Epic transformation of my 1850s house in France (start to finish)

Hello and welcome to my little world in the French countryside. To those of you that have been following along on this journey, welcome back. But to those of you that have never been to this little corner of the internet, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Nathaniel Drew. This whole adventure out in the countryside, we're two years in and the transformation element of it is nearing completion and so it just feels like a significant moment. Before I dive in a little bit of context and then I'll give you what's going to be two things at once actually It'll be a tour of the house as well as a showcase of how much the space has transformed because I never actually ended up showing What this house looks like in detail on the inside at any point? Rewinding just a little bit two years ago I felt intensely pulled to move out to the French countryside and experience a different way of life I did that with essentially no comprehension of what that actually entailed what it would cost the effort it would take and it's i think safe to say it's been an arduous process but also i would say at this point the most profoundly transformative experience of my life while on my adventures biking around looking for a place i found this house this lovely house that was built in the 1850s and i have been fixing it up since then So last year, I shared the transformation of the outside. Everything from the yards, to the roof being cleaned, to building a sauna, to transforming the secret artist studio in the backyard. And now the house itself is pretty much nearing completion. I mean, houses, any house owner will tell you, houses are never done. They're like living beings. They're ongoing projects. But I think it's in a good place to share with all of you at this point. So without any further ado, let's dive in. This is the entrance area, okay? I am just in front of the front door. And as you enter, turning to the right is the kitchen. Okay, yeah, so I'm starting with the kitchen because this has got to be the room that I most often frequent throughout the day. And it's just a lovely space. It's so bright and beautiful. You'll see that that is a big feature of this house. It is just... bathing in light and that is so important to me and it's actually the reason why the dining table within the kitchen is near the windows because that way i can sip my coffee and have breakfast right in the daylight it's just amazing it's just so nice this kitchen had a lot of charm already i didn't dislike it but i was very naive about a lot of things and one of them was just how disgusting and grimy the kitchen was upon further inspection it was just absolutely disgusting and the electrical outputs were illegally installed I mean it was the more I scratched at the surface the more problems I found so I quickly realized that I was going to just have to renovate the kitchen I think it's just really important to feel clean and hygienic in your own home that's very important to me but when it comes to the kitchen that's where it becomes kind of a health issue right illegal so i knew that this this room really just needed some work so every single wall has been repainted this is all new and i find it so beautiful i love this wood and stone setup it's just really fun to cook in here honestly it just feels good there's good vibes the tiles was a really fun new process for me i'd never done that before the oven is awesome i just love roasting vegetables and new dishwasher the cupboard as well was moved back a bit to create more space for storing things i just love the color palette of this row i mean the brown the black and the reddish color and then this kind of cream color it's just a it's an awesome combo i just love this kitchen electricity by the way has been redone in the entirety of the house. And no, I didn't do it. I hired electricians. The old setup was from like the 70s. It was dangerous. Okay, so if we back out of the kitchen for a second and turn left upon entering the house, you end up in the living room, which is where I'm at right now. I'm just going to talk so much about light throughout this video, but it is bright all day long. And that's because this house is facing south. So the... Sun just crosses the sky, and it's different light all day long, but it's always bright. The tomat floors just immediately was taken by as soon as I walked into this house. They just needed a deep, deep scrub to be cleaned, and every wall in the entire house has been painted. And so that's actually made it even brighter and more welcoming, because before it was kind of like a tired beige off-white from, you know, decades of living. Obviously, all this costs money. And I've actually been debating making a video where I break down the costs of everything, what I bought this house for, what it has cost me to renovate it and transform it. I don't know if that would be of interest to you guys, but maybe leave a comment in the comment section if you are interested in knowing more about it. Anyway, I have done what I could where I could, but I have had to hire help. It's just been inevitable, especially