I am writing from the South of France, where we are meeting with the builder to decide on the finishing touches on our new house. We flew from Luton near London to Beziers, about 25 minutes from our new little village, Lézignan La Cèbe. How exciting a time it is to begin a new life in a new country, and to begin our retirement in a new country as well.
It has been two years since we stood on the brush-covered patch of land, trying to visualise what it would look like when complete.
That’s not to say that there are not times when I question the fact that we are going to be living what feels like far away from our Jonathan & Liz & Joshua as well as my sister and her family and our friends. Even though we have been living in England for the past six years due to Steve’s job, we have been back to Southern California every three months for three to four weeks over the past two years, so we have seen the kids and our friends and spent a good amount of time with them. I know that this is a transition period for us right now as we just spent four months in Southern California and then back to England and now preparing our move to South of France.
On this visit we are spending time every day making decisions on so many choices. We were fortunate enough to be working with an interior designer, Jessica. She is amazing as she walked us through each room to choose the paint colours from a palette of colours. It was really exciting creating picking the colour scheme for the whole house and then we were able to pick the furniture for each room.
We began with the kitchen – the layout was done on the computer at the kitchen shop to our specifications of what we want regarding cabinets, granite worktop, backsplash, colour of the wall under the counter, the appliances and all of the little details that go along with a kitchen.
We finished with the bathroom. We decided to continue through the bathroom with travertine flooring and on two sides of the shower, and a design tile for the shower wall with the shower head and wand on it. We chose the colour of the paint for the walls and the wood cabinet with the two sinks and a single mixer handle.
While our house is new and just being finished, our next door neighbour is an old chateau, which is being refurbished. Our community will have a swimming pool, which was being created while we watched.
We were able to spend some time visiting Pézenas, a medieval town nearby, offering lots to see.
Who knows, Aux 4 Saisons may become our favourite fruit and veggie store.
That’s it for now as the week seemed to fly by. Stay tuned for the remainder of the finishing touches.