Have you ever felt like your life was something straight out of a movie? That’s how Pierre and I have been feeling for the last couple of months. In March, we received notification that Pierre had inherited a house and property in southern France. To put it mildly…we were stunned! The property is located about an hour-and-a-half southeast of Toulouse, and about 1 1/2 miles away from a small village with less than one-hundred inhabitants.

The property is heavily wooded and is completely surrounded by farmland, giving the property a spectacular 360 degree view. I think the best way to describe the surrounding area is—-breathtaking!

The house, well, that’s another story. It’s in really (read that as REALLY) bad shape. Pierre estimates that it hasn’t been properly maintained for at least 10-15 years. It has structural problems and it was filthy and filled with junk. To horribly misquote Taylor Swift, “The house is a nightmare in the middle of a daydream.”

Initially, we kept the news to ourselves because the house needed to be transferred to Pierre’s name. However, the biggest reason that we kept quiet was because we were in shock, as you might imagine. We had already planned a big trip to Europe in August and September, so we decided to massively change our agenda to include southern France. Our temporary plan was to spend time at the house, so we could clean it and decide what to do. Our options, as we saw it, included keeping the house and renovating it, or selling it.

Pierre went over before I did, and he ended up spending four weeks there, and I was at the house for two weeks. We worked really hard to clean the house out, and basically disinfect it. Pierre also began to cut the trees down that were choking out the house. The trees were so numerous, that when driving down the road, you couldn’t even see that there was a house on the property. I love trees, but southern France is extremely windy and the tress were really big and old, so some of them had to be removed.

As we worked, and talked, and thought, and debated….a funny thing happened…we fell head-over-heels in love with the house and the surrounding countryside. We have decided to keep and renovate our little maison. Life is so interesting and it’s filled with so many unexpected twists turns. We’re excited!

Check out the views from our property—