Property Renovation in France

First let me be clear - I am not a tax expert and any complicated financial transactions will need the advice of a qualified accountant. In this section I have outlined some of the main areas that you might like to consider about tax and VAT in France.

VAT

VAT is known as TVA in France, and has a standard rate of 19.6%

Currently, although it is under constant review, most renovation work, building work and material purchases (as part of a renovation through a registered builder) are subject to VAT at only 5.5% This makes a significant difference to the total cost of work.

The reduced TVA rate came about for a couple of reasons - both to defend jobs in the building profession in France, and to reduce the number of people working on the black economy. There is now a lot of resistance in France among the building profession to the suggestion that this special low VAT rate be cancelled. Read more

Although I have been renovating old buildings more or less continuously for the last four years, and have created this website about the best ways to renovate old buildings, I am also a modern architecture enthusiast.

In magazines and brochures you will have seen buildings that are old and traditional on the outside, yet have soaring spaces, steel staircases and halogen lighting on the inside. It is the contrast with the outside that sets your expectations and adds to the surprise when you enter such a property.

Yet the biggest challenge is how to incorporate the two. We have not gone resolutely modern in our barn conversion, but we have incorporated some modern touches.

For example:

- a wood and steel balcony mimics the ‘parallel lines’ theme of the ancient roof beams, while being very modern in appearance. You could do the same thing in stainless steel, which would look even better

- adding modern art can transform the look and feel of the interior (how many modern art galleries have old worn stone or brick walls?) Large Rothko or Jackson Pollock paintings (copies if you are not a millionaire) would also work very well.

In the kitchen, instead of choosing wooden fronted units a semi-industrial stainless steel kitchen and steel appliances would work very well.

We have some friends who have suspended plasterboard between the roof-beams in the lounge, but have left a small space between the sharp straight lines of the plasterboard and the rough hewn edges of the beams. With halogen lights inset in the plasterboard, this is a very impressive ‘modern meets traditional’ approach.

Don’t be nervous or intimidated about incorporating some modern elements in your project. Just because a building is old doesn’t mean everything in it also needs to be old. Modern items will gain a new lease of life with a rustic stone wall behind them.

Indoors / Outdoors

Incorporating the indoors and outdoors of a traditional French building goes completely against the norm. A traditional house has small windows to keep the heat out (or in, in winter). There are shutters on all the windows, and the inside is quite dark.

But nowadays we like lots of light inside the property, so this is not always the best choice. If you have a good view from your property you want to see it from inside the house, so that it can be admired during the winter.

Another effective idea is to have an outdoor terrace that feels like part of the house, so that you can move between the two easily.

The solution is often to have large patio doors, with as much glass as possible, between the two areas.

At this point I have to recommend a book. It is a superb book, but I think is only available in French. No matter, the pictures alone are worth the price, if you can’t read French. The book is ‘Habiter l’architecture’ by Maurice Sauzet.

The book considers the ways to make the best use of space, both inside and outside, and suggests ways to establish natural ‘pathways’ through the house that lead to the highlight - often the terrace and the view. It also has ideas about the best ways to arrange garden planting around the property, and the ways to screen the private areas of the property from the public parts such as the driveway and so on.

In the book you will see houses that start out as unremarkable little houses and end up as masterpieces of modern architecture. I can’t recommend too strongly that you buy this book if you are interested in how best to approach your renovation from a modern angle. And just for the record, I have no financial interest in whether you buy the book, and I don’t know the author!

Materials

There are a few possibilities available when you are buying tools and materials for your renovation project. Most French towns have some kind of builders merchant where you can buy all the materials that you need. This is a good place to start - local delivery charges will be less or not apply at all, and if you go in and introduce yourself before you start your project, and explain that you intend to spend lots of money, you will possibly be able to negotiate a discount.

The staff in the shop will get to know you, which will make it easier to get free advice. But I have found that prices are not always very clearly marked.

(See our DIY shops in France section for a brief introduction to the DIY shopping experience in France.)

Keep an eye on the free brochures and magazines that come tumbling through your door.Most of the larger stores eg E Leclerc, Auchan, Gamm Vert etc which have large ‘building’ sections have occasional promotions.

These promotions can save you a large amount of money. As an example, when I needed to buy 250 square metres of plasterboard for building ceilings and walls, a local ELeclerc was offering a promotion price that amounted to a reduction of about 2 euros per square metre. Even after paying the delivery charge (40 euros) I saved a great deal of money.

