Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Home Improvements’ Category

We’ve had our place listed with several estate agents for a while now and had sort-of settled into the thinking that it would sell “sometime” but probably not that soon.

These days, you get a lot of “window shoppers” when you’re trying to get a decent price for your place and we’ve had our share of those through normal estate agents.

However, one estate agent that we listed with some time ago and heard nothing from since got in touch last week to see about a visit on Saturday. They’d said at the outset that they pre-vet purchasers to the extent of checking in advance not only what they’re looking for but also that they’ve got the resources to pay for it and made a point of saying that they’d only be around with “serious buyers”.  Total estate-agent speak if ever there was an example of it we thought.

The call was surprising on several fronts. We’d not heard from them in ages so figured that they’d forgotten about us which was a shame as we’d originally thought that they would be the people who’d sell it for us. More surprising in some ways was that the appointment was for Saturday morning: I always figured that estate agents were strictly Monday to Friday people but apparently not.

Although our place is pretty large, usually we’d people round it in maybe an hour and then a little chat afterwards. These people were here well over two hours and were only asking the kind of questions that you’d ask if you were pretty serious about a place: can we buy that land for a pool?, can we build on that section? and so on.

We still don’t know if they’ll buy the place as they’d seen several other places in the area but the estate agent was talking of getting an architect in to see how much the changes they’d like would cost. If they run to that, I think we may need to start preparing for a fairly quick move as they seemed very proactive.

If you’re upgrading the look and feel of your home it’s important to do it in a consistent way to avoid the impression that it’s just been splattered with various bits & pieces that you’ve come across by chance over the years.

The longer you’ve been living in a house, the more likely that effect is going to gradually creep into various rooms and therefore now and again you need to stand back and review what’s happened in terms of the look of your home overall and of each room individually. That’s not to say that every room needs to be done in the same style as every other room but rather that the look should flow through your home.

So, for example, it’s fine to have an olde worlde look to your bedroom with antique furniture throughout but a much more high-tech look to your living room might well be more appropriate if you’ve collected a lot of gadjets there as many of us have. Antique furtniture with flat screen TVs and computers is a look that needs a lot of care if you want it to work and it’s probably simpler to run with a modern look if you want something consistent.

You can even carry the feel of your garden part-way into your house by way of a conservatory perhaps with hanging wrought-iron baskets of plants or marble pedestals for them depending on the style you’ve used around the garden.

You’re probably concentrating on Christmas at the moment but whilst you’re out and about doing your Christmas shopping, you should keep an eye on what’s available in the shops that would improve the look of your home as the sales will be starting shortly after Christmas is out of the way.

If you’ve picked out a few key shops you can easily find that you can get a lot more bits & bobs for your home than you’d manage by aimlessly wandering around the sales. Much better to target just a few shops as that way you’ll be there before the real bargains have been bought.

So, keep an eye out while you’re out!

I found this little missive carved on the arena in Arles yesterday.

Whilst today, the worst of the grafitti is scraped on with a penknife, in times gone by it looks like they were at it with a hammer and chisel for quite a while. Who was D Leon that he had the time and the inclination to carve his name so deeply into the rock?

But then, it’s verging on being “historic” by now of course and in another century or two may even be deemed worthy of preservation.

DIY is one of the most popular activities in France if the constant flow of traffic into the DIY (bricolage) shops is anything to go by.

One reason for this is that it’s next to impossible to get anyone to do odd-jobs here so many more people are forced down the DIY route than would otherwise be the case. The range of items for sale is much larger than that in the equivalent places in the UK. Electical equipment runs right up to professional gear in the larger stores and you can buy everything required to build a house from scratch which is also a fairly popular activity. I well remember one old couple wheeling out everything that they needed to floor a room in their house from the floorboards to the tools required.

The popularity of the activity is most noticeable just prior to public holidays when it’s best to avoid these places unless you’ve a considerable amount of time to spare as the queues are just unbelieveable.

Naturally, whilst it might be a popular activity, that doesn’t mean that the work is necessarily done terribly well. Not that the workmanship of the professionals is always better of course as you can see from the not quite perfect sign from this DIY store.