New lot in life

Port of Tougues in Chens-sur-Léman

This is our story of building a house in France.

As anyone who has ever built – renovated, decorated or even bought – a home knows, things never quite turn out how you expect.  And as anyone familiar with France probably knows, you can multiply that by the “F” factor.  So what, you may ask, has possessed us?

After 25 years of marriage, we have officially entered that sought-after demographic known as “empty nesters.” Funny, I don’t remember getting old. Seems like only yesterday we were in the diaper zone, chasing after kids and dogs with barely a moment to ourselves. Now, the kids are all growed up and we are supposed to be free to do all those things we always dreamed of.  Oddly enough, instead of downsizing and investing in a good set of luggage, we have decided to sign on for another 25-year mortgage.  Which I guess makes us optimists. Or foolhardy. Possibly both.

Despite our supposed empty-nest status, we still work full-time. Both with pretty demanding schedules. The kids have flown off to distant climes but still make fairly frequent trips to home base for moral – not to mention material – support.  So we need a place for the family to call home, a place to hang our hats, a place with plenty of space.

If there’s one thing you learn from living with someone else, it is the value of space. Personal and physical. We are joined in matrimony, not at the hip. So he has his ski weekends, I have my yoga.  He seeks adventure, I am a homebird.

5, clos du Couchant - Our first house

When we built our first house, I personally swore we’d never move again. That was after moving five times in seven years, including one transatlantic move with a toddler, two french bulldogs and a container full of stuff.  After several years of living in the city, apartment-bound with kids and dogs, it was such a relief to see open the shutters and the sky, enjoy the garden, get to know the neighbours. In ten years we built an addition, an inground pool, the trees grew tall...it began to feel like we’d always lived there. 

Alas, we must work to pay for all those things. As it happened, career moves took us both to the Geneva area and we entered a period of weekly commuting.  After four years of schlepping between home and work, keeping two refrigerators stocked, getting dressed in the morning with the one thing you need in the other closet, we decided to sell up and move closer to work.

It was painful to say goodbye to our house in the Lyon area, where we’d built a new life for ourselves, put down roots, seen the kids grow up. Where I had finally acclimatized to the French culture, even acquired French citizenship. And yes, taken on certain bad habits like flashing slow-poke drivers and cutting in line to get through traffic jams. But we realized we could become part of a fairly exclusive club of people: les frontaliers -- those who work in Switzerland and live in France, ie. get paid in Swiss francs and buy our daily bread in euros, while enjoying the perks of some pretty awe-inspiring scenery. The mountains are nearby for ski weekends, with the Jura on one side and the Alps on the other. Lake Geneva is a beautiful lake that manages to stay clean and is good for swimming, sailing or just strolling by. 

After several months of searching on the Swiss side above Lake Geneva, towards the Jura, we ended up on the other side of the lake. It’s an area known as the Chablais region of the Haute Savoie, stretching more or less from Annemasse to Evian. We had discovered the region some years before when vacationing at a little town called Yvoire. It is a tiny medieval village with cobblestone streets overlooking the lake, and we fell in love with it.

Our new home is being built in Chens sur Léman, a short distance from the Swiss border at Hermance, another cute little village with a lot of caché.  As the old real-estate adage goes, there are three things to look for when you buy: "Location, location, location." So this is the place for our home, suite.