My first foray into interior design was an orange candlewick bed spread, a very bright orange.  My room already had  a brick red carpet with black flecks in it.  I have no idea why my mother allowed me to choose, she generally had quite good taste.  The clashing dark red and bright orange really wasn’t helped by my insisting on the fuchsia pink dressing gown, which hung on the back of the door for the next three years.  Since then orange decor has never been my thing.  You really shouldn’t give in to the decorating whims of a seven year old.

We moved a lot as kids, mostly every three years, but sometimes there was an extra little hop in-between.  Living in forces married quarters meant that the furniture and decor came with the house.  Mummy was not going to let that stop her inner designer.  She would insist that the living room walls were painted white and then set about the soft furnishings with vast quantities of  dye.  Which ever colour blind procurement officer chose the fabrics, had, on occasions, set a seemingly impossible task, but mummy saw it as a challenge; purple and blue bubble pattern crimplene (I can still picture this one), or the favourite shades of mustard gas green, all got the navy blue treatment.  The rule for walls ‘when in doubt go white’ has never left me, although there were a few lost years in the 90’s.

When bought my first little starter home in 1985,  I was lucky, house prices were rising rapidly but I had a steady job and mortgages were being given away.  My one bed house with detached garden built by Mr Wimpy was pretty ugly, but perfect for me.  My first foray into actual decorating was born.  I loved my blue bedroom with black and white prints of naked men on the walls.  It was cool and fresh and very 1980’s. I didn’t go with second-hand, chucked out, furniture.  I would rather wait and buy what I wanted than end up with a mish mash of unloved hand-me-downs.  As the youngest of three girls I had had to wear the out of date styles of my older sisters for years.  Anyway, any decorative disasters didn’t really matter in 1985, as 10 months later my little house was on the market and sold in two days, at a vastly inflated price.  A few months later puffed up prices dropped like lead balloons, I was one of the lucky ones. 

My husband bought a his first flat a few years before me and had all the hand me downs offered.  We still have one red draylon sofa cushion, from his grandparents three piece, he uses it to kneel on when decorating.  By the time we bought our house he had managed to purchase new furniture and was the proud owner of G-plan white ash units and sofas with a pink grey and cream diagonal pattern fabric.  The units were excellent quality and right on trend, but the Sofa fabric…I don’t let him loose on his own in a furniture shop these days. That G Plan fabric was indestructible, even by puppies and small children.  I never did get out the dye, but I eventually got my way and they went to a good home, that is any home that wasn’t mine.

It took three complete makeovers of our  3 bed, run down, 1940s bungalow over a 27 year period, as it transformed into a four bed house, before we settled on a style that suited us.  By then I had acquired a few bits of antique furniture, from my grandparents via my mother, and from Davids Grandparents.  Rather than second hand I was acquiring a taste for antique, and vintage.  This was right on time as there is no way we could afford new furniture for Le Moulin.

So having chosen our new home and already identified through several visits, a few of the challenges that awaited us, we started to prepare for the big move.  Paint in France is poor quality and indecently expensive, so our friends advised us to stock up.  White Matt emulsion, tons of it, and silk wood paint.  But also I bought a very pale cream, not quite white after all a change is good and also four soft shades for accent walls in the bedrooms.  I bought linens for the bedrooms, in complimentary shades,  after all there were a lot of bedrooms and bed linen of any quality is always expensive, but I knew where to get it a value prices in the UK.  So again I went large, stocking up on ends of lines from Christy’s that coordinated with my paint colours.  Well you know I like a plan.  And towels heaps of towels,  I love TKMaxx even if they do have too many X’s.  

Our Vendors had set about converting the mill from the previous owners country style, with a mishmash of colours and white and tiles and mosaic.  They ripped out anything that resembled an old world feature or needed a bit of attention and put in modern, but not ultra modern and sometimes cheap.  Then they plaster-boarded,  everywhere, miles of the stuff.  Some things they did were good  (pantry and solar panels) but some continue to cause problems.  Of course it was their taste and their home and now its ours so we have different ideas. 

The hall was orange.  Yes when I was seven it might have been a colour of choice and I do have clothes that are orange…but walls? and woodwork? Even the ceiling beams.  I know they might read this but….sorry, this isn’t the dutch football teams HQ,  its a country house in rural France.  It sets the tone as you enter the house.  The hall has little natural light, a tiny velux in the roof on the second floor and three narrow panels in the front door.  So its cream now, pale and you might think bland but, with flowers of multiple colours readily available in the garden and dark wood framed mirrors and Davids great grandfather barometer I love it.  Oh and our coat hooks, I’ll come back to those. The last owner change the main staircase, and if what’s left of the old one is anything to go by it probably needed it.  The stairs are fine, but I wish they had kept a couple of the features, like the first step which was stone and very traditional. 

