Our French Village House (Episode 1)

Week 21 in France 12/22-12/29/2025. We are officially into our fifth month of full time living in France.

Welcome to the 49th weekly post of our Baby Boomers Move to France blog. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from our place in Chabanais, France.

Things on the agenda this week:

We are in for another busy week:

• Hardware store run for more tools and hardware
• Figure out how to regulate the heat in the house. It goes from too hot to cold. I think there is some kind of program that I’m not getting.
• Figure out the shower hot water issue
• More furniture to assemble

The weather forecast for Chabanais this week is looking pretty good again with highs in the upper 50s most days and lows in the 40s with partly cloudy days and only a couple of days with a slight chance of rain towards the end of the week.

More about our house

This week we will share our home prep progress and a little more detail about this 120-year-old stone village house and its location relative to the village. See below in the “French Lifestyle and Culture” section. This will take a couple of posts so stay tuned.

Why this Blog?

Long story short, we are “Baby Boomers” that have moved from beautiful Venice, Florida to the beautiful French countryside as retirees. After a little over a year of planning and fretting we sold everything in Venice and made the move on 1 August 2025.

We publish a brief update of our adventures every Sunday to share our experiences, tips and mistakes.

For starters, we have decided that the French countryside is where we will call home. Although we enjoyed our visit to Paris, our life is not in Paris. We like the peace and calm of village life that includes amenities of course. We will explain over the course of our blog posts.

If you are thinking about a move to France? We are happy to share our thoughts and answer questions. Just drop a question in the comment section below and we will get back to you.

If you are wondering what got into our head and inspired us to make the move, check out some of our earlier posts. Again, if you have questions about our adventure, drop your questions in the comment section below.

We are learning a lot about the French culture and lifestyle as we make our life here and each week, we include in the blog some thoughts on what we learn. If you have a specific question about France, let us know and we are happy to answer. Other folks probably have the same question. If we don’t know the answer, we will share resource information.

This Week in General

Our daily schedule is not too rigorous. We are retired after all. Given that it is winter and too cold to do much outside, we usually get up around 9ish. Have a couple of cups of coffee and a croissant or a bowl of yogurt with honey and granola and discuss what we will get done during the day. There are plenty of projects so there is no shortage of to-dos. We usually do our French lesson in the morning then we are off and running.

Sometimes exploring fits in the schedule and then there is planning and doing chores and banjo practice and other retired people stuff.

EB usually cooks up something good for lunch, we add a cup of tea, and we are all set for the rest of the day until dinner. This is time to work on our to-do list. I enjoy this time to work on this blog too.

Many days I love that we just have a plate of cold cuts, cheese and bread and wine for our evening meal.

After our chores and dinner, we often play a game or watch TV until bedtime and sleep like babies. EB has her crochet and she is learning to knit too. Below are some of the things that kept us busy this week.

Monday Shopping and the Heating System Work

EB drove to St. Junien to buy a few things for the house. I stayed home as my main objective was getting the heating system regulated.

EB found a tall cabinet for the guest bathroom and a shelf unit for the living room. We carried them into the house and staged them for assembly. These were projects for Tuesday and Wednesday.

Success with the heating issues. It all had to do with the programming of the remote thermostat. The thermostat is surprisingly adaptable and controls room temperature as well as the “domestic hot water”. I think I have the room heat settled except for the dining room. As I have suggested before, the dining room is going to need a pellet or wood burning stove for heat. The previous owners of the house were very energy conservation aware and had the thermostat programmed a bit cooler than we like. They had a pellet burner in the dining room but sold it before we bought the house. I had asked about a pellet burner. The previous owner mentioned that he planned on replacing the pellet burner with a hydro pellet burner. My understanding is that this is a combination room heater as well as a hot water heater. Something to think about.

Pellet burner or wood burner??

There is a debate in my head regarding whether to employ a wood burner vs a pellet stove for heating. I’m starting to lean toward a wood burner but not a 100% committed. My reasoning changes week to week but I think I have myself convinced that the wood burner will be our best bet. The cool weather season in Chabanais is from mid-November to mid-March so roughly 5 months of usage. We have a cave storage area that will be good for wood storage and an additional enclosed storage area just outside our back door. Lastly, we have a good area for daily storage near where we will have our wood stove. Yep, I would have to add an axe to my tool list for banging out kindling. This is a minor detail, but I think I will add kindling to the shopping list so EB can handle the wood if needed. We have contacted a couple of contractors for quotes. Hopefully this will be wrapped up by the middle of January and installed in February. Fingers crossed.

The hot water system is a bit under sized for American tastes. The water is plenty hot and there is very good water pressure, but capacity is lacking. No more long showers for me. Likely an upgrade is in the future.