Similarly, other expensive items, such as insulation, are often available at a reduced price at certain times of the year. Even if you don’t actually need them for a month or two, consider buying them in advance and storing them.

Remember that the different jobs require different materials - plasterboard for a bathroom is not the same as plasterboard for a lounge, for example. So don’t get carried away with bulk buying, only to find you are left with large amounts of unnecessary materials. It is worth buying materials accredited as Normes Francaises (NF) whenever possible, since these are certified as being of a certain quality. When comparing prices between different suppliers, be sure you are comparing like with like - you can pay 5 euros or 25 euros per square metre of silver foil roof insulation, but they are not the same thing!

Buying tools

Always buy the right tool for the job. It does make a difference to the quality of the final result.

If you are starting a large project, buy good quality tools and electrical equipment at the beginning. These will cost several times as much as the cheapest available, but will actually last for the duration of the job, and make the work much easier to do. If you read the specifications on the boxes in the shop, it is unclear why you are paying extra, when they have the same speed, same pressure, same power and so on. Get home and use them and you will change your mind.

You have to trust me on this one - I don’t buy expensive things because I have got too much money, but because there is no alternative if you want to do a professional job.

Typical examples are drills, jigsaws, air compressors, angle grinders, pressure washers etc. All come in cheap versions and expensive versions and you will regret buying the cheaper.

‘Kitchen renovation’ is a misleading one because usually a property renovation will involve installing a new kitchen, rather than simply trying to improve an existing one.

The primary concern with kitchens is their placement within the property. You need to decide this early on in the design process, so that your plumbing and electrics can be included as necessary.

You don’t need to follow the existing property layout unless it is the best one for you. When there is an existing kitchen in a house it is natural to begin by planning a new kitchen in the same room. But first you need to take a step back. If you were designing the layout of the property from new, is that really the room where you would want the kitchen to be?

You might like to check out these two useful guides (especially the first, since IKEA kitchens are perfect in renovation!)
Good Advice on how to fit an IKEA kitchen: Click Here

General Advice on best practice in kitchen design: Click Here

Read more

When I describe how to construct internal walls, I take internal walls to be the same as non-load-bearing walls. Note that none of the methods for constructing a wall that are described below are suitable for supporting walls.

Metal framework for internal walls

The most common method of constructing internal walls in France is using plasterboard that is fixed to a metal structure. Glass wool is put in between the two layers of plasterboard to provide some sound insulation. The metal structures are easy to use, being put together rather like Meccano. They consist of metal ‘rails’ that are securely fixed to the floor and ceiling, and metal uprights (’montants’) that are placed between rails, usually at 60 centimetre intervals. The uprights are then attached to the rails using self-tapping metal screws. This method of wall construction is easier, quicker and cheaper than constructing a wall structure in wood.
To create door openings a shorter piece of rail is fitted at ‘top of the door’ height between the two uprights. It is easy to cut appropriate lengths of upright and rails (with an angle grinder).
The rails and uprights come in various thicknesses between about 4cm and 10cm - the thicker they are, the more rigid the final wall will be. The strength can also be increased  by attaching two uprights back to back every 60cm, rather than just a single upright, or by using the uprights every 40cm instead of every 60cm. 40cm or 60cm gaps are used because plasterboard is 120cm wide and needs to be fixed at both edges, as well as in the middle.

The space between adjacent uprights is then filled with semi-rigid rockwool, which slots easily into place, to improve the sound insulation properties of the wall. Rockwool is sold in standard 60cm width so is very easy to fit. Another recommended technique for improving both rigidity and sound proofing is to use two sheets of plasterboard on each side of the structure, rather than one.

You need to alternate the plasterboard on the two sides of the structure - that is, plasterboard on one side of the wall should never end at the same upright as the plasterboard on the other side. Again, this is to improve the rigidity of the wall.

The uprights have precut holes, so electricity cables and plumbing pipes can be passed through the inside of the wall.

Plasterboard is then screwed on to this metal structure with self tapping screws, the joins are taped (with ‘plasterboard joining tape’)and the indent is filled with skim plaster as usual.

Remember to use green ‘hydrofuge’ plasterboard in bathrooms and wet areas, white in other areas.

Plaster squares for constructing walls

A second common method for building internal walls is to use ‘squares’ of plaster, about 60 centimetre square and 5 – 10 centimetres thick, which have tongue and groove edges.Tthese are glued together with special glue (available from the same supplier as the plaster squares).

