Chateau de Firbeix

All the trees directly in front of the chateau are terribly overgrown, as is much of the garden and outside areas. While working on renovating the upstairs bathroom in Les Arbres when it wasn't raining, I started pollarding the 7 willow trees. The jury is still out if these are actually willow trees, my brother Mark thinks they're Lime trees. They are to be found throughout France.  In case you are not familiar with the term "pollard", it just means pruning branches to encourage growth. Before One done! All done! Now the pollarded tree have leaves again, I'm adding a pic in case anyone can help identify them. Several mentions of a Lime tree.

One of my first projects, before my brother and son arrived, is to remodel the upstairs bathroom in the gîte we'll be living in to begin with, Les Arbres.  I started this in early December and thought it would be a quick job but I quickly found out tile, cabinets, showers must be ordered and this can take 4-6 weeks, even when the world is working normally! Gutting the old bathroom was not too bad except the tiles around the old pedestal sink would not come off the plaster board without damaging it so I opted to remove that section of board and replace it with new. I added 2 additional metal studs to the outer edges of the hole so the new plaster board would fit seamlessly with the old. The wooden studs you can see are for the pedestal sink which was screwed into these for additional support. The shower base they had in stock so I bought this and quickly realised the wall where the shower was going was about 3cm out of square so I had to add batons and new plast...

To partly fund the purchase of our chateau, we sold our holiday home in Spain and also the property next door which we bought as an investment shortly before I became ill.  On a misty day in late October, a huge 18 wheeler rolled up the drive to delivery the furniture we chose to bring with us from Spain. Getting the lorry up to the house was easy, getting it out was another story! After multiple attempts to turn it around, the driver eventually reversed it out, causing some damage to the grass but nothing serious. Andy and Michael from the delivery company did a great job with no damages.

After not seeing the chateau for around 6 months since we signed the contract of sale, we are back in Firbeix (or La Coquille where the notary's office is located) to close on the purchase. Today we are proud owners of a chateau so a glass of champagne is called for!

The property we bought, as the blog title is a giveaway, is the Chateau de Firbeix, located in a very small village (called Firbeix) on the northern edge of the Dordogne department bordering Haute-Vienne, 40 minutes south-west of Limoges on the N21 to Perigueux. Firbeix is in the Périgord Vert region and the area has a long history with Richard the Lionheart and is on one of the routes of Santiago de Compostela (Camino de Santiago, or the Way of St James in England). Richard the Lionheart actually was injured and died at the Chateau de  Châlus-Chabrol, 4km away in the year 1199. The chateau dates back to the 14th century with the remaining buildings from the 18th century. It is set in very established gardens of 1.1 hectares (2.7 acres). It comprises of three buildings. The main building is the main property and comprises part 14th and 18th century parts divided up into 3 dwellings. Primary Property The left most dwelling is a 3 bedroom gîte in a modern styl...

This blog is owned by Caroline and Tim Parsons and will document our dream so our friends and family can follow along, all comments welcome! While it is our dream, both our extended families and friends have been so supportive and keen to get involved, especially to date my brother Mark shortly followed by our son Daniel. Our dream to have a complete change of life style, after working in the corporate world non-stop for 35 years, was triggered by several events coinciding, none of which we actually planned.  The first event chronologically was health related, I was diagnosed with bowel cancer in March 2018 and underwent treatment in Switzerland for 13 months. While on medical leave, it was announced on January 3rd 2019 that Bristol-Myers-Squib was buying Celgene who I had worked for since 2006. In parallel we had been watching the "Escape to the Chateau" programs which appealed very much as a lifestyle we admired. Our spoken French was pretty good after 20 years living...