Its not finished, the hall that is. There’s more to be done, a feature cupboard I have planned.  But it’s started.  The beams have been stripped and most of the orange paint banished, no one will recoil in horror now, and the orange walls did have that effect on many of our visitors. 

When we moved in we needed some settling time to see how we used the rooms.  For summer we needed a kitchen and cool bedrooms and that was it.  We lived outdoors.  Our first Autumn was glorious.  The trees were stunning and we continued to eat mostly outside.  As the time came to move indoors, with things to preserve and soup to be eaten around the kitchen table,  we needed a farm house table.  So how to find a big old solid table …..

Our hosts during the property search, had bought stuff in the ‘Troc’ , and we wondered about this mystical place.  Eventually we paid our first visit.  A cavern of old stuff.  Mostly its full of house clearance junk, like a brocante market but indoors.  We were looking for quite a lot of things to fill the gap between our 4 bed chalet bungalow and a more than necessary, bedroomed Moulin with a vast number of reception rooms.  We have 11 rooms that have at some point been used as bedrooms.  I recently met a Dutch woman who was conceived in what is now a storage room for sports equipment in the loft, at that time it was a B&B guest bedroom.

On our first visit to troc, we looked we wondered and we weren’t sure.  So we went away.  There was a lot of crap and wood worm, and rather musty smells.  Then we asked about, to see if there were more of these places? Oh yes lots more.  So we tried some in Toulouse and after visiting three more Trocs we decided the first table we’d seen was the one.  We bought the perfect farm house kitchen table.  It’s oak, probably a whole tree.  About 2m long and 1m wide.  The top is deep and solid and heavy. The base is solid too and it’s all bolted together.  It appeared that the staff would help carry and load it, but we had to take it apart.  They had muscle and a dolly so we set to work. It just fitted in the landrover, great!  So we took it home.  But how to get it into the kitchen.  Between us we can’t lift the top.  No really, its solid and about 10 cm thick.  So we drove up to the laundry room, across the front garden and with pulleys and straps and bits of wood underneath and a couple of blankets we rolled and dragged and pushed and eventually forced it into the kitchen.  It’s not coming out again.  Nope not in my life time. Even when knocking down walls it stayed in the kitchen.   It’s so heavy its moulded itself to the shape of the uneven floor.

The table was our first troc purchase and it opened the flood gates. I have become addicted to searching out that perfect item.  But,  it’s easy to be carried away, so I have a rule, I only buy something I already have a use for.  Don’t buy something just because you like it,  your house will soon look like a junk yard and you will have to start selling things.  There are many Expat ‘antique dealers’  who started out finding things that were just too good to leave behind.  They have over filled their homes and become magpies, searching for more and more shiny objects.  Many of these lovely people have become my friends.. I love them dearly.  They are often the best people to go to to find things, as they already filtered out the complete toot.  Some have opened shops, some now sell things on line,  it’s their passion and their life, it could so easily become mine, I’m  still trying to resist. 

A friend of ours,  who had recently moved to France, was having a wee tour of le Moulin. She spotted one of my small cupboards on legs in the hall.  Quite an ornately carved little cabinet. Inside the cupboard is lined in marble and the top is marble.  Oh ,she exclaimed, ‘I bought one of those, it’s a cheese cupboard,   you know like the bread cupboards but these have marble inside to keep the cheese cool, my neighbour told me about them’.  I tried to keep a straight face, really I did,  I wasn’t sure what to say.  This one was new to us, still downstairs, standing in our hall, I hadn’t taken it upstairs to join the almost matching one I’d bought previously.  Being me I had to enlighten her.  So I explained, we have about seven and they come in pairs, but quite often one has been damaged so buying singles is common.  They are bedside cabinets.  You put your ‘gozunder’ ( as in goes under the bed ) in them…ie chamber pot.  The marble wipes clean and keeps the pee cool overnight so it doesn’t smell…Cheese? not any cheese I want to eat, but being bedside cabinets explains why they are so ornate.

