“We bought and renovated an 18th-century French farmhouse remotely from Toronto for $1.9 million”

In 2019, Nancy Hanley, a former client director, and Kevan Gorrie, a commercial real estate investor, found their French dream home. Named after a French nobleman, Caubel is a two-storey 18th-century farmhouse with six bedrooms, a barn and an in-ground outdoor pool. But, when the closing date on the $1.1 million property coincided with the start of Covid lockdowns, the couple started to get cold feet. How would they renovate the 6,000-square-foot space from Yonge and Wilson, without even setting foot in Europe? They persevered, though, and after umpteen hours on Zoom, they transformed the summer home into a vacation spot where they could relax, swim and sip wine en plein air. Here, they tell us about the ups and downs of renovating a home from overseas and why they’re glad they stayed the course.

Kevan: Nancy and I met in the early 2000s. I worked in an office building at Bay and Bloor, and I saw her at Tim Hortons every morning. Then, in 2004, I was out with friends on College Street, at Bar Italia, and I spotted her.

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Nancy: I didn’t remember him at all, but we started seeing each other. Then we got married in 2007 and bought a house near Yonge and Eglinton.

Kevan: We’ve since moved near the Toronto Cricket Club by Yonge and Wilson.

Nancy: I’d always loved the Canadian lakes and wanted to buy a cottage, but Kevan was lukewarm about the idea. Then, in August of 2019, we travelled to the Dordogne region of France with our wine club and fell in love with the area. There is so much history there, from the Neanderthal days to the Second World War. Some of these medieval villages have signs that say, “Market every Thursday since 1263.” They are so proud of their culture. Josephine Baker also used to have a house in the area. So I started looking at real estate. I couldn’t believe that you could buy a piece of history at a fraction of the cost of a Muskoka cottage.

Kevan: France was interesting to me. We looked at buying in Italy too, but ultimately we felt more comfortable with the laws and regulations in France. The process tends to favour the buyer. The government handles a lot of details. You don’t have to arrange for property inspections yourself, and there are no bidding wars. If you meet the seller’s price, they have to sell you the property.

Nancy: I had some background in hospitality, and I’ve renovated every house I’ve ever lived in. After having my second daughter, I decided not to reenter the workforce. But the idea of a major renovation felt like a project I could really dig into. Initially, I tried searching for properties online, but I wasn’t getting anywhere. So, in October of 2019, I went to France with a girlfriend to see places in person. We flew into Paris and then to Bordeaux, then we drove to Bergerac, which is in Dordogne. I lined up 20 viewings over four days.

Kevan: We had a budget of about $1.1 million. Our original plan was to spend a small portion of that on a condo in Bordeaux and then the rest on a rural property.

Nancy: But, when I saw the condos in Bordeaux, I just felt the value wasn’t there. The units themselves were quite small, and the common areas weren’t well maintained.

Kevan: We decided to put all of our money into the farmhouse instead. We wanted something big enough to accommodate our wine club, which is four couples and their kids. Ideally, we wanted it to have five or six bedrooms, each with their own bathroom, or at least the potential to add a bathroom.

Nancy: At first, it felt like I just couldn’t find a place that fit the bill. One house was literally right next to a cemetery, and a lot of them would have needed major structural changes to accommodate the number of bedrooms we wanted. At one, there was a dead rabbit floating in the pool. It felt like a bad omen. Then, finally, our agent drove me to a property in Lot-et-Garonne, which is southeast of Dordogne. Outside of the main house, there was a barn and an in-ground pool that looked out onto fields of sunflowers. When the agent showed me the courtyard, I was blown away.

Kevan: The outdoor space really fit with our vision of a home where families and friends could gather.

Nancy: The house was previously a bed and breakfast, so it already had six bedrooms with their own ensuite bathrooms—super rare in Europe. It also had a large foyer, a kitchen, a games room and a storage room. I didn’t love the finishes inside the house, but it clearly had great bones. By the end of the tour, I was in tears. I knew this was the one.

