Slowly Making our French House our Home

Welcome to the 62nd weekly post of our Baby Boomers Move to France blog.

Week 34 in France 3/22-3/28/2026.

We have been in our home in the village of Chabanais in the Charente department of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine Region of France since the middle of December 2025.

This week, we will take some walks while the weather cooperates. I will continue working on French tax paperwork. I will play a round of golf at Ron and Michelle’s house. The electrician will be here to work on our electrical projects. The pellet stove and wood stove should be installed this week too.

Our home in Chabanais

Things on the agenda this week:

• Pellet and wood stove install
• Electrician
• Golf
• Garden work

Weather forecast:

A little cooler than last week, partly cloudy and some rain throughout the week. High temps in the 50s and lows in the upper 30s.

Why this Blog?

Long story short, we are “Baby Boomers” that have moved from 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.

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, I’m happy to do a little research and we will share resource information.

This Week in General

Sunday

Nice walk on Sunday. bright sunshine, but downright cold. Very quiet day for us. We slept in a little later than normal. After lunch we went up to the summer house, had a glass of rose and discussed our strategy for the rest of the week.

I took a picture of the flowers that EB planted in pots that included the new azalea.

Monday: Stoves arrive and Electrician gets to work

The pellet burner arrived and is scheduled to be installed on Tuesday. The delivery guys brought it in and left it in the living room where the wood burner is supposed to go. The paperwork said bois (wood) so they were convinced it is a wood burner. They are not the installers. After they left, I did a little research and I’m a 100% sure it is a pellet burner. I guess the installers will have to move it.

Hopefully the other stove will arrive this afternoon.

Electrical work

The electrician arrived right on time and got to work on the projects. He wanted to be sure he had the outlet for the pellet stove in the best place so having the pellet burner arrive as he was getting his tools arranged was good so we could verify the location of the power. As I mentioned in a previous post, we need a little power for the pellet auger to feed pellets to the burn pot. If we have a power outage in the winter, we will need a backup if we need the pellet burner. I’m thinking if that happens, we can get by with the wood stove alone for a short bit.

• Install a new electrical outlet for our pellet burner.
• Install a new light fixture in the hallway to the living room (remove the current flourescent light fixture)
• Install a new light fixture in the living room (remove the current flourescent light fixture). this will be a little tricky.
• Install a jumper cable from one grounding post to another. This was a big “anomolie” on the house inspection report that was done for the sale of the house.

Tuesday: Wood stove delivery and set up

A crew of guys from Aasgard arrived on schedule, around 8:30 to prep the chimneys and install the stoves. Wow! What a project. They started on multiple tasks.

• Modify the fireplace and chimney access in the livingroom
• Remove and replace the hats (chapeaux) on both chimneys on the roof.
• Remove and replace the chimney tube for the living room from the roof
• Remove and replace the chimney tube for the dining room from the roof
• Add a ventilation port through the wall in the hall to the living room
• Move the pellet stove to the dining room
• Bring the wood stove in from the truck
• Connect the stoves to the chimneys

This took all day and the team left around 5:30 or 6:00 PM. These guys worked their butt off and left a really nice installation and did a good job of cleaning up afterwards.

EB and Rosie spent most of the day up in the summer house while all of the activity was going on in the house.

We opened the back gate so most of the traffic went through there rather than through the house.

Whoohoo another house project done.

Wednesday: Hugo arrives to explain how to use the stoves

Hugo arrive around 11:00 to go over the ins and outs of how to use the remote control for the pellet stove and fired it up. It works really well.

Next, he went over the wood stove and the Scandinavian fire-starting method. I think that I mentioned this last week where you start the fire from the top down not like I had been taught as a boy from the bottom up. So, you put the logs at the bottom, then stack your kindlin on top and then your Firestarter on top. Light the fire starter and voila you get a beautiful fire.

Hugo left around 1:00 PM and assured us that they will call us in a year to certify the chimneys and service the stoves. As I mentioned before, the chimney must be certified each year. This is important for insurance reasons. I will share more of our experience as we get familiar with the wood fired heating systems.

By the way, I highly recommend Aasgard Limoges for your stove purchases.

Our salesperson, Hugo Ageorges is great. Was very patient with us, answered all of our questions and speaks pretty good English (although he would say he does not speak English well). He kept us up to date as the project progressed. All in all, it has been a very good experience. He can be reached at [email protected] and 07 48 78 58 69.

Our Wednesday French lesson was very good. I learned how to say “well played”. “Bien joue”.

Thursday Golf at Ron’s!!

First priority of the day was to deliver our signed acknowledgement that we had received a copy of the Approval to proceed with the solar panel project. I walked over to the Maire’s (mayor’s) office located in the Chabanais Hotel de Ville (Chabanais city hall). This is just across the Vienne River and is an easy 10-minute walk. It was a challenging French language effort for me, but I got through it. I even managed to ask about the fence project that we have in mind. I was told that I do not need permission. The project is to replace an existing wire fence with a nicer looking PVC version.

I drove over to Ron’s and we played a round of golf. He hits his drive a country mile. He ended the round with 5 pars and almost got another one. Bien joue!!

Me? I did better than the first time we played. Still struggling with pulling the ball. I never had that problem before. I was a slicer before. I’m encouraged that I improved a little though.

Bien joue Ron!

