Nikki and Jean-François

We met each other in Paris in 2001 thanks to a mutual friend who organised our rencontre. We chose Pezenas simply because Nikki found a job here. Nikki had been living in Paris for the last 10 years and was yearning to leave. Jean-François was living in Montpellier and looking for another adventure. Jean-François is French and has lived all over France, he spent 7 years in New York before giving up on the big apple and retuning home. Nikki was born and raised in London, spent over 10 years in New York before escaping to Paris.

We both decided we wanted the calm of country life when we decided to move to Pezenas however we have managed to fill the last 4 years of our lives with anything but calm.

 

We have two children, Nicolas who is 6 and Neal 3 1/2. Between the two of them they have tasted every pebble in the garden, they have tried and tested the pool barrier, they have pestered our 3 cats, Scotch, Domino and Tigger, to death, etc.

Just to give you a little overview of how the guest apartments came to be. We bought the Couvent in 2002. It took us 6 months to find a bank to finance the work and it took us a year to renovate the building.

 

We kept the four outside walls and the 1st and 2nd floors, the rest was gutted and rebuilt. With over 900m2 of living area we created 4 apartments on the ground floor. All 4 are approximately the same size (130m2), and all have the same disposition (2 bedrooms, 2 ensuite bathrooms, 4 toilets, mezzanine and living/kitchen area), the only real thing differentiating them is the décor.

The iron work was done by a local artist who has a museum in St Giraud (1/2 hour from here), the paintwork was designed and created by a group of young artists from Anduze, and the rest was done thanks to Jean-François blood, sweat and tears, and his ability to negotiate and encourage French workers!!
If you are interested in looking at the 'before-and-after photos' let us know. We have put together a dossier with all the photos.

Jean-François, Nikki, Nicolas & Neal Marques-Quist