This type of wall is very quick and easy to fit, but is less practical in places where there are numerous wires and cables to be concealed - the method doesn’t leave a cavity in the wall, so cables need to be individually buried by cutting grooves. A common use for these plaster squares is for making ‘low walls’, such as those found in kitchen bars, or in supporting walls for bathroom sinks and so on.

Wooden framework walls

More or less the same as ‘metal framework’ above except it costs more and takes longer, and is harder to sound proof! But you can do it with a saw rather than an angle grinder. That’s slightly unfair perhaps, but I don’t think you would ever find a professional using a wooden frame to make a plasterboard wall.

Covering an existing brick or stone wall

For holding plasterboard to an existing brick or stone wall, there is special glue available. You do not need to build a wooden frame against the wall! You just make sure the wall is dust free, put big blobs of glue on the back of the plasterboard and lift it up to the wall. Press it into place, check it’s straight and vertical, and that’s it. How easy can you get.

Plasterboard ceilings

There are two ways to lift plasterboard to ceiling level and hold it there while you are fixing it into place.

One is hard, involves two people, a series of struts and supports, and a great risk to life and limb. The other is much easier and involves a machine. I hired the machine, and suggest you do the same.

With the hoisting machine, the plasterboard is placed on a surface that holds it in place while it is vertical, and then this is tipped to the horizontal. A handle is then turned that lifts the plasterboard to ceiling level and holds it there while you fix it in place. Without this machine, as I know from experience, the job would have taken two of us several days – with the machine it took me two and a half days on my own to do 80 square metres of ceiling, including all the cutting to size around the edges and so on. The hire cost for two days was about £20. There is still a bit of effort involved in getting the plasterboard on to the lifter, but it is possible for one person and easy for two. I think that motorised hoists are also available, if you really want the easy life.
Pretty much all towns will have a place where large machines can be hired, and I would certainly check these out before you buy machinery that won’t be used very often. If you can’t find a hire shop, check in the local builders merchants or diy / bricolage store since they will often hire things out, or will be able to point you in the right direction.

Other Ceiling Tips

Use plasterboard screws rather than galvanised nails for fixing the board in place, since these are less likely to worl loose over time.

One slight complication is leaving the holes for ceiling light fittings. You will need to cut holes in the plasterboard for these to pass through, before you lift it up. Then you can lift the board close to the ceiling, feed the wires through, and finish raising the board to its final position. Clearly care is needed in getting the hole in the right place in the board!

As with internal walls, the joists to which you are fixing the boards will usually be 60cm apart so that the edges of the plasterboard can be fixed firmly in place.

If the corners of your room are not right angles (I bet you they aren’t) you will need to lower the plasterboard back down, and shape the end as appropriate. This is much easier than putting the board in place and then trying to fill in the spaces later.

I have already discussed some of the stages you should go through when planning the layout and design of your property at a ‘high level’.

At a ‘low level’ (more detailed) you will need to give some thought to interior design and style issues. If you have a vision of the ‘finished product’ the whole project will be easier.

I do recommend that anyone restoring a building should accumulate hundreds of magazines, pictures and books. Then you can search for pictures of exteriors or interiors that you like, and try to work out what it is you like about them. A couple of hundred euros spent on books and magazines is money well spent if the ideas can translate into adding thousands of pounds to the value of your house and, more importantly, if they can make it a nicer place to live.

The property renovation magazines that I buy are usually not immediately applicable to the work I am doing, but they come into their own when I am later planning a bathroom, a shutter colour or anything else for the property and I am looking for ideas.
Looking at interior design and decoration magazines may seem a bit ahead of yourself at this stage of the project, if you find you are looking at different designs of curtain before the room even exists. But the more of these ‘ideal’ interiors that you look at, the clearer the idea you will have of what you want.

The other good reason to look through magazines and books is that they will help keep you motivated during the long winter nights, or the rainy days when the mason can’t start his work. Sorry to say, but on a rainy day in January your enthusiasm for being surrounded by mud and building materials might fade just a tiny bit. A few magnificent magazine interiors will soon help you get your enthusiasm back.

Even better looking at magazines is looking at the real thing. Whenever the opportunity presents itself, go into other houses and have a nosy around. Most people are happy to show off their houses, and you will get loads of good ideas for interior design. Invite people in for a coffee, and soon enough they will invite you back. You might make some friends into the bargain.