Old locking mechanism

We have some wooden doors on the outbuilding, a gate and door shutter that have, what we call skeleton keys and old steel lock mechanisms. These locks are exposed to the elements and have started rusting and became very sluggish. These needed some attention. During the last trip to Mr. Bricolage, I purchased some 3-in-1 oil for the purpose of lubricating these locks. I spent some time exercising the locks and put the 3-in-1 oil to good use. I will have to check on the locks regularly, but they are working fine now considering they are old.

We had checked the weather report and knew that there was potential for freezing temperature overnight. I spent part of the day wrapping water pipes with insulation.

I checked out what is to be “the workshop”. It is a pretty good space with light and an electrical outlet. All 4 walls are made of old stone, and the space is a bit musty. There are some wooden shelves, one of which is filled with scrap wood and some pressed wood. I think this is a big part of the musty smell. When I get a chance, this will need a good organizing. I’m actually looking forward to it.

I noticed that there are a lot of ceramic tiles stored in the workshop. I’m sure that we can make something out of them. They are plain muted colors, but I’m pretty sure we can do something useful with them.

Gorgeous Tuesday with a bright blue sky, sunshine and chill in the air.

High priority for the day was a walk over to the pharmacy. We bundled up and put a sweater on Rosie and walked across the bridge over the Vienne River to the pharmacy. I went in to the shop and struggled with my French and the lady responded in really good English. Together EB and I had 5 prescriptions. My atorvastatin was for 3 months and EB’s prescriptions are for various durations. When we had gone to our doctors’ appointment last week the doctor suggested that we buy a blood pressure testing unit, so I got one of those too. All in all, the bill was 92 euros. I paid for this with my Wise card, so no exchange rate fees added. We bought a bunch of euros at essentially market rate a few months ago. The dollar has fallen more against the euro so I’m glad we bought euros before the dollar lost more value.

Once back in our cozy little house, I got to work on the guest bath cabinet assembly and EB went to the market. She is getting very confident driving the 6-speed manual shift transmission Dacia. She sent me a text a couple of hours after she left the house to let me know that she was headed home. She said traffic was crazy and the store was crowded. Eizabeth doesn’t do well in crowded stores. I texted back and asked if she was ready for a cocktail. When she got home, she said, ” I’m ready for a cocktail”. She hadn’t received my message, but I knew she would be stressed. Gin and tonic coming right up.

You know when you get one of those furniture kits with a bunch of parts it’s gonna be a couple of hours of assembly. Even though the box says “30-minute assembly”. I got the thing all put together and realized that I had one-part backwards. Disassembled half of the thing and got it straightened out and voila, looking good.

Elizabeth helped me move cabinet into the bathroom and we noticed that we would have to cut out the quarter round molding at the floor joint, so the cabinet would fit. Oh, shucks I gotta buy some more tools. We put this project aside. We will get back to it tomorrow.

Wednesday was another nice day that turned really cold in the afternoon. We were thinking it might snow.

Rosie was not interested in going out for long walks at all. She likes our back yard though.

I went to the hardware store in St. Junien and got the tools needed to finish the cabinet install. Meanwhile EB started the shelving unit assembly.

Square room corners?

We got the cabinet installed and the shelving unit assembled and in place. Looks pretty good. One thing we notice is that every place that we have lived in France so far typically does NOT have square corners and even the floors tend to have a very slight slant. This is true in our Chabanais house. When we installed the cabinet in the guest bath, we had to shim the legs to get it fairly level and steady.

You know we had WiFi installed and it works well except we don’t have coverage over the entire house. I guess the stone walls are not conducive. Because of that we moved the computer desk and computer closer to the WiFi box. The computer is working a lot better now. I’ll need to check if there is a booster available that will work in the house.

We went to bed wondering if we would wake up to snow.

Thursday, MERRY CHRISTMAS

We woke up to a light dusting of snow. Sort of a white Christmas. Cold, but pretty. I was excited about the whole idea of a white Christmas. Coffee, yogurt, honey and granola and snow. How cool is that? Some of you northerners are probably thinking I’m nuts.

EB took this picture through the window on the stair landing going into the master bedroom.

By the time that we decided to take a drive to Limoges the snow was melted and gone. We want to be sure that we would know our way to the Limoges train station when Don and Cindy arrive. They aren’t coming until February, but it gave us an excuse to take a drive.

Good to know: It is an easy drive from Chabanais to Limoges and back.

Friday

EB went out shopping again for groceries and a few items for the house. Unfortunately, she had to scrape ice off of the car windows before she could head to the store.

While Elizabeth was out, I worked on some little projects around the house then Rosie and I took a little walk. It was too cold to go far, but both of us were happy to get outside even for a brief time.

EB bought some frames for pictures that we brought with us from Venice, FL. You might remember that we took pictures out of frames so that we could ship the pictures to France easier. Despite our effort to pack them safely, we did have some casualties.

We hung some pictures of our travels, and the house is starting to feel like our home.

Time for my hair cut. EB is getting pretty good at cutting my hair. My hair was getting a bit bushy on the sides despite the fact that I am losing hair on the top of my head.