The fence guy came over to check out our small fence project. He took his measurements and said that he would have a quote back to us in 2 weeks. We met this guy at the Limoges Home and Garden show a couple of weeks ago. Our home is becoming our own little by little.

Saturday: Happy Birthday Don

Don’s birthday. We are sure that he will have a great day participating in a Dragon Boat regatta.

The day was sunny, partly cloudy and chilly. It warmed up by noon to around 60F and then started cooling off again by 3:00.

Shopping for accessories

We drove into Limoges as I wanted to go to Leroy Merlin for some fireplace and pellet stove accessories. We got everything we needed and decided to stop at Si Signorizza in St. Junien for lunch and EB wanted to get some yarn at E.Leclerc. I got some jeans there too.

French made jeans’ sizes are different, I think. I usually get size 36 in the states. Here I need 44. I admit that I have probably gained some weight but not that much. They fit well and are comfortable, so it is all okay.

We purchased some pellets at Leroy Merlin. Just enough to get us through until our shipment arrives. We got a small container for storing about a half a bag of pellets. That will work for now. I think that we will want a larger storage container in the future. We were being penny wise and pound foolish. Well, you live and learn and we can use the smaller container for something.

Wood a pellet stove cleaning

Speaking of the pellet burner, I took the burn pot out and the ash collection bin and did a thorough cleaning. The cleaning schedule is not too demanding. Clean the glass and vacuum ash weekly. Empty burn pot daily, clean hopper and fan monthly. There is not much ash as the unit, like the wood stove, burns really efficiently. The wood stove needs the glass cleaned daily, empty and vacuum the ash pan weekly and check gaskets monthly. The sales guy told us that we should leave a thin layer of ash in the stove. Both stoves get a professional checkup and the chimneys swept annually.

One other small project

There was gap in the paneling where we had the light fixture removed in the living room. It needed something to fill it in, and EB came up with the perfect thing that fit just right. She is some kind of a genius. Job done.

I suggested that we go up to the summer house and have a beer. EB thought that was a good idea and we just relaxed and Rosie joined us.

I spent a little time on the blog and then it was Time for a glass of wine and to fire up the wood stove.

Saturday: We slept in until 10 or so

We had turned the pellet stove off overnight and wow it was down to 16C degrees in the dining room. So, EB started the pellet stove and quickly had the room warm and cozy. The day stayed cold despite the sunshine.

We stayed up late on Friday night binge watching a series that Ron and Michelle had recommended. Have you seen “Homeland”? I like it. I think Cindy had recommended it too.

We bundled up and I even put my scarf on to keep warm while we were out. We took a run into Confolens to the Bricolage and Hyper U and EB wanted to check out the nursery (jardiniere) in Confolens. The nursery is a really nice place with great prices. We will go back in April or May for a Lime (Citron vert) tree. Shopping done we came back home to get warm. Started the wood stove and kicked back.

So that was our week.

The stoves were delivered and set up. What a difference they make. We need to get used to the pellet stove remote control. A little learning curve as with all new things and I got to play golf again at Ron’s house.

French Lifestyle and Culture

French vs USA clothes sizes

I mentioned that the jeans that I bought were size 44 not my normal 36. Also, my shoe size is something like 42 compared to my 9 1/2 in the USA.

I did a quick search online and found that France has a unique sizing system. I checked out FARFETCH online and found the following information.

The French use an alpha system for casual clothes and a numerical system for other clothes. I consider jeans casual, but the size is numerical. If your size is S, M, L, XL and so in the US you can use the French system which is similar. However, you are advised to size up as the French system is not as accommodating as other systems.

If you find that the article of clothing that you are interested in is in the numerical system, you will need a conversion factor until you are familiar with your size. In general this means for women’s sizes you take your US size and add 32.

For men it is a little more complicated. For a shirt you multiply your US shirt size by 2.54 and round up to the nearest whole number.

For some reason if you are talking about a suit you add 10 to your US size.

I didn’t see a conversion for jeans in particular. That said, it seems that adding 10 to your US size is about right. A US 36 would be a French 46. I bought 44 but the fabric is a little stretchy, so the size seems about right.

Now for shoes the system is based on an antique measure sysem established by French cobblers in the mid 1800s. It was called the “point de Paris” system. For US sizes you simply add 31 to convert to your French size. Thus, for US size 9 you add 31 and get 40. I bought a pair of house slippers at the grocery and found 40 didn’t fit comfortably. I needed a 42 in that particular brand. I did buy a pair of shoes at a shoe store in St. Junien and found that the US size was noted on the inside, so it was easy to find a pair to try on. Obviously, clothing size is not a big deal once you figure out your size. It is just another learning curve associated with our French adventure.

Next Week (la Semaine Prochaine)

• French taxes
• Firewood delivery on Tuesday
• Maybe a little yardwork
• Walks around town and more photos
• Golf with Ron on Thursday
• Pellet delivery on Saturday

Weather forecast for next week

We stay cool this coming week with highs forecast in the mid 50F (10C) and nighttime lows get up to the mid 40s (7C). Chance of some rain too. We still get to use our stoves.

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.

Many thanks to those of you that added a message in the comments. Peggy was right about the yellow bush in our back yard. It is indeed a Forsythia. We confirmed that at the nursery.

Keep in touch and leave questions, suggestions and comments below. We really enjoy hearing from you all.

Wishing you a good week (Bonne Semaine)

Mark and Elizabeth Beiley

Babyboomersmovetofrance.com