because I wanted this to be well done. I'm an amateur and hiring help. has only been possible thanks to sponsor support. That's how I'm able to fund it. So before I go any further with the tour, I do want to briefly talk about the sponsor of this video, which is BetterHelp. Life brings challenging moments for all of us. That's life. There are many ways to look at it, but I do think those challenging moments bring flavor to life. And it's good to talk to friends that you trust or family members, but at least in my case, none of them are therapists and Relying on them in that way brings a kind of weight that I actually don't want to put on those relationships. It muddies those relationships. I have found it tremendously helpful to talk to somebody outside of my immediate orbit who can bring an outside perspective, who is trained in doing this kind of thing. BetterHelp is designed to be flexible and to fit your schedule. And you can keep trying out different therapists and changing for free until you find somebody that you click with. You can also communicate via phone, text, or video call. whatever is most practical for you. It's easy to sign up and get matched with somebody and I'll leave a link in the description below if you're interested in checking it out or you can go to BetterHelp.com slash Nathaniel Drew. Clicking the link actually supports this channel and it'll get you 10% off your first month with BetterHelp. So if you go straight from the entrance towards sort of this under area, this pseudo hallway under the stairwell, you see this door right here which gives straight access to the backyard. and the studio. To the left is my office. I think this was actually originally the previous owner's bedroom. Again, repainted, cleaned up. Facing the backside of the house makes it feel even more private, so it looks on into the artist's studio. Turning to the right is the bathroom, which might be the single biggest visual upgrade to a room. This is totally subjective, obviously, but I found the... original tiles and the original setup to be terribly ugly. And again, totally subjective, but I knew it was going to have to change. And on top of it, the way the tiles were installed originally is just not well done. So they looked like they were falling off. So the whole space has been transformed. I added a shower. I love the new tiles. They give it a real pop of color. By the way, that's thanks to my mom who found them. I don't think I would have ever found tiles as nice as those. So the bathroom window points towards the backyard which again creates this very sort of secluded feeling and I have this little mirror that I put up on here sometimes for when guests come to visit. It's a stupid joke, okay? It distorts your face and it's functionally useless. It's a tiny mirror. I do it because I think it's funny. And I swap it out because I can't actually even use it for anything like shading. So once I get bored of my own silly joke that's not really that funny, I'll find a more permanent solution. There's also the toilet. Not a ton to say other than it too has been repainted. And I guess one more thing, which is I discovered after moving in here that underneath the piping was actually duct taped. previous owners had done. I was so naive. So that too has been fixed. Every problem I found, I addressed. I have taken zero shortcuts and I didn't do it. Okay, I hired a plumber because you don't want to hire me for your plumbing unless you want a exploding geyser in your house. In which case, I'll leave my information in the description below. Give me a call. I have some availability next month. Okay, on to the dining room. which you can access by crossing the living room another beautiful spacious room all repainted totally new radiator instead of the one that i quickly discovered upon moving in here was about to fall off the wall and could easily break your legs so we had to deal with that really quickly fireplace and i just love how this room quickly and easily gives access to the front and backyard like it's made in a way that makes it easy to fluidly move in and outdoors, which I quite like. And I guess I'll go on the tangent really quickly while we're on the topic of outdoors, just to show you these beautiful flowers that are exploding to life in my backyard. Absolutely incredible. And my peonies are just bursting to life in real time. Okay, so there is one final room downstairs before we can go upstairs that you can access by crossing the kitchen. And that is the laundry room. That weird gigantic metallic thing you see in the corner is called a kiln, which is used to fire pottery, which I originally thought was going to be so cool to have until I discovered that it would be quite dangerous to use because as you may recall, the electrical situation in this house was sketchy. So sadly, it too had to go. So this room as well has been repainted like, you know, the window frames and whatnot. That's all freshly done. Right in front of me is an entirely new structure. with walls and insulation. It's like a laundry room inside of this laundry room, which protects the all new hot water tank, the washer, dryer, all the piping, all