The funny thing is Richard, that space isn't at a premium in rural north western France, so for $$ I'd be embarrassed to mention in polite company, you get - seriously - acres of space. Our one is just a 'long thin farmhouse', started in about 1780 and added to every time they had another cow or two, or some children, to house. Seriously! So you end up with something 40 metres long and under 8 metres wide . . . The 8 metres was the old limit of bits of available tree trunk of roughly parallel diameter to get from side to side, so all these house are the same 'depth' for that reason
The bit Herself lives in needed a lot doing, and it was duly done, but where I and the dog hang out (sadly down to one hound these days, from a heyday of several, including 60kg of 'Bouvier Bernois'), I haven't made any investment as it's just too scary. Once you start, you can't stop, and then you are stuffed because you're right out of money - and there's still no darn roof!
One thing I'm no good at at all is 'building work'. Just not interested unfortunately, and so have never taken the trouble to get into it, buy cement mixers etc etc etc. I was forced to do a load of what I guess might just about qualify as 'first fixing' carpentry to create some rooms out of huge empty attics in the house, but that's been about it, and my attitude to 'decor' is pretty much the same as for my bikes with 'patina' - as in: 'They're Quite Fine Like That' and 'What are you on about?'.
The downside of all these madcap expat adventures is that, in the highly likely event of my dropping off my perch and 'cooling' through self-neglect and bad habits, the cost for the beloved of finding a smaller place in an area she might care to be seen in, in whatever country, will far exceed the value of this pile of cow-dung with bits of tree trunk for beams. We have friendly discussions, aka arguments, about that now and then!
The upside is, if I pop my clogs before Herself, that I'll be chuckling from a better vantage point as the kids try to figure out what to do with things they won't even know the names of.
They have been warned, verily down to the third generation, that there is work in store for them. They laugh - now - but it will be on them in the end.
I'm trying to line up locals, bike people friends, to grab stuff and do the necessary when the time comes, because as we all know, bike people treat you right. There are a lot of tools . . . The table top 'mill' is just a big pillar drill of no pedigree with a 2-way machine vice; the vertical miller is 'oriental' (Warco?)but cheaper new than a good second hand Bridport or similar and easier to find, the Myford is just an ML7 with a few bits and bobs I've concocted to do things it probably shouldn't, the boom box might still work - there's a massive pile of better 'boom' that doesn't work in another corner!, the 'surface plate' table is actually an American 'across the bed' toolbox for a pretty l'il truck, with large inside capacity for all sorts of crap, mounted in an angle-iron 4- legged frame, the helmet is a recently-retired one I bought in the 1970s, so almost new (!), the lighters light the butane gas bottle and my pipe, with the emphasis on the latter, sometimes the oxy-acetylene if I can't find the flint-grinder thing, and the space heater is from the good 'ole USA, designed to run on paraffin but does pretty well on diesel as we can't get paraffin here. That's also nearly new, I bought it in 1995, along with my Hobart Mig welder, a 6KW generator and other things ready for the apocalypse. Half the leccy stuff is 110v, and uses transformers or the gennnie, the rest is 220v Brit or French. I guess no-one else should switch anything on, just in case there's a 'mismatch' - but while I have marbles, disaster is being avoided.
But above all, it's FUN and I wouldn't change a thing.
