#9 - The fairy tale Chateau de Gudanes

What if you were to browse the internet and see a photo of a neglected castle in the south of France, a ruin for sure but with a faded grandeur that pulls at your heart strings… 

Would you be tempted to give up your dream of a little house in the country and throw everything you have into restoring the castle to its former glory? Live without electricity. Chop wood to keep the fire going so you don’t freeze in winter as the snow falls all around and the bitter wind blows down from the Pyrenees Mountains. Give up your comfy life and a good job in Perth, Australia. Learn how to speak French and take on the mother of all restorations? 

That’s what Karina Waters and her family did when they bought the Chateau de Gudanes – a real life sleeping beauty that’s now been brought back to life.

This is an extraordinary story, one that has captured the imagination of millions around the world

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Chapters

• 0:00 Intro
• 0:48 Interview Karina Waters
• 33:23 Q&A Section
• 36:11 What's next?

Transcript

The Good Life France's podcast - Interview Karina Waters, from the Chateau de Gudanes.

Janine Yes today we're chatting to Karina Waters from Perth, Australia. There are some times in our lives when opportunity presents a different path from the one we thought we'd chosen. When a dream is born and it's a dream we might not even know we have. A time when we may swerve completely from the path we thought was set before us. And that is certainly the case for Karina and her family. They saw a photo on the Internet of an abandoned castle in an area in the southwest of France, and Karina and her husband fell head over heels in love with the Chateau de Gudanes - and bought it. Thank you so much for joining us today, Karina. 

Karina Thank you, Janine. Thank you for having me on your program today. 

Janine Oh, it's an absolute pleasure. I mean, I've been following the career of the Chateau de Gudanes. Is that how you say it? (goo – dane). 

Karina Someone in the local community said to me, I have to pronounce it “Goo – dun” because we're almost on the Spanish border. There's that little bit of Catalan influence. So sometimes some of the local people even call it “goo-dans! It took me about two years to get it right. 

Janine Well, I've not got two years, but I'm hoping that I'm going to get this right while we're talking to you about the Chateau de Gudanes! So I have been following you, along with many millions of people, following the way that you've restored the chateau and bring its whole history come to life. I mean, how did this even come about? Can you tell us a bit about you, where you're from and what you did BC, back before the castle? 

Karina Yes, well, before the castle, I led a completely different life. I grew up in Western Australia, right in the city, in Perth, and my life was completely different. I was a tax accountant at that time and our children were just beginning at university. So I lived a completely different life than what I am living now. 

Janine Was it always your dream to live in a castle in France? 

Karina No, no. I think we were just sort of in that transition phase where our children were older and they were establishing their own lives and we thought, well, maybe we could travel to Europe. We had hardly travelled to Europe before we were married and then when we had children. We’d been to Paris once before and we thought, imagine just having a little home, just in a village. And that's really where the original idea came from. But then it sort of grew and a little bit of breadth and grandiosity. And then once we saw this ruin, we didn't know how much it was ruined at the time. And we thought, oh, imagine driving in France and driving into the Pyrenees. And that's basically how it sort of started. So we hired a car and ended up in the Pyrenees. 

Janine Did you visit the Pyrenees before you saw the chateau or was it as a result of going to see the chateau? 

Karina So to be honest, I had never heard of the Pyrenees, I didn't really quite know where they were until we looked on Google Earth and we thought well imagine just driving down into the Pyrenees - how amazing that could be. And that's certainly what it was the very first time we drove down to that part of France and seeing the area for the very first time and then driving through the villages and then weaving through all these beautiful mountains, just sort of coming up in every direction. And then we found ourselves at the gates of this ruined chateau. So we originally went in search of a little farmhouse. And I also have a French friend, and she said, no matter what, do not buy a castle. Don't ever even consider it. Never consider a restoration. 

Janine You didn't listen, did you?!

Karina It took me about two years to gather the strength to do it all that needed doing to buy it and I knew she would be a little bit upset with me. So, yeah, it was completely unexpected. And it wasn't really a dream of ours to ever really live in France. It was just a very small base we had in mind, so we could sort of travel in through Europe when we had the opportunity when our children had left school and university. 