of which was exposed beforehand and would regularly explode in winter. I genuinely don't understand the system before. Just for reference, this is what this part of the house looks like from the outside, which also got repainted. And this side faces towards the carport. where i park my car and actually i don't think i've ever mentioned this but next to the carport is this horse stable that i obviously don't use but a horse used to live there while we're outside again on the other side of the carport is a small greenhouse that i don't think i've ever talked about either all right enough with the downstairs time to go upstairs okie doke so up the stairs we go and up here is the landing and i will first show you the worst of it what has become my storage room so i basically had to sacrifice a room because i don't have like a a basement or a storage area so this room became that um it's not pretty um but i have kept it pretty organized until i find a better solution moving along here is the bedroom that i fixed up with friends over a year ago so this is kind of like the guest bedroom at this point And then coming through here, all the bedrooms are connected. Upstairs, you like walk in a circle basically. So this is my bedroom. Let's call it the master bedroom, the main bedroom. And it's super bright. I mean, this is another room that has massively transformed. Before there was the most disgusting moket. It's like a carpet. Removed that, new floors, the walls were this really dingy like yellow. so that's all been repainted and the brightness i mean it's so much brighter than it used to be this is the same room just from the other side i'm trying to help you kind of get a sense of the space without obviously being here but basically that right there is the landing we just did a circle through the rooms back into the landing so and this window right here looks out to the studio and the backyard again that kind of secluded quiet cozy countryside vibe you know Alright, and finally, there's one more big room people even forget or don't even realize exists because this doesn't make sense in your brain. It is this very large room that has become my workout space. But it could be anything. There's so much you could do with a space this big. I could easily make it like a filming space. You know, like a studio space. There's lots of possibilities. But anyway, this... room as well had really disgusting carpeting before and was filled with nails and cables and stuff like that so that's all been cleaned up cleared out it looks so much better now so yeah there you have it that's i think i've covered every single room in the house at this point talk about a transformation am i right i spent a lot of time focusing on what all this looks like during the day but here are a few shots of my house in night mode you can switch in the settings just kidding That's not how life works. You just need to wait until the sun goes down. That's the analog method. I think I just wanted to mark the occasion. You know, I've been working on this for the last 18 months. I'm just really proud that I have taken no shortcuts. And I persevered, and now this place is a true reflection of all the work and effort and energy that went into it. I obviously learned a lot about DIY through this process, but I think more importantly, I learned so much about myself throughout this whole process. And yes, That might sound corny or cliche, but it's true. What do you want me to do about it? People talk about how much work it takes to do this kind of thing, but you just don't know until you're doing it yourself. Anyway, I just wanted to say thank you for watching. Thank you for all of your incredible support over the years. None of this genuinely would have been possible without your support and without you guys cheering me on. I get to live this bizarre, lucky life of... pursuing adventures and doing these experiments and i couldn't do it none of this was done with money that i inherited or was given this is all possible because of youtube money so it is directly thanks to you because i just wanted to mention that because i'm incredibly grateful to be in this position to be able to do this kind of thing all right folks i think that's enough for me for this video The best way to support me is genuinely just give this video a like if you enjoyed it or subscribe. I believe both of those things helped me help this video do better in the algorithms. Or you can check out my sub stack. I'll leave a link to it in the description below. Totally free. And it's a way for me to reach you without the algorithms. All right. More to come soon.

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Timestamps:

00:00 – Intro
02:04 – Tour begins: Entrance & Kitchen (cuisine)
04:39 – Living room (salle de séjour)
06:01 – Sponsor
07:03 – Hallway/Office (bureau)
07:37 – Bathroom/Toilet (salle de bain)
09:42 – Dining room (salle à manger)
10:28 – Brief excursion to the outdoors
10:45 – Laundry room (buanderie)
11:45 – Carport/horse stable/greenhouse
12:06 – Landing (palier) 
12:23 – Bedroom 1 & 2
13:06 – Master bedroom
14:04 – Final surprise room ;)
14:50 – The house at night
15:12 – Final thoughts