Cottage Shopping Update

Text and image by Gabrielle.

I’m a bit late posting today, but I have a good reason. Today, we put an offer on this cottage!

We’re so excited we can hardly stand it. We’ve been looking at it since last August, but the property needed some certification before we could buy it. It used to be a house, but hasn’t been inhabited for many, many years and was reclassified as a barn. So we’ve had to make sure it can be certified as a house again before we move forward.

There is one catch: all these months later, it’s still not officially certified. But. It’s so close to being certified that the notary felt like it was okay to go ahead and make the formal offer and sign all the paperwork. So, there is a chance that it won’t receive the approvals and we won’t be able to buy it — but I can’t help but be excited anyway!!!

The house is essentially a stone shell — in fact, will need to restore both electricity and running water on the property. But it’s on a lovely piece of land and has a charming outbuilding too. And it was an amazing bargain! It needs a huge (HUGE!) amount of work, but the prospect of owning it and fixing it up still has us grinning ear to ear.

As soon as it’s officially ours, I’ll be sure to share more photos, but for now, hopefully my instagram shot above will whet your whistle.

P.S. — For those of you who are curious, we’re still planning to move back to the U.S. in July. Our intention with this cottage is to use it as a vacation home and a base here in Europe. And mostly, we hope it will keep us connected to the friends we’ve made here and to this region which we love so much.

58 thoughts on “Cottage Shopping Update”

  1. I am very happy for you guys. It looks like a marvelous structure- even though a shell, it a beautiful shell. Yes it will be a TON of work, but very satisfying and you and your kids will learn so much. Basically it is what Joe did to make his pottery shop and me my painting studio. His shop had a 10 diameter reunk apple tree growing inthe front door when we bought the building… My studio was a log crib/barn structure full of used water heaters and pig manure, roof gone- I could go on and on. It is a lovely space now. I have always wanted to live in the barn with my horses and now I kind of do. They have 1/3 of the barn and I have 2/3 for my studio.

  2. I do trust all of the ideas you have offered to your post. They are really convincing and can certainly work. Still, the posts are too short for newbies. May just you please extend them a bit from next time? Thank you for the post.|

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