There are two ways we could tell this story. One involves a polished vision, decisive leadership, and a clear plan. The other involves seven years of indecision, a building full of junk, and a handshake deal that probably shouldn’t have worked. We’re going with the second one – partly because it’s true, and partly because if you’re still reading after that sentence, you’re our kind of person.
I’ll warn you, the story doesn’t start where you think it would, and I’m pretty sure it won’t end where we think it’ll end. It’s a stupid story, it’s a bit like stumbling around in a dark room, convinced you’re looking for a lamp – and accidentally switching on the floodlights of a football stadium.
To add some context, Katel and I have been together since 2016, and we started looking for a place to call home more or less straight away. This property search took us until the middle of 2022. That’s 7 years for the mathematically challenged among us. RIDICULOUS.
To cut a long story short, we looked at 50+ properties, but there was always something that we didn’t like. By the end, estate agents greeted us the way bartenders greet people who always ask for water and never order a drink. Be patient with us, the story takes us “around the houses” (pun intended) a little bit, but it all makes sense in the end.
In any case, we saw a little cottage with another building next to it (absolutely full of junk) for sale on the edge of a lovely village. The price was great, but they needed a lot of work! We figured that we’d either rent the house out on Airbnb and maybe use the other building to store things or turn it into some kind of workshop. We’d poked our heads through the door exactly once. Long enough to confirm three things: it was full of junk, we couldn’t move inside, and whatever was under that pile was absolutely not our problem. Or so we thought.
When I reached out to the owner to make an offer, he told me that he’d just received an offer from another buyer that he planned on accepting. Frustrating…
“Let me call you back.”
I called Katel. We agreed to counter.
“We’ll give you 10k more.”
“I’ll call you back.”
… The next morning, he called me back to accept the offer. Great news. But I wasn’t finished…
“Just one more thing… I know that you own the big stone barn behind the two houses with a couple of acres of land. My offer is contingent on my being able to buy the barn and land from you in a year.”
“But they’re not for sale… I’ll call you back”.
Anyway, the next morning, he was true to his word. He said he’d sell the barn and land in a year, but on a handshake… He’s old school. It felt reassuring at the time.
Fast forward a year, and we hadn’t made much progress on the house (Katel gave birth to Gabriel a few months after we closed) and we didn’t really know what we were doing, truth be told. But, we had emptied the second building and that’s when we realised something important.
We had accidentally bought two houses for the price of one!
Wow, jackpot! We figured we could turn it into a two-bedroom cottage and rent it on Airbnb, it should probably cover our mortgage and give us a bit of pocket money. Nice!
Of course, we stuck true to our word and bought the barn and land too. So now (summer 2023) we had a half-renovated house, an emptied second house (i’m talking mud flood in the basement, holes in the roof kind of empty) and a big old stone barn. Now what?
I wasn’t joking when I said we started with a mud floor.
The main floor looked like this, but shoulder-high in junk. Rotten beams and floorboards.
And upstairs looked like this. Rotten floorboards, holes in the roof and an old chimney to remove!
Our plan was evolving the way sourdough does: slowly, unpredictably, and mostly when we weren’t looking.
Bear in mind that we’ve always rented the same property to host our art retreats since day one, and we thought that wouldn’t change (we thought maybe one day we would buy it). At this point, we had no idea that we would end up hosting our retreats at our new place.
Moving to the end of 2024, we’d had another successful season hosting retreats, Gabriel was now 2 years old, we’d finished one of the cottages, and we were well underway with the second one.
What started as a renovation slowly revealed itself as a personality trait 😅
Katel and I were walking around the property, enjoying the sunset one evening…
“Hang on,” I said. “How many bedrooms are we actually going to have?”
We both stopped.
Did the maths.
And realised — at exactly the same time — that we had accidentally started building ourselves a retreat centre. I really wish I could tell you otherwise, but this was not a vision. This was a series of accidents that eventually started nodding at each other. The exact opposite of a Steve Jobs keynote.
We’ve been hosting retreats for nearly a third of our lives now, so we’ve picked up a fair bit of knowledge about what works and what doesn’t, and exactly what our guests are looking for in an idyllic retreat centre. Without boring you with the details, we now had a plan that incorporated all of the best parts of what we already offered, combined with a massive number of things we wanted to improve on.
Imagine the same sunset, but a new roof (uniform all the way along), stone cladding on the right-hand side and some dormer windows opening up to a sunrise every morning.
Digging up the entire front of the property early last year and replacing the old tarmac with with grass and stone pavings.
Without spoiling all of the surprises, here’s what we envisioned:
– highlight the beauty of our region’s historical properties: The style of roofing, the texture of the limestone walls, the views overlooking rolling countryside, and the variety of plants we can grow in this climate.
– unique bedrooms: each room has its own feel with regard to colours, decorations and history. We turned an old breadoven attached to the house into a bedroom, and it’s AMAZING.
– lots of quiet spots: being in a group of 10-15 people for 10 days can be a lot… So we’ve got lots of quiet indoor and outdoor spaces for people to be inspired, create, sit and chat or just relax. Imagine sitting on an old Mont Martre table overlooking the valley below, surrounded by summer flowers, buzzing bees and the smell of dinner gently reminding you that it’s nearly time to eat.
Time to get on with it.
So now you know how and why we got to where we are today. In the next part of this series, we’re going to show you more of what we’ve been up to, and you can follow, in real-time, our progress on the final building.