We arrived here to a barn full of toot.  The few useful tools we had been promised seemed to have disappeared, the large bell that hung under the eves at the front of the house, was gone and an old stone trough had been removed from the front garden.  We initially thought the last owners had sold or given away everything but experience now tells us, it’s just as likely that friends and locals help themselves.  If a property is sold you are not required to leave any fixtures or fittings unless actually specified in the contract.  Here, the items left by the previous owner are considered, unofficially you understand,  to be communal property and available for redistribution.  Luckily not everything had been redistributed and we still had a rickety ride on mower and a small elderly and rather rusty fridge.  We had been offered the opportunity to buy a number of items like the big gas range cooker but I was rather glad we’d said no.  Who knows if they’d have still been here as the previous owners had left several weeks earlier. 

One of the houses in our village had been in the same family for many generations.  Its a large rather imposing property in the middle of the village and the very elderly owner had five children and and wife from whom he was separated.  It appeared he didn’t see much of the children who lived all across France. He was in his 90’s when we moved here and only occasionally visited from his home in Toulouse. The house had been used as a holiday home by the family since about the 1950’s. 

  One day the elderly professor took a drive and turned onto the motorway, up the wrong carriage way.  He was getting on in years and as a result banned from driving.  If you are banned here then it’s difficult to get about, but it’s OK there a simple solution.  You can buy a little car for which no license is require, bit like a moped with a roof.  You can’t go fast, you can’t go on the motorway, but you can trundle down the centre of any lane you like after a very good lunch with your friends.  

So our elderly professor purchased his new transport and about a year after being banned he had a wee holiday in Samouillan.  During his visit he popped into town for a spot of shopping.  On returning to his wee car  he failed to engage reverse and drove forward, over about 30m of paving through a fence and over a 20m drop  into the playground of the school below.  Luckily the children we inside. A rather spectacular exit.  A good example of why not to drive once your license is removed.

None of the family wanted the house, with its five bedrooms, large barn, and amazing view of the Pyrénées. Too much work to banish woodworm and instal bathrooms and heating and they each only had a small share. So it was put up for sale, however it was still fully furnished.  The family took the things they needed and wanted and invited the neighbours to take what they wanted of the rest.  We were a bit reluctant to help ourselves, but were encouraged to aid in the final clear out so it would be ready for the new owner.  So ready to help make a bonfire and to hoping acquire a few small objects we set off. 

Many items had already been removed.  So armed with dust masks we set about clearing out the rest.  As I cleared a cupboard in a bedroom, I found a framed photo.  The frame was lovely, and I thought I can always use a nice frame. The glass was filthy, a quick wipe and there were three young girls, all dressed up for their studio photo.  The picture dated 1880, the year our house had been rebuilt. The girls looked solemn,  having given it a clean I propped it on the stairs at home, my husband declared it a bit creepy looking down as you entered the house, so we moved it.  It’s now on the wall in the upstairs corridor.  Those young girls must have visited the mill many times to collect bread.  Also in the cupboard I found some old newspaper, too grotty to be of value, but wrapped inside were seven old cast iron hooks, I’d been scouring vide-grainieres for hooks like these.  They are very popular so another great find.  We acquired rather a lot from the clearance in the end, much of which is being recycled to remove the useful parts and dispose of the wood-wormy bits.  

Four captains bunks were acquired,  one has been utilised in the upcycling mode for the headboard in our ‘Moulin’  bedroom. I have similar plans for the others, as my lovely husband made such a good job of the first one.  From the hooks and a piece of an old armoire,  my very clever husband fashioned a coat-hanger for our hallway.  I have plans for a cupboard to hide the electrics using the armoire’s doors. 

The loft was a treasure trove of interesting things. Much had been attacked by damp, woodworm and mice. Not to mention the owl droppings and nests.  I found old trunks that fell apart when opened, stuffed with linen baby clothes, old school books and accounts, which a friend with a knowledge an interest in took for closer examination. And a myriad of old equipment the uses if which were unfathomable, things made of wicker that were not complete. Amongst everything were some treasures. A cast iron hook for holding pots over the fire, a blue and white washing bowl stapled together as a repair.

Since our first forays to the troc I have found some more useful places to buy antiques and other pretty things too.  There are Markets of course, and annual fairs and little Broccante shops and Troc and Emmaus.  Emmaus is a charity, and is much like the trocs, I have bought many an old linen sheet there, for making all kinds of things, gite curtains, and quilts and I have a pile for more projects. And i bought a beautiful mirrored armoire for the gite.… .So when you come to visit (and how could you resist?),  if you fancy scouring the countryside for things of interest or beauty we know some great places, there are so many more discoveries to be made I can take you on a tour, …But only once, because I will buy something and really how many bedside tables do I need…. 

