A fairy-tale chateau in France you can visit
Owning a picturesque chateau in the countryside of France is the stuff of dreams, complete with crystal chandeliers, sweeping staircases and rooms filled with antique furniture. But it takes a lot to make a dream like this come true.
Just ask Karina and Craig Waters, a couple from Perth who began searching for a small holiday house in France more than a decade ago and ended up becoming owners of the majestic Chateau de Gudanes in the Pyrenees mountain range near the Spanish border.
Their unexpected adventure started when their daughter Jasmine did a three-month language exchange in Nice, and the couple started to think about getting a place to use as a base for European travel with their two children. Despite only having visited France twice before, they began searching intently online and planned two trips to explore properties.
Karina and Craig Waters. (Photo: Supplied)
“The French agents were just marvellous and so real, and they took us to us properties that really look the way they are, not overly photoshopped or styled,” says Karina. “This really helped us to get a stronger idea of the market because when we started out we were so naïve and didn’t even know how to get a French bank account.”
The search came to an abrupt stop the moment they glimpsed Chateau de Gudanes. The grandeur of the 94-room building and its spectacular location outshone the fact the chateau was a certified ruin with collapsed floors and ceilings throughout and a badly leaking roof.
Despite only being able to enter four of the rooms in the chateau at the time of sale, they made an offer on the property within a week of seeing it. This was eventually accepted, after many complications, almost two years later. The building had continued to degrade during this time, so a complete restoration was required by the time they took over.
“Initially we thought we could just do up the front rooms and live in part of it and leave the rest,” says Craig. “But it quickly became apparent that this wasn’t going to be viable because structurally we couldn’t just leave a big hole in the back.”
After working with architects they began the “consolidation phase”, during which a team of 12 Spanish builders moved to the village and worked full time for a year removing the debris from within the chateau and rebuilding the skeleton, reusing the fallen oak rafters wherever possible, sometimes reinforced with metal braces for security.
The renovation in full swing. (Photo: Supplied)
“They were such a good team and they basically put it back together again,” Karina says. “But that was really just the beginning.”
For added complication, the chateau is designated a Class 1 Historical Monument in France, alongside the Eiffel Tower and Palace of Versailles, as it was designed by Ange-Jacques Gabriel, the principal architect of Louis XV. So they have needed additional approval for each stage of development.
Yet they’ve pushed forward with extensive and extremely gentle renovations of the building with the help of their children and a revolving roster of volunteers and restoration experts from around the world. Slowly the team, lead by Karina, has worked its way through the chateau tiling floors, repainting walls, restoring frescoes and replanting the garden. All materials found along the way, from doorknobs to roof tiles, have been kept and repurposed, helping to keep down costs and retaining the original character of Gudanes.
But no amount of thriftiness could offset the financial cost of a passion project on this scale. The couple have chosen to never disclose the amount they spent in purchasing and restoring the property, but Karina admits it was a substantial investment.
“People sometimes ask us if we bought the chateau for nothing, like those properties in Italy, and I think they must be kidding,” she says. “The costs have been huge but we’ve done it because we wanted to rescue this building and we knew if we didn’t do it then probably no-one else would.”
Another challenge is that the project has been funded privately by the Waters family, with no financial support provided to date by the French government. They’ve been offered numerous television and book deals, including the popular show Escape to the Chateau, which was originally created with them in mind. But they’ve turned them all down out of concern about overcommercialising the property and losing some of its character, instead producing just one book of their own.
The spectacular entrance to Chateau de Gudanes. (Photo: Supplied)
They have also chosen to open the chateau up in recent years to a handful of select commercial ventures to help fund the restoration including overnight experiences during the summer, an online shop with French antiques and occasional corporate photoshoots
“You have to be a certain type of person to take on a project like this,” says Karina. “If you overthink or worry too much then it’s just going to crush you, so you have to roll with things. I’ve learned to do this and I’m looking forward to what comes next.”
There is plenty still to do at the chateau and Karina notes that, after years of work and makeshift living, it is just now more comfortable and “finally starting to feel like a home”. The internal structural work throughout the building is now largely completed, with decorative elements such as restoring frescoes and decorating rooms still ongoing and likely to continue indefinitely.
They have started to install electricity and heating in more of the bedrooms, having previously relied on candlelight, and have plans to replant the gardens and completely renovate the exterior of the building in the next five years.
Learn about upcoming art, music and culinary experiences at the chateau at https://chateaugudanes.com/