Janine So you thought about buying a small home somewhere in a little village in France, and then you saw a chateau, fell in love with it, drove straight there, through those gates, fell head over heels in love with it. What was it like? I mean, what sort of a state was it in the first time you saw it? 

Karina Well, we had contacted the owner in advance, obviously. And he had said to us, look, it's a little bit of a hard hat zone. We only seen a few photos and they didn't look great. And then when we arrived, we sort of like, you know, it just captivates your whole attention because the chateau was situated in this mountainous valley and in every direction there were mountains. So the vista is just so captivating and attention grabbing. And we went through the gates and then he showed us all of the grounds. And, you know, a meadow of beautiful wildflowers. And it was just spectacular. And then we stepped inside and he hadn't quite sort of explained what the stage of it was. But I mean, we really couldn't go further than the front rooms on the right hand side because the rest of it was completely awful. It had fallen in and the roof was half on half off the house in certain places. There were five levels that had just fallen in and it was just totally unexpected. But towards the right were these beautiful salons, one of them was just completely gold gilded with musical instruments from the 18th century in such beautiful, preserved condition. There were, you know, the other rooms, filled with stinging nettles, trees. There was also a tree growing on the roof. But we knew that if we walked away, that would be the very last season or winter that it would see and then it would be completely would have fallen in. It's sometimes, it's hard to translate that, that feeling and why one would embark on that. But mostly for my husband, it was the fact that the position in this mountainous valley meant that there could be so much to do. And also the owner had given us a budget and said, oh, look, you know, this is what would be the restoration cost. And we thought, well, that's probably achievable. And so - and then they also said to us that we didn't need permission from the historical monuments for the inside - we knew that as a class one historical monument the exterior would, but as we understood it at the time not the inside. And it wasn't until two years later when we finally signed the documents with a notaire that there was a clause in the documentation in the contract that we would need permission from the chief architect for the historical monuments in Paris. So it came really unexpected, at the very last minute of actually paying for the chateau and signing the documents. So a lot of it just sort of happened, we were sort of quite unaware. And I think if we had known about all those things in advance, then we would not have actually gone ahead with the purchase. So in some ways it was quite fortuitous that that was the case. 

Janine I suppose you could look at it two ways - fortuitous or not really, because I can't imagine, you know, bringing a historical monument back to life with rooms that you can't even enter and plants growing out of the roof and out of the walls, that can’t have been an easy task. But it sounds like it's so magical that actually you were unable to resist it and it cast a spell over you almost. 

Karina I think that's absolutely it. And you know, it is a fairy tale, but it is a rollercoaster of fairy tales, because you always have to have the ups and downs and the, you know, the good and the bad in any fairy tale and love story. But I think in the very beginning we were bringing our own cultural expectations into this project, and we actually thought that we would send in some builders in a couple of years, it would be finished, and then we would just sort of travel and we had totally naivete of not understanding the system of the historical monuments and really what it means to actually purchase a chateau, because purchasing a chateau with or without a restoration doesn't come with a handbook. So it takes some time to grasp the enormity of it. And with it being a historical monument and having architects from Paris and locally, and engineers, etc., it was very apparent after a couple of years that a building team wasn't going to work unless we actually project managed it ourselves. And so after trying other ways for the first two or three years, we then needed to have a presence on site and be completely involved in the process, which was something culturally that we were not expecting in the very beginning. 

Janine Oh, I can imagine. I mean, how old is the castle? 

Karina The foundations? The very first stones of the foundation of the chateau were laid in the 13th century before that part of France was actually France. And the borders didn't change until I think about 1550 when it became part of France. Then it became a fortified castle, and it's sort of strategically placed right on a river in the valley. And back then the chateau owners, who were the same owners up until the French Revolution, they owned a thousand square miles of land. And so they owned all the land all the way to the Andorran Valley, up to Andorra. And then in the 18th century, the grandson inherited his grandfather's chateau, which was a little bit medieval fortress like at the time. And he thought, oh, I'd really like, you know, an 18th century grand chateau. So he engaged Ange-Jacques Gabriel who designed Versailles to come and change his grandfather's fortified castle into a neoclassical elegant and castle for entertaining. 