Wherever in France you have bought a property you will need some type of heating. You might not believe me if you have visited your dream property during the summer. Even Provence and Corsica have their cooler moments. There are several ways for adding heating at the time of renovation. The method chosen depends partly on whether you plan to live in the property full time, or just as a holiday home.

General Advice

Almost all types of heating need to be inspected and serviced at least once a year. This includes having flues and chimneys cleaned, for example.

Open Fires and Wood Burning Stoves

Open fires look nice. That is their main advantage, and it is their only advantage. The net effect on the temperature of a house with an open fire is, apparently, zero. A large part of the heat from the fire goes out of the chimney. Worse than that, it sucks the warm air out of the house with it, which is then replaced by cold air entering the property through all the nooks and crannies around doors and windows, from the attic, and so on. All the new air is coming in from outside. The net result is that as much heat leaves the property as enters from the fire. Still, to be fair, there is an area immediately in front of a roaring fire which feels warm, even if you pay the price with a freezing cold bedroom.

Wood burning stoves are a very good way of heating. They burn wood very efficiently and a well fitted modern stove is environmentally friendly. Wood burning stoves are nine times as efficient as an open fire (i.e. three times as much heat with a third of the wood burnt). Although if an open fire is zero efficiency that still sounds poor(?!) Most of the heat actually stays in the house. Modern wood stoves reach a temperature at which most of the substances in the smoke are also burnt - the process is known as double-combustion, which makes the clean and non-polluting to use. In France twice as much forest grows each year as gets cut down, so there is no reason to feel guilty on ecological grounds. Wood stoves can produce typically 9 - 13kw of heat.

The large amount of heat produced is not spread evenly throughout the property, however, and this means the room with the stove in will be the warmest room in the house. Systems of ducting are available that can carry the heat from a ’sealed in’ type wood stove to other parts of the house.

In principle it is possible to install a woodstove yourself. The stoves and chimney parts are readily available. But problems can arise. On more than one occasion I have heard of self-fitted stoves leaking large puddles of tar/creosote across the floor of the room. A smaller but important problem may be that the stove appears to be working well but is actually not working at full efficiency. If you fit your woodstove yourself, study the documentation that comes with the stove, especially the part concerning the position of the chimney pipes, and the regulations that cover the distances of the stove and flue pipes from inflammable surfaces, and how to pass a chimney through a roof space. These are important for both efficiency and safety.

Woodstove flues, as with all chimneys, need to be cleaned at least once and often twice each year. If you read your insurance documents you will almost certainly find this to be a requirement of your insurance cover.

Central Heating

Central heating usually runs on oil or gas. Gas is normally town gas (i.e. arrives at your property through a gas supply pipe) only in the larger towns and cities, whereas propane in tanks is used elsewhere. Gas tanks can be buried in your garden, whereas oil tanks should stay above ground, and will need protection from the elemnts, and concealing. Oil is usually cheaper than gas to heat with, but town gas is cheaper still.
Installing a central heating system will begin with a full assessment of your property requirements. This assessment will be performed by the plumber or a heating engineer. The total heating power needed, and the heating levels required room by room, depends on several factors including the method of construction, the number and sizes of doors and windows, the ceiling heights, the presence of proper insulation and so on. The heating engineer will have a computer programme that can calculate the heating levels required for optimal performance for your particular property.

An over-powerful system is not a good thing, because this can force the boiler to start and stop all the time, causing unnecessary wear and tear. It needs to be the ‘right’ system to be efficient and effective.

Oil / Gas Boiler with Underfloor heating

Underfloor heating now is very different to underfloor heating that was installed 10-20 years ago. Nowadays the heating works at low temperatures - the floor is at a temperature around 28 centigrade - so the floor doesn’t actually feel warm to touch, or give rise to swollen ankles and hot draughts.

Many more pipes are used nowadays, so that the entire floor area can be heated without having localised hot spots. Insulation is placed under the heating pipes to prevent the heat from travelling down into the ground.
Although impressive, we have never used this system in our own renovations. This was because I believe that if the heating is on all the time during the winter, underfloor heating is very efficient, but for more intermittent use the ‘thermal inertia’ (time spent reaching temperature and cooling down again) of the floor would make it less useful. So I was less sure how well it would work in conjunction with a wood-burning stove, which provides a significant part of our heating. This is an area in which I am happy to be corrected if I am wrong.

