Time for an update!

So this is how things stand at the moment:
We put in an offer at €126,000, but lo and behold, the very next day another potential buyer put in a bid...after much toing and froing, we've put in the highest offer at €156,000...we really like this house!!! We're still waiting for confirmation from the solicitor that the other people have pulled out, and also for the results of a parasite survey that's being carried out tomorrow, which we should get on Friday. If all's well we should be signing the first stage of the sale Friday or Saturday morning!

We also put in an offer for another house in the same town - just opposite in fact. It's VERY nice inside, although a little too renovated in a way; belongs to a pharmacist, and it's a bit clinical. It's on the market at 215,000, and we offered 180,000, but the owner wasn't having any of it!

Tomorrow afternoon we're going to see another house, again in Bréal, similar style but smaller, cheaper and not in a good condition at all; it's a house with earth walls that've been totally covered in concrete, of all things...it's been turned into a bunker, basically...seems that they've taken out the old staircase and fireplaces as well. Idea of this one would be to buy it cheap and try to give it back some of its former dignity.

We'll see what happens next...

Think this is the one...

We went back to see the house in Bréal this morning with a couple of friends who've lots of experience in renovating etc. They think it's a perfectly feasible project, and requires less work than we previously thought! The upstairs is much more habitable than downstairs, and as it was flats before it's fully independent with kitchen, bathroom etc. The idea is that we'd live upstairs until the downstairs is done, then do the opposite, which avoids us having to rent another house at the same time as doing the work. So full speed ahead! we'll be putting in an offer first thing Tuesday morning. I took a few more piccies while we there:

Fireplace in the left back room downstairs (the really dark one)

This is the view from the dark room at the back through to the front. The floor's really not bad, although there's a bit of woodworm in the front room.

The Stairs - from the ground floor to the first floor...

First floor to the attic....

And looking down the stairs from the attic.

The corridor upstairs, seen from the top of the stairs.

Righthand side as you come up the stairs, front to back.

Front bedroom, righthand side as you come up the stairs.

The children love this house, and their favourite part is the cellar - it's still got the original beaten earth floor, traditional in our region. H's parents both lived in houses with beaten earth floors, no running water or electricity...and that was only 45 years ago! The cellar is huge, and an absolute museum - there's all sorts of things that've been left and forgotten, including this bike, and about 40 bottles of wine dating from the 60's...! Not that the wine's got anything to do with our decision to make an offer, of course...

Our new house?

Here are a few photos of the house in Bréal-sous-Montfort we're thinking of buying.

The layout of the house is ultra-simple: four rooms downstairs (two on the left, two on the right) with a corridor through the middle from front to back. The stairs are at the back of the corridor - gorgeous 19th-century wooden staircase.

The layout upstairs is exactly the same. The stairs continue from the first floor up to a large attic under the eaves of the house. There's a large cellar, accessible from a door under the stairs.

The roof is old (nailed slates - approx. 50 years old) but in apparently good condition.

Nearly every room has lino on the floor, but with the original floorboards underneath.

The bathroom and laundryroom are currently in the most AWFUL (I can't emphasise how awful it is) 1970's extension, accessed from a door next to the staircase, which cuts all the light to the left-hand downstairs window...needs to be pulled down, so no bathroom...

All the doors are original wooden doors with latches.

The windows are fairly new, but cheapo plastic frames. Same for the shutters. Double glazed.

Cellar access under the steps.

Downstairs kitchen, front right as you look at the house. Back right bedroom accessed through the back of the kitchen.

Back right bedroom. I hope that's not damp in the corner...

This is the view out of the back right bedroom.

The wall is the 1970's bathroom

monstrosity that needs to be pulled down....

And this, believe it or not, is H climbing out of the window of the left back bedroom (agent couldn't get the key of the back door to work...) It's a bedroom like a tomb, totally dark all the time as no light can enter because of the bathroom carbuncle on the left of the photo. The wall on the right is the Strange Room (see below) - you can see the door to it.

The steps go down to the garden.

And this is the Strange Room. The lintel in the wall used to be a door to the back left bedroom. It's fairly high, about as high as the first floor, with the eaves visible.

That's it for the downstairs - I didn't manage to get any photos of the left-hand side of the house, or the staircase, unfortunately.

The two rooms on the left communicate, and both have/had fireplaces. The one in the front room has been taken out, but the one at the back is still there. That back room (the one H is climbing out of!) is unbelievably dark...Really wonder how anyone could have lived in it...

Now for the upstairs!

The upstairs 'kitchen' (front right as you look at the house). Access to the back right bedroom is through the back of the kitchen.

This is the back right bedroom, accessed through the kitchen. The pink door on the left leads to a mini 2-foot wide bathroom, as long as the room (also needs to go...)

The back of the 'pink' bedroom.

Nice view....

The garden's fairly small, with a couple of fruit trees (apples and pears). L says the pears are very sweet! The town council has bought the back of all the gardens in the row of houses, to make a rear access pedestrian road, which we'd be able to use to bring the car round to the back of the house. Shame to lose some of the garden though...

That's all the photos I managed to get! Let me know what you think...we've estimated around €50,000 of work on it to get it decent again - including full rewiring and demolition of the back, redistribution of all the rooms, and a new bathroom...