Janine That's just amazing. I mean, you say that when you saw it that first time, you. You could see the salons on the right, and they looked amazing and you couldn't really go much further. So how many rooms and was it a bit of a shock when you found out how many? Because I imagine there must be quite a few. 

Karina The chateau didn't come up with any plans. Nor have we ever received any keys, although that probably would have been a waste of time anyway. But at the time when we could actually piece it back together with walls that still were in existence, there were 94 rooms. And so now that we have actually put the floors and ceilings back. So, you know, it's consolidated. It's gone past now being a building site. But now we've put it back to 55 rooms. 

Janine That's so many rooms, isn't it? 

Karina It is if you want to vacuum. 

Janine I was just thinking, you know, I struggle to hoover my little farmhouse. I can't imagine what it's like to, you know, run a vaccum around 55 rooms - and dusting!

Karina. I dream of having one of those robotic vacuum cleaners. Yeah. 

Janine You definitely need one. Have you got any animals? Do you have, like, a cat or anything like that? 

Karina Well, I think what goes with the territory of having a chateau in a village - we have plenty of animals. And I think that they either turn up at the shelter, either instinctively or often they get left on the front porch in a cage. So sometimes people bring kittens up. And so we mostly have rescue animals. And so what we've done is that we've converted the pigeonnier, which was the original I call it the original Chateau chicken house, where they used to have the pigeons for post, etc.. We use that as a feeding station for many of the cats that are abandoned. And there's certainly a lot of cats and dogs and hedgehogs and chickens. And I think next week there are ponies coming on site. So there are a lot of animals. But I think that they're the beautiful part about bringing something back to life as well. And you know, there's this beautiful symbiosis with having the animals and they're certainly great company. And, you know, I would hate to live there on my own without them. 

Janine I was just thinking, I've got six cats and I think I've got about 18 rooms in the house, which is big enough, and sometimes I can't find them. So I'm wandering through the house calling for Tigger or Lulu or Fat Cat or Mimi the Marmalade Moggy and they're all hiding in different rooms and I can't imagine if they were in a big castle  with 55 rooms, I'd never find them. 

Karina Well, we try to keep the cats in the kitchen and then the downstairs level and out there, they're allowed inside and they sleep in the kitchen at night. But we try to keep them out of the chateau as much as possible. But Claude Monet, he always if you go upstairs, he's always under a duvet of some sort. Maybe it's impossible to keep him out. But we do try to have some boundaries because it's true. I mean, they with that many rooms, we don't tend to know what's outside and what's inside. So, yeah, from a cleanliness point of view, we try to keep them, you know, within walking distance of the outside. 

Janine I love that. The thought of you walking around the Chateau shouting “Claude Monet get out of that bed immediately. Bad boy.” It's a bit like me. Last week, my bread man came to deliver the bread and we were just standing there talking. And then Bette Davis came running around the corner and she was screeching, followed by a screeching Joan Collins. And then George Clooney came up behind them, strutting about and I'm like, Bette Davis, get back in your pen. And you Joan Collins. And you George Clooney, and my bread man, he just looks at me. He's like, you're absolutely mad. But I love to give my animals all these names. So have yours all got artist names. 

Karina No, no. The chickens are all they're all named after sisters in Pride and Prejudice. So it's a little bit like that. We built this chicken house out of all of the pieces that we've had from the chateau. So that was our brief to ourselves to repurpose everything. So we call that Long Bourne Manor. 