Kevan: Nancy phoned me from the property and said, “Oh my gosh, we found this B&B and it’s just beautiful. It’s meticulously maintained.” I said, “Well, then put in an offer. Let’s do this.”

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Nancy: We put in our offer of $1.1 million that day. That price included some of the furniture, like these beautiful old wardrobes they had in the bedrooms, plus the pool equipment and a few tables.

Kevan: It took two months to negotiate the deal and then four more months until we closed. By that time, it was April of 2020. Nancy got a bit of cold feet—after all, she was now staring down the barrel of trying to renovate a property she couldn’t visit due to pandemic travel restrictions. But I still felt like it was the right move. We had a genuine interest in buying a house in France, and I knew that we’d eventually be able to travel again.

Nancy: I had a lot of anxiety around how to keep the project going. So I asked our real estate agent if she knew a designer we could work with. She referred a friend who wasn’t a trained designer but had great taste. When I spoke with her, she understood that we wanted Caubel to feel like a European experience but with North American amenities.

Kevan: For example, we wanted North American–sized beds and side tables that were big enough to put lamps on. We also wanted a modernized kitchen that was big enough to accommodate multiple families. These aren’t things you always find in Europe.

Nancy: We worked with her and our contractor remotely over Zoom. For most of the reno, I had weekly meetings with them that lasted a couple of hours each.

Kevan: Since the place already had six bedrooms, it didn’t need a complete overhaul. We added in a new staircase made of 100-year-old reclaimed oak and replaced the ceramic tiles on the main floor.

Nancy: I wanted the kitchen to feel very French country, but modern. Lots of natural wood. We added new cabinetry as well as a coffee nook. We also had a dining room table made out of reclaimed French oak. It’s massive—it weighs north of 2,000 pounds. It took seven guys to install it.

Kevan: The biggest change was to the basement. Because the place had been run as a B&B, it had a large storage area that was used for pallets of drinks and supplies. We turned that into a wine cellar and then transformed a second storage area into a lounge and an extra sleeping area for the kids.

Nancy: We also turned the games room on the upper level into a sitting area. Originally, the chimney from the downstairs fireplace went right through the middle of the room. We moved the fireplace to the outer wall so that the layout would make a little more sense. We kept the palette mostly neutral since I’m not really into patterns. And we put a vintage Persian rug in every bedroom.

Kevan: Our designer sourced all of our furniture from the Netherlands because she was partially living there at the time. You can get really good quality furniture there at more reasonable prices. All in all, we spent $400,000 on the renovations and an additional $400,000 on the furniture.

Nancy: In normal times, the renovations should have taken four months. But, with the lockdowns and product availability issues, it took about a year and a half. We were finally able to see it all in person in November of 2021, but even then we couldn’t stay overnight.

Kevan: The oil heating system hadn’t been maintained properly. I wanted to install heat pumps because they’re better for the environment, but it was hard to find a company that could put them in. In the French countryside, they still heat their houses with wood chips. It took until late 2022 for us to get that sorted, and that’s when we were finally able to stay at the house.

Nancy: On our first night, we started a fire and sat by the dining room table. We had cheese and wine. It was great.

Kevan: We stayed in one of the largest bedrooms. It’s on the upper floor and faces east, so you get the sun coming up in the morning. Another amazing moment was when we were finally able to bring our wine club to visit.

Nancy: When we were showing them around, our friends were in tears. To be able to bring that group together in the new house was so special.

Kevan: These days, there are always things to fix up. We have to replace the shudders periodically because they’re wood and they rot. And there’s a bit of roof maintenance coming up. One of the challenges of owning a house in the country is that you seem to get new critters each year. One year it was flies. This year it’s ladybugs. Next year, who knows?

Kevan: Right now, our daughter is in school, so we only visit for about a month in the summer. Then we rent it out for the other warm months each year under our business, Caubel Retreats.

Nancy: I love that having this property has forced Kevan and I to head to Europe more. I never did anything like that when I was younger. In Toronto, I hate grocery shopping, but when we’re in France, I love taking my basket to the market and getting my food. It’s simple, quiet living.