Let’s go live in France, in a Château!
True Confessions. Yes, I have a few bad habits, and some of my friends might say, “Really darling, I would never have guessed.” I hold to the principle that I’m no better than anyone, and no one is better than me. Sometimes, I slip in that arena, too.
I also watch YouTube. I have discovered a niche of (mostly) foreigners renovating Châteaux in France. I am a francophile and still speak and understand the language with less proficiency than I imagine after not living in France for more than 50 years. I once had all of Julia Child’s cookbooks along with the overlooked but, in some ways, more interesting Elizabeth David’s French Provincial Cooking, and I used them. I follow the reconstruction of Notre Dame.
Stephanie Jarvis bought the run-down Château de la Lande over twenty years ago. It is in Crozon-sur-Vauvre, south of Paris in central France, in the middle of nowhere. The nearest major city is Poitiers. Starting with little money, she and her friend Michel began ripping Lalande apart and undertaking an extensive DIY project. She was among the first Château YouTubers and has amassed 257K subscribers. She does segments for UK TV plus her Château Diaries. It was a lucky choice she made more than two decades ago.
Some of her projects are extremely interesting. She undertook the renovation of the 19th-century chapel with a very creative online fundraising scheme. Though not a listed building, she has spent nearly a million euros to have specialists do the work. The painting is as intricate and beautiful as some of the side chapels in Notre Dame, and those video segments have been fantastic TV. Recently, some sagging beams above the grand salon required extensive work in the bedrooms and washrooms on the first floor and renovations of the ancient fireplaces. The carpenter, her cousin, is a master. Top drawer.
Less interesting is Stephanie’s fretting over wallpaper choices, sorting hundreds of unread books, rummaging through every brocante between Lalande and the Mediterranean, and spending hours moving precious junk from one attic room to another. I usually fast-forward but can be slightly amused.
It is also not lost on me that YouTube has provided a handsome income for Stephanie, her boyfriend, her mother, and other friends, who regularly rush off to Paris, Vienna, Venice, Geneva, the Riviera, or Marrakech for fantastic food. She leads an incredibly privileged life. (They even popped off to Venice and returned with the bed that King Charles and Camilla slept in, which became available before a major renovation in a hotel on the Grande Canal! How many people can point to a bedroom in their Château and say King Charles slept in that bed?)
Now we get to the fun part, the over-the-top mother of all disasters, the devastation of devastations! There was a leak in the ceiling of the kitchen. She had to rush back from dinner in Geneva, driving through the night to view a situation well in hand; two skilled carpenters already had the false ceiling down; the floor was mopped up, a plumber on the way; the dishes removed to a safe place, not one broken, no poo from the faulty sewage pipe on the floor, the kitchen relocated to another full-service kitchen in another part of the house, but Stephanie was inconsolable.
20 years of shattered dreams. Her well-oiled team of codependents gather around to soothe her. Oh no, she cries. How can I go on? The kitchen was the first room we repaired. It fell apart. This is the worst tragedy ever. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVShsNmf1sM
Get a grip, girl. Do you think you’re Marie Antoinette? The histrionics point to a life far too privileged and perhaps overpaid. I began: “Stephanie, darling, can I make a suggestion? I don’t mean it in a nasty way. Tone down the disaster and devastation talk.” I got jumped by one of her cohort of codependent supporters, telling me that she was just grieving and that I should get over it. She’s got you hooked into her game: “Poor me. A struggling minor English actress in France. Fate handed me the burden of having to spend money I have to fix a kitchen that needed to be fixed before I move on to repairing the damage caused by rotting 400-year-old beams before I restore boiserie that I picked up for a nickel out of a Parisian Hotel Particulier.
I’ll stop trying to be nice. I mean this in the nastiest possible way. Just shut up. Stop it. People who can’t afford to redo their kitchens and grand salons might find this as offensive as I do. Your team is far more interesting and pleasant.
Here is a list of my favorite YouTube Châteaux videos:
The Château Diaries; https://www.youtube.com/@TheChâteauDiaries.
Escape to Rural France; https://www.youtube.com/@escapetoruralfrance.
Les Jeromes; https://www.youtube.com/@LesJeromes.
Bordeaux Life; https://www.youtube.com/@BordeauxLife.
The Petherics; https://www.youtube.com/@ThePethericks.
Château du Theil; https://www.youtube.com/@Châteaudutheil.
Château de Purnon; https://www.youtube.com/c/Ch%C3%A2teaudePurnon.
Au Petit Château 1780; https://www.youtube.com/@AuPetitChâteau1780.
How To Renovate A Château; https://www.youtube.com/@HowToRenovateAChâteau.'
Escape To The Dream; https://www.youtube.com/@chateaudelalacelle.