Janine I wonder sometimes if the French think we're a bit crazy when we foreigners come to France and we create these, you know, palaces for our chickens, for our poultry, and we give them all names like this. And I really did think that as I live in a very like a farming community where people basically grow them for the poton the whole, not for pets like I have them for the eggs until I discovered that my neighbour, Jean Claude, he has a chicken that he absolutely loves and he entered her for a Miss Poule competition they actually hold here. Yes, they actually have like a Miss World chicken competition. And he entered. Yeah, he entered his chicken and his wife said oh he has no chance to win, she does not have the right temperament. She is bad mooded chicken. You have to be a happy chicken to win. It's not just about looks just like you know Miss France competition. Maybe something happens to you in France, you will become a bit chicken crazy. I don't know. 

Karina] I'm not too sure. But I think in the community there's always this sort of thing about, you know, that the people, you know, the Australians that are in the chateau, they're a little bit crazy. So I'm not sure if it's the chateau, or the animals or the names. I'm not too sure which came first. 

Olivier Talking about the community, Karina, as a French person I have a quick question for you. How did the neighbours react to you buying and restoring the castle? 

Karina I think the local community has been so supportive of us restoring the chateau and I think also in the way that we have gone about it and what we hope is a respectful restoration ongoing to the past. There were so many people in the local community whose  lives and their families have been that have been part of the chateau for centuries. And it's very often, you know, normally weekly that someone will arrive at the chateau and say that, you know, their great grandfather worked in the mine or they worked in a bakery or worked at the chateau. And we have many friends that come from the local community. One lady whose mother was the cook at the chateau when she was a small child. It's quite extraordinary really, to have that support. And there are many people in the community who for example, when they go past, they always salute the chateau and they've been doing that for generations. And I think that's one of the things is that coming from a country like Australia and from Western Australia where you don't understand or experience the whole history and what it really means to purchase the chateau, you don't really purchase it - because it's living and breathing itself from its own history. And I think that's why it's really in the community that we've been so well accepted. 

Olivier Yeah, that's a very nice support to have when you start something like this, I guess. 

Karina Yes, absolutely. And the French government has also given us a Medal of Honour for the work that we have achieved up to date, and that's a great confirmation of the work that we're doing it and doing it in a way that is respectful for the history. 

Janine ] It's just amazing, isn't it? And in fact, I mean, I think the reason I found you in the first place and I can't even remember how long ago it was now is several years ago. But I had a Facebook page and one of the people following me on the Facebook page was a French man called Fred. And I think he lived in your area. And he messaged me and he said, you know - I was I was quite starting off then with my website - and he said, oh, there's this absolutely gorgeous chateau in the village and this crazy Australian lady who bought it and she's doing it up. And he said you were crazy because the amount of work it was clearly. And he said, but it's so beautiful and it's like something out of a fairy tale and you should write about it. And I looked at your Facebook page and I thought, wow, I was just completely blown away. And I thought, yeah, it's crazy to take on such an enormous project. And I remember contacting you and I wrote yes, just a little bit about it. And, and people went completely crazy for it. It's sort of almost overnight and well, certainly it went viral on my website. I just think. Yes people just completely fell in love with your story. And  it's clearly not a fairy tale. It's clearly not a walk in the park, because this must be a massive amount of work. And I know from reading your blog that you started that you had to do it with all the authorities. And it's not hasn't really all been a bed of roses, has it? I mean, looking back, are there enough parts that stand out in your mind where you go, oh, you know, at that point I could just given it all up and gone home. 

Karina I think that that's an ongoing thing of feeling. It's not about… it's not a regretful feeling. It's just sometimes that it's overwhelming, these challenges. And just when you feel that that one, you've overcome one challenge and then another one presents and it feels like you're sort of always trying to climb over the mountain as opposed to, you know, these mountains were not meant to be climbed. So it is very challenging. It's been very challenging with the historical monuments. We haven't requested any financial assistance. All the work is being carried out privately. And not that we didn't apply, but we haven't been you know, some people have been able to receive grants or financial assistance. But that hasn't been the case with the chateau. And not that that we expected that in the beginning by any means. It's just that like, for example, one year one of the big walls fell down and it took a year of rebuilding. So there's always these twists and turns with it all the time. I think it would be untrue to say that, that you didn't ever feel that way because, you know, sometimes I wake up and I think, oh my gosh, what have I done? And sometimes you know, sometimes I do want my life back again. But then I know that it would never go back the same way again. And having had this experience, it's just been extraordinary in so many ways. And I think the same. When you first approached me, Janine, and asked me to write a piece for your blog, and I did. And for us it also went viral. 

