A gorgeous mediterranean style French farmhouse in Provence

Bonjour, I'm Marloes, a Dutch business owner and I moved to France in 2019 with my family. And on my channel I share our life in the French countryside, the renovations of the old farmhouse that we bought, my love for brocante, nature walks, recipes and much more. And I've also started sharing house tours of other beautiful French farmhouses. And in this video I'm taking you to the beautiful Provence where I want to show you a gorgeous French farmhouse. 🎶 I recently went to Provence with a friend and we stayed in Julien's beautiful Bed and Breakfast. And we're entering the driveway now. In the summer this is surrounded, the entire house is surrounded by sunflower fields. Unfortunately they had just been cut by the time that we arrived, but you can still feel how magical this place is and I guess you can feel that when I show you. Julien bought an old Bastide, which is how they call a French farmhouse here in the Provence. And when he found it, it was a ruin. It had been abandoned for a couple of years and it needed a lot of work. But he said he fell for it because he loves the weather in the Provence, it's always sunny, it's warm, the light is beautiful and he just fell in love with the place. It's taken him years of work to restore this gorgeous Bastide back to its original beauty. The works are still not done, but I'm going to show you the part of the house that he's finished and that he's also renting out as an Airbnb. He's restored the exterior and he put in new windows that match the original style of the original windows. And I love how he's left the shutters. I don't like it when they're all freshly painted. I love this worn style, so he's left them. I really like that. Julien wanted to create a Mediterranean feel and style for the house, which is characterized by the use of light and warm colors, natural materials like wood, cotton fabrics, ceramics, arched doorways and windows, tiled floors and an open floor plan with the living area, dining area and kitchen all connecting. So as you can see, it took a lot of work to get there. So he created arched doorways for most of the openings and he also used a traditional render for the walls. It's a traditional layer of sand, straw, lime and water that's traditional for this region. And he used that to render all of the walls to get that plaster traditional Mediterranean look. You can see the beautiful detail of the ceiling here. This is a traditional Provence style ceiling. So Julien covered the old beams with wooden planks and then he filled in the gaps with plaster. Julien designed and made this kitchen using a gorgeous original sink that he found in Marseille and then he designed the rest of the kitchen around it. He built the cabinets and countertops using cellular concrete blocks that he rendered with a homemade béton ciré-like coating. And for this he added cica latex, which is a product, to the cement that he used to render all the blocks. And this creates a homemade béton ciré look. Over time it did soak up some of the grease but I think this gave the kitchen its authentic lived-in look. For the furniture, Julien chose a more Provence style wooden furniture with the traditional Provence patina. And I also really love how he used old wooden shutters and doors for all the built-in cabinets. I thought this house was just magical and if you ever get the chance to visit Provence, please know you're welcome to stay with Julien like we did. I'll put a link down below to his Airbnb page. And please do let me know what you liked about this house in a comment. I'd love to hear from you and I'll see you next time.