So what about new stuff?

With a new home and there is always a list of new stuff  you need,  but it’s the big secret, no one tells you about where to get the basics.  France is an amazing place for buying old stuff, but what about the modern things that make life comfortable, Fridges, Freezers Microwaves and TV’s. New mattresses and bedding, sofas and hair dryers?  We arrived without a fridge freezer or cooker, so day one these were a priority.   

Well it turns out its actually not at all difficult, really the French are quite an advanced nation don’t you know.  They have the centre for the European Space agency in Toulouse, they build AirBus planes and are putting in fibre cable everywhere.  Yes there are tiny villages with homes and people that appeared stuck in the 1950’s and OK people still pay by cheque….. but honestly you can have an iPhone, an electric car and a comfortable bed. 

So I was a little concerned about the fridge freezer situation, it was 37 degrees outside.  Kris our lovely friend told me I could go to the hardware store in the local village (Aurignac) and they had catalogues and would order what I wanted.  I expected this would be a 1950’s fridge delivered on a donkey cart in six months time.  So we decided to head to Toulouse where we had already discovered, with the help of our gite house hunting hosts, a rather large and modern DIY store (Leroy Merlin) and see if we could find something better.  

Right next door is  ‘Boulanger’  which suits me down to the ground.  Its the equivalent of John Lewis’s electrical department.  They sell most of the better ranges of white goods.  So in we popped, and spoke to a nice man about a fridge freezer, and arranged for it to be delivered a couple of days later.  I also found a suitable cooker, a temporary stop gap until we redesigned the kitchen, but for me it needed an induction hob and pyrolytic oven, to be delivered along with the fridge, yippee.   Then I spotted the cordless vacuum cleaners, all my birthdays had come at once.  So the very lovely assistant explained in his very slowest French with a bit of help from the pictures on the display that I could have a number of versions of the same thing, but was it for hard floors or rugs?  At this point my french failed me,  so i did a wriggly hand movement,  I wanted it for getting spiders webs off the high ceilings.

  There are, as in the Uk many stores supplying electrical goods, Darty do a wide range at reasonable prices, but not the top end of the ranges, so you probably guessed they never have what I actually want.  Then there’s Conforama, definitely cheap end but our dishwasher arrived quickly along with the supper king sized bed I ordered. So yes there are actually plenty of shopping opportunities. 

Ordering on line has become much more possible and very easy in the last couple of years. So when my washing machine packed up, I ordered the new one from, you guessed it boulanger.com  and it arrived the next day. They fitted it and took away the old one because that was included in the delivery charge.  Honestly they are not paying me…other people hate them but I’ve found them brilliant. I had a few problems with the fridge freezer, but replacement was efficient and new doors were ordered while they were here and the staff so helpful.  The first one had been damaged in transit before arriving at Toulouse.  The second had similar damage and they decided to unpack and check the third before delivery and all the time I kept the original one until a perfect one arrived. I didn’t need to empty it as it was jut the freezer door. 

So what else can you find on line;  Oh yes old stuff.  There is an on line Troc, a national network at troc.com that you can search. You can’t order but you can see what they have and then buy collect and there are many local independent troc stores.    And then there is leboncoin.fr  You can buy anything here, from a duck to a house, rent a holiday home or probably sell your granny.  This is the french equivalent of eBay, they have eBay too, but leboncoin is the place to go for everything and anything.  I advertised our pigs for sale….three old pigs to a good home…another tale.  But once you go on to leboncoin its so difficult to get off. Honestly you start searching for ridiculous things just to see if anyone sells them and yes you can buy a guinea-pig, a candle and many types on banana, cos I looked.

If you need something else there is always laredoute.fr they sell everything on line, I’ve bought garden furniture and rugs and lanterns and clothes;  a massive french catalogue company, it is a rival to any uk online store, a bit like next directory.  You can still get your nickers from M&S and a whole range of household items from marksandspencer.com just click on the link to move to their french web page.  And of course IKEA (pronounce  Ick ear)

And back to that little iron monger, in our local town of Aurignac (more of a big village), yes its true you can buy a million different sizes of screws, plugs, paint stripper and they cut glass to size.  They also have a full range of modern household appliances you can choose from a catalogue in store and have delivered….its the best sort of shop, with personal service and someone to mend things that get broken, like chain saws and lawn mowers.  Apparently they no longer deliver by Donkey…but I have a sneaky suspicion that they probably did.