How did two musicians from Los Angeles end up buying a 17th-century château in rural France? This is the story of how we got here.
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After our first episode, so many of you asked the same questions: Who are we? Why did we leave Los Angeles? What was the farmhouse? When did we actually move to France—and how did we end up here?
So, for this episode, we sat down to tell the story properly.
We talk about the life we left behind in California, why we chose France, and what happened after we arrived in 2023. We explain the farmhouse we lived in before the château, the long and occasionally bewildering search that followed, and why this particular place was the one we finally chose.
We also talk about changing careers, trying to build a saner relationship with work, the kind of life we hope to create here, what we would do differently if we had to begin again, and where we actually are in the story now.
There have been a few plot twists.
Once Upon a Castle follows our family as we restore a centuries-old château in the French countryside and slowly make it our home. There will be renovations, gardens, history, music, family life, beautiful discoveries, questionable decisions, and almost certainly several problems we do not yet know we have.
Subscribe here on YouTube and join us from the beginning. We have so much to show you.
✦ READ MORE: WHY WE LEFT CALIFORNIA
For the more personal story behind our decision to leave—and the life we hoped to find on the other side:
https://www.onceuponacastle.com/p/why-we-left-california-and-found-c5c?r=5yj82i&utm_medium=ios&triedRedirect=true
✦ ONCE UPON A CASTLE
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CHAPTERS
00:00 Our Story
01:01 Who We Are
02:56 Arriving in France — 2023
04:24 Why We Left Los Angeles
05:34 On Choosing France
09:26 Pivoting Careers & Work-Life Balance
13:07 The Farmhouse
14:19 The Château Search
17:27 Why We Chose This Château
21:19 The Timeline
23:02 The Life We Want to Build Here
26:46 Would We Do It Again?
#FrenchChateau #LifeInFrance #ChateauRenovation
24 Comments
Glad to meet you both, just caught your channel
Nice introduction. Very informative. Thanks for sharing your life. Interesting content.
Omg, we were also looking for property in LA and couldn't justify its price either. So we settled elsewhere too
Amazing pls Upload more vlog
Great vlog describing how and when you made the decision to move to France. The Chateau looks great and will be even better as you renovate or restore as time allows. The long house looked outstanding, I think that living on those stunning grounds allowed you both to decide that France is for you as a family. I look forward to seeing more vlogs as you progress forward to your dream of the main building being fully renovated. I wish you all the best as a family and wish you success in your dreams going forwards. Pete from England.
What a lovely home and family! 🏰❤
I love that you took your time to settle in, put the videos together and release them not in real time. I figured you'd get us caught up eventually. Definitely appreciate this real time update and look forward to the upcoming videos 🙂
French banks expect goreigners to have between 50% to 70% down payment. They KNOW what the renos will cost, even if you dont. That said, hiring a loan broker is a worth while expense, and results in success.
Thank you for your Q/A.
Would it be possible, for you to share more videos each week.?
Looking forward to following your journey. I am happy to follow your gardening dreams. During Covid I started growing 1000 flower seedlings a year and now we have a greenhouse and I have a potager and grow vegtables. Gardening is my passion for 32 years on our 15 acre farm (2 horses)and Victorian home. We have wanted to sell and buy a small chateau in France but feel it best to stay in Western Canada for now. Wishing you all the best. Hope I can help you with gardening advice. France is prime growing conditions….your kids are adorable. ❤
I'm looking forward to the next video! It was nice to hear a little about you and how you ended up in France!
What type of work, are you still working with music??
Bienvenue en France ! Salutations from Angers (Maine-et-Loire) 🎉
I subscribe to your Substack and have loved it, and now the videos are delightful! Thank you so much for allowing us to follow your journey. It has been magical. xoxo
Hi 👋 from the Corrèze region of France, it is great that you have a good relationship with your partner, a beautiful family, wishing you all the success for the future, mine sadly did not work out, I put nearly 18 years into relationship, renovating and converting a property over in England, and in that time we purchased a property over here in France in 2013, by 2019 I realized I was being used, set up, mainly by my niece and husband, helping my so-called female partner, they were trying to take my business and all the properties that we both own, as more to the story than I can put on YouTube,
I did manage to keep the property in France. I lost all my savings, I had to buy her half share out, we go through life building a relationship with our friends, a partner, our family, and we never know when they are going to try and take it from us,
Absolutely uplifting vlog,beautifully filmed with grace. We have lived in France off and on for 10 years and you have rekindled our interest in returning . The world is in an extremely difficult place, seeing your hopes and plans for the future are the best antidote . Congratulations Richard and Julia
I’m so happy you guys started a channel! When the algorithm fed you to us I told my wife “Oh that’s the Substack couple from LA!” (We’re moving from The Bay Area to France as soon as our house sells, so it feeds us a lot of France content.) Anyway lovely to get to know you guys in a different way, especially because she prefers videos whereas I love the long prose of Substack. We’re following along and wish you all the success on this new journey!
What a humble couple.
Chateaux are absolutely expensive. The thing is the sell price is just a part of the total cost.
You are my new favourite Chateaux channel ! 🎉
Lovely to meet you both, stunning chateau and look forward to following your journey
More money and a butler would help a lot (all of us 😅) ❤ from Austria
You two are very sensible people. By doing what you did and approaching buying in france was such a good way of doing things. More people should follow your example of not rushing into buying and then find out all that is wrong with the chateau.
Dear Sean and Kamile
Thank you for this video. It was so nice to learn about your journey so far. I watch several channels about purchasing and renovating in France, which is a place I would definitely move. My husband and I, we've been to France many times. Most of these channels never talk about the cost. It would be nice if you, once in a while disclosure the cost of buying, finance and the cost of living compared to LA. It would help so many of us that want to do the same thing. You could say "something around…" Or Kamile could start an online consulting business to help people that want to do the same. You have so much knowledge already!
I can't wait for new uploads! Your channel is a success already. I subscribed when the channel had only 800. I have a channel myself and it took me a year to get to the point you achieved in the first video. Congratulations!
Question: Are you planning on renting the other buildings? I would love to visit and search the area for a property for ourselves
Thank you!