rosemary on the tv

Now…there are fixer uppers, and then there are fixer uppers. Can you imagine buying a three hundred year old French chateau and restoring it? Because that’s exactly what one Australian family is doing in the south of France right now. A quick history lesson for you.

Built in the early 1700s, Chateau de Gudanes, located in the small village of Chateau Verdun, was designed by neoclassic French architect Ange-Jacques Gabriel, known for designs like Petit Trianon – the small chateau at Versailles that Louis XVI gifted to Marie Antoinette. The Marquis de Gudanes threw lavish parties attended by the likes of Voltaire and Diderot.

Much later, the chateau was purchased by a foreign investment company that planned to turn its 94 rooms into 17 luxury apartments. APARTMENTS. Can you believe that?! Of course, they were denied the permits to do so, since the chateau is a class 1 historical monument, so the company let the house sit and decay for years before finally putting it back on the market.

Then, after four years of sitting on the market, Karina and Craig Waters purchased it and embarked on a full restoration of the house and ‘le parc’ – the 12 acres of land surrounding the chateau.

And THANK GOD for them, they set up a website, Facebook page and Instagram so we can follow along too.

{ images via Chateau Gudanes }