House #26: Hester's place

Her name was Hester, and she was another Brit. I find it fascinating that, since the vast colonization of France by Brits which has been ongoing in force for the past few decades (not to mention centuries), a sub-world seems to have sprung up, wherin Brits sell houses to Brits through British agents, and the French never enter the transaction. Hester was what's known as an eccentric lady, an artist who paints distilleries and poppies, and who's selling her house of 27 years in order to build another 300 meters away. She's designed her new house herself. If the house she's been living in these last many years is anything to go by, it should be a curious construction indeed. We were one mile from the village, looking over farmland. Here's the first view, cunningly photoshopped together so perfectly you can't even see the seams:

Well, maybe a little bit. Anyway, for orientation: what you can see here is the main house to the left, and me entering through a door, and then another separate house to the right, which is completely independent... but that's getting ahead of the story. So I entered through that door there,

...and found myself looking at a small but bright room with a bed, a wood-burning stove, an unstrung harp, some miscellaneous curiosa, and some paint. This is the studio, where Hester's great works come alive in pigment and paper:

Special. Now, this room had a door in each wall. Straight ahead I could see the garden behind the house and a table set outside. To the left, a door passed into the body of the main house. And door #3? I went through the mystery door and found myself face to face with... the washing machine. Mmmm: laundry. But this surprisingly led to a corridor containing a bathroom and shower, and finally terminating in another very small but very light little room with a single bed and no room for much else. Funny. A whole little self-contained sleeping zone built into what is actually a utility room. You can see it through the open door in this next cunningly photoshopped image:

Nice garden back there. Not sprawling, but green and sunny. The house all ivy-covered, western exposure: this is where you sip wine in the evening. We walked down the slope around the house and re-entered it from the short side, to find ourselves in a nice kitchen/living area with a massive fireplace and lots of exposed wood.

And I have to admit that for quirkiness, cosiness and explorability, plus pure rusticity, I was loving this house. It felt like fun. Then we went upstairs, though, and all that good feeling changed. Because upstairs we found two bedrooms, both again so small that they barely contained their beds. It was a little warren of walls up there, with the stairway unfortunately placed in the middle of it all so that you could never really do much else with the place. The bedrooms were cosy, but tiny, claustrophobic.

Up another flight of stairs, we found yet another bedroom. Funny. Because this one was broad, the whole size of the house, but low. I could barely stand up in it. A whole different kind of claustrophobia.

By now I was disappointed, because these bedrooms were so tiny. But wait. There's another house too, remember? Let's go check it out:

Very cool again, lots of stuff everywhere again. A living room again with a nice wood-burning stove again. Another kitchen, even. Very fun. But then, again, the bedroom upstairs again. Low again. Lower than the other in fact. So low that Sarah couldn't take a picture of it. Well that's not true; she forgot to... but still. Low.

Alas. I don't want a house with tiny tiny bedrooms I can stand up in and big wide bedrooms I can't stand up in. Plus the garden, while nice, wasn't huge, and Sarah doesn't want a house looking at a cornfield anyway. But it was a very fun and funky house. We are definitely headed in the right direction, I think.

So let's see what the next one is gonna be like...