! Soon. Notice we kept some of the blue on the ceiling. The living room reveal from our Renovation in Provence! More photos to come. When we first put this rather large bookcase in the room Robin wasn’t too happy with me as he …

This tiny garden of ours has endured quite a lot since we started renovating last December. There’s been so much debris, stones, machinery, and all sorts to the point where we often could barely get in and out! It’s not much to work with, but I think it’s improved enormously. …

These images don’t do the final result justice; and everything is also not quite done. However, here is the first version of our almost finished home in Provence. After 8 months of renovation, and with the limited budget and awkward dimensions we had to work with, I’m quite impressed! I …

Our tiny house is an awkward triangular shape. This is most evident in the upstairs room and the kitchen. Basically, anywhere you would need to put a large rectangular object– like a bed! Everything has been a compromise to make the space appear bigger as well as functional. Here …Continue …