Face time

Cindy and Don are in Big Bear and we all had a nice “Face time” call at around 8:00PM our time and about 11:00 AM their time. It was sad to hear that Dan and Rhonda were not feeling well and wouldn’t be on the call.

On Saturday we did a couple of small projects on the house and some chores. Banjo practice and EB started her new crochet project.

EB ordered a firepit, a Sous Vide machine, a vacuum sealer and a tub to do the sous vide cook in from Amazon.fr (france).

We still need a small freezer and a BBQ. We are looking for a BBQ that has enough room to cook beer can chicken. This is not easy to find here. We will have to find a beer can chicken stand to cook the chicken on too. By the way, if I haven’t mentioned it before, meat is expensive here. We do a lot of fish, chicken from time to time and duck (canard).

A few small projects done on Sunday

Got the banjo hanger in place and curtain rod up in the master bedroom. Elizabeth continued her new crochet project and more Hallmark movies (’tis the season you know!).

French Lifestyle and Culture

More About Our House (first installment)

I think this is a good section to talk about our house. A complete explanation of this house will take a couple of posts. So here’s a start.

To me this house is typical of village houses that are “in” the village. Almost by definition (my definition) village houses are compact. I think Europeans tended to be small in stature during the time when this house was built and in fact the past owners of this house are relatively short so everything in this house is designed around shorter folks. Works for us as Elizabeth and I are on the short side by modern standards at 67 inches tall.

The house is located on a narrow street that runs up a small hill, at the top of which are the fairgrounds and a tall clock tower that we want to check out. This is the clock tower that rings in the hours of the day all day. The road is barely wide enough for 2 cars to pass each other so you might notice the side view mirrors get folded in when the cars are parked along this road. The streetlight on the right shines into our back walkway. Our gate opens into the walkway just this side of the light. That is our Dacia there on the left next to the retaining wall. I really like that little car.

Our house is just up from the corner of Avenue Carnot and Rue du Champ de Foire. A short walk down the hill takes us to a boulangerie and little further is Place de 14 Juillet and Rue de L’Abattoir and the Barriere Restaurant and hotel just past the now defunct railroad tracks. There are rumors that the train system may reinstate the train route that stopped in Chabanais on the way from Limoges through to Angouleme.

Street Names

You might notice the names of the roads are not real creative. For example, the name of our road translates to “Fairground Road”. The fairgrounds are just up the street. “L’Abattoir” is basically the slaughterhouse. I assume at one time the slaughterhouse must have been on the road. Place de 14 Juillet commemorates July 14th, the day the revolution stormed the Bastille. It seems like every town has a Rue de 14 Julliet.

When standing in the house looking out of the front door you are facing just about directly East. So, we get the morning sun through our dining room window and front door window. As you may have noticed in the picture at the top of this blog posting, our front door has a 3/4 window. The house is, to an extent, built into the side of the hill and the garden gets sunshine all day. You can see here that we have a side light window at the front door. Most of the doors and windows are new and are robust and well insulated.

The windows are hinged and swing inward. The frames are pretty thick and well insulated.

A short walk down the hill from the house and past the church and we are at Cafe Lillian and Cafe de Sport is just across the street from Cafe Lillian. We have talked about both cafes in previous postings. Walking a little further to the left you are at a small village square around which are several shops and a Tabac. If you continue walking straight instead, you cross the bridge over the Vienne River. More shops and the Marie (mayor’s office) are across the river. If you decide not to cross the river, just before you get to the bridge and look right you see the town hall. To the left is a really nice park and walkway along the river.

When you walk into the house off of the road you enter our dining room and see our new table and light fixture. The tiled wall to the right is where the wood or pellet burner will stand. You can see the chimney pipe that comes through the ceiling. It is currently sealed up.

Okay, that is enough about the house for this post more to come next week.

Next Week (la Semaine Prochaine)

This coming week is New Years Eve and we will be starting our 6th month of living in France

• Visit Rochechouart and the Chateau
• Follow up wood stove contractor
• Follow up French tax consultant and preparation
• Visit the Marie and introduce ourselves
• Follow up French lesson info

Weather forecast for next week

Weather for the week is forecast to be COLD. Highs in the low 40^o F and lows as far down as 21^oF overnight. Partly cloudy and some frozen rain mixed in and potential for snow. We will report how it goes. WE will need to get some supplies before the snow comes.

Signing off for the week

As always, we sign off wishing you all a good week and remind you to take care of yourselves and your family. Have a safe and sane New Years everyone. We are looking forward to an awesome 2026.

Keep in touch and leave questions, suggestions and comments below. We really enjoy hearing from you. Your kind and encouraging words remind us that we can do this.

Wishing you a good week (Bonne Semaine) and Happy New Year (Bonne Annee). Stay warm.

Mark and Elizabeth Beiley

Babyboomersmovetofrance.com