At the château
Step behind the scenes of Kathryn and Steve’s restoration of their fourteenth century home in rural France. From clearing roof collapses to shopping the brocantes, if you enjoy honest renovation, characterful buildings and a real glimpse of life between two countries, you can follow the whole journey on YouTube, and stand by for our appearance on Channel 4 in March 2026!
We didn’t mean to buy a chateau... it was an accident!
We were fed up of living out of suitcases during our trips to France, changing hotel rooms daily, then covid hit AND Brexit combined. That finalised our decision to look for a property. I had my heart set on a small village house with an outbuilding for storing stock.
However, the best laid plans quite often don’t turn out as expected. We follow an account on instagram called Dream French Properties. It’s a dangerous account to follow.
We saw two properties we really liked, a huge abbey and the chateau. I decided that the abbey would be the never ending project (!!) So we organised a buying trip around visiting a 14th Century Chateau in the Auvergne.
For Steve it was love at first sight. For me I saw a very reasonably priced Chateau or could be viewed as a very expensive pile of stone. After some thought and the gung ho attitude of you only love once we bought it.
The negatives - it had never had running water, there was only half a front door, there were hardly any windows and no glass, the stairs had been smashed out of it and the icing on the cake the huge 16th century tower had fallen when a fireplace had been removed from the base.
The positives - the chance of a lifetime.