Janine It's extraordinary, really, isn't it? Yeah. I mean, you didn't get financial help and that must be difficult. Which reminds me, did you actually speak French when you came out and took this out in the first place? 

Karina No, No, I didn't. But fortunately, like, part of this project, it is a family project. And also my children have been instrumental in this progressing. My daughter speaks French. She learned at school, but French came very easy to her. But it's been like, it's been very difficult for me. But anyway, I do my best and I think I sound a lot better than what I do. But that's always evident to the local village with people saying to me, “you should be a lot better than that!” But I'm trying. 

Janine I can just imagine, you know, dealing with historical monuments, does every room come under the term historical monument or do you get a break? 

Karina Yeah. And also the exterior as well. So every single part of the chateau inside and out is listed as a grade one historical monument. 

Janine So when you want to do something to it, you want to change something or you want to rebuild or restore, do you have to do you have to literally send them details of what you're doing. 

Karina Well in in the beginning that was very difficult because I would you know, we would have to engage two architects, of course, because, you know, you’re putting back something which needs to be structurally and engineered correctly, particularly if the chateau is going to be used for different purposes in the future, which for us, I mean, we didn't know what we're going to use it for or what that would be. But for anyone that would use it, you know, like weight distribution, etc., things like that had to be considered. So for the first few years, probably five, it was extremely difficult with the Historical Monuments. And then just before COVID, they changed their team. They had equal representation of male/female in the team and then suddenly the process for us became so much easier. We can now deal with just the local architect in the local prefecture, we don't have to go through such an enormous authorisation, for example, to say, paint the colour of a wall. That's been significant and certainly taken a lot of pressure off us financially, but also just emotionally and physically sustainable as well. 

Janine We have to ask for permission to change the colour of our shutters and that's quite normal in France. Yes, to change anything in any room at any given time. I can't imagine time consuming. That would never be finished. 

Karina Yeah, well, and that was really overwhelming at that point in time and jiggling things, you know, with the Historical Monuments in Toulouse or in Paris and travelling up to Paris to try and get something off the ground and was quite exhausting. Then when they came on site and I was so worried and I thought, oh, they're going to come on site and they're going to be so unhappy. And because I do regular checks and yeah, I got myself all worked up and soon as they walked out from all these cars, they all turned up and I'm like, oh, I'm so really overwhelmed by this. And then I got out of the cars and they greeted me at the front. They said, we so appreciate what you've been doing. Thank you so much. I was like, oh my goodness. And then as they walked around the chateau, they, you know, they said that we really need to make this easier, this process for you because we so appreciate what you're doing and the way that you have done it. For example, we put in new bathrooms. It was used as a school holiday camp for a while. So we used the same places and we'd had the bathroom doors all made from timber, from the trees that had fallen down on the park and a local artisan had made them. And so the Historical Monuments were saying, look, you know, how did you do that? And could we use the same artisans and recommend them? So, you know, it was really great that they appreciated the efforts that we were going to and the way that we were doing it with that, with the process. And then it sort of removed that great big fear factor. 

Janine I can imagine. But also, I mean, I love that. They walked in and they saw what you did. Because I know when I look at your Instagram page and we look at the before and after pictures, it's obvious that you've done an absolutely wonderful restoration. And I also know that because of this, you were able to share the chateau with other people. And I wonder if you could tell us a little bit more about, you know, how you share the chateau and what you've got planned for the future? 

Karina Well, in the very beginning, when we first started on Facebook was when we both met online. Janine and you asked me to write. I woke up sort of the next day and I thought that my children had sort of messed around on our Facebook page or whatever. Then suddenly there was all these thousands