If you are installing underfloor central heating, this must be planned early on in the project. Some specific points to consider:

• Wooden flooring is not suitable for installing over underfloor heating
• It is important to have insulation underneath the ‘in floor’ heating system
• The mortar screed on the floor must be laid carefully, because the heating pipes must be completely surrounded by the flooring material, with no air gaps. Usually a specialist will be necessary to lay this properly. They will use a ‘pour it on’ type of screed, that is very liquid when added, self levelling, and quickly sets hard. This has the additional benefit that you get a completely flat surface for tiling on.

Central Heating using Radiators

In areas which don’t have access to town gas, oil based heating is still often the most economical solution in France, despite the recent price increases.

We were lucky enough to have several solid cast iron radiators left over from an earlier renovation, so were able to use them. The plumber had no particular difficulties attaching old radiators to a new heating system. A central heating system using new radiators is still less expensive than a full under-floor heating stystem.

Radiators are less satisfactory than underfloor heating in one main respect. The sensation that yo get of cold in a room is due to ‘thermal gradients’ – that is, areas of the room that are at higher temperature than other areas. This creates air movements and drafts, and gives rise to the perception that some areas are colder.

Geothermal Central Heating

Geothermal central heating is a system in which subterranean heat from the land around  the property is used to provide the heat for the property. This is an efficient system, and is quite popular in France and several other countries. A viscous liquid is piped around the land surrounding the property, in trenches dug to a depth of about a metre. This fluid reaches a temperature of about 15 centigrade, all the year around. This fluid is then passed through a heat pump (similar to that used by a refrigerator, but operating in reverse) which raises the temperature to 45 centigrade. This is sufficiently warm to be used for heating - almost always in conjunction with an under floor heating system, since this is better suited to such low temperature water.

The main ongoing running cost is the electricity that drives the pump, to force the liquid through hundreds of metres of buried pipes. Each kilowatt of energy used by the pump gives rise to three kilowatts of heating energy. So heating bills should be much reduced, typically by a factor of three.

Installation costs of geothermal heating are higher than with other heating systems, partly because of the cost of digging up a large area of land to lay the pipes.

Electricity

I don’t personally know anyone who has electric heating in France. There are several companies that promote their own ’super efficient storage heater’ systems. These cost as much as any other central heating system to buy and install, but they do avoid the problems of fuel storage that you may have with oil and gas.

In towns and cities, where buildings are smaller and warmer, and in new-built properties with high levels of insulation, electricity can be very economical and is less subject to suden surges in price than gas and oil. In other situations it is likely to be less often recommended.

If you are installing electric heating you will need to ensure you have a adequate supply of power to the house (see electricity section).
We do sometimes use oil-filled electric radiators for heating one of our rental properties, in conjunction with a wood burning stove. These work very well, need no installation skills (ours plug in) and are cheap to buy.

Methods for laying quarry tiles and ceramic floor tiles

If you intend to glue tiles to an existing floor, the existing surface needs to be strong ans stable before you start. Any existing weaknesses in the floor need to be remedied before you begin. When I am glueing floor tiles I use the big sacks of premade floor glue, that simply need mixing with water before they are used, but on the occasions where I have needed to tile straight on top of some existing tiles I have used premixed glue. This is more expensive to buy, but has additives already combined that make it more flexible and more ’sticky’.

It is possible to stick one layer of tiles on top of another, if the existing tiles are solidly attached to the floor below, using this premixed glue. You do need to thoroughly clean the existing floor tiles first, then it is a good idea to ‘paint’ on a solution of ‘resine d’accrochage’ (like PVA, this will make the surface less slippery so the glue can adhere better) - available in bricolage shops. Read more

Old houses might have any of a wide range of floor types in place - including earth, old quarry tiles, wood and concrete.

Terre Battu

Flattened earth floors are quite common in old houses in France. These ‘terre battu’ (‘beaten earth’) floors are not simply a consequence of never laying a proper floor, but were once (until about 200 years ago) quite sophisticated, with clay being spread on the existing floor and then beaten flat. Read more

In this section I have assumed that you willproject manage the renovation yourself. Many people prefer to hand the entire renovation process to someone else. (See Project Managers section for a few thoughts on this).

Part of the process of obtaining your planning permission will probably have involved discussing the project plans with your architect (or architectural designer), and you will now have obtained approval for your project.

DO NOT START YOUR PROJECT UNTIL YOU HAVE PLANNING PERMISSION!

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