Renovation project - Decorating in France

Renovation project - Decorating in France

EDF are arriving today to change the electric meter and up our ampage, John gets to the house for 8 am and I stay at home to have another go at the casserole in the slow cooker, it will have to work at some point!

I join John at the house and he has really cracked on. He has sanded all the walls in one of the bedrooms and has started to decorate. We are painting the whole room white including the wooden ceilings, for some reason most Bretagne houses have wooden ceilings that make the rooms very dark, added to the choice of dark wallpaper the rooms look much smaller and more closed in.

The white paint makes a massive difference already.

This is also French paint, normally we always use English paint as the quality is so much better, but this paint was on special offer when we went shopping and we wanted to see if it had improved.

The paint covers really well, this may be because it is external paint. But we are happy with it, which means no more buying in the UK.

In case you were wondering why we are using external paint, it is because it has anti mould and other things already added to it. This makes the paint more long lasting and durable, especially if you have concrete or stone walls.


This was advice John had received from a master decorator many years ago and has always worked well. But beware the rooms do need to be fully ventilated as the paint fumes can be much stronger.

Ignore the bath in the photos that is just moving around the house until we build a new bathroom

I make a start on removing the tiles in the kitchen and then scraping those walls. The prep for decorating takes so much longer than the actual decorating itself, it is also the worst part, it is dirty and dusty, but necessary, without prepping correctly your decorating will not look good.

Decorating is preparation, preparation and preparation.

We do wonder whether to keep the tiles as they are very retro, but decide against it, we do have a pile though if anybody wants them?

John fits the water heater (it is not fully connected yet) we need some more bits but soon we will have hot water, which means we will be moving in, I am so looking forward too being in the house.

I have got the decorating bug now and move on to the other bedroom where I spend an age stripping the wall paper, John pops up to see how I am getting on and asks why I have stripped a wall that is being removed, it is at this point I could scream, I had completely forgotten we were removing this wall, he says it will be easier to knock down without wall paper on, I am not sure if he is just making me feel better, so I take this as a positive with out questioning it.

And by the way, todays casserole was the most bland meal we have ever eaten, one more attempt and then it is being given away as a present (to some one we don't like very much obviously!)

Top tips:

• You will hear many people say you need to buy your paint in the UK and bring it with you. but this worked out at a similar price to good quality paint in the UK with no travelling.
• If you see something on special offer, buy it, as it won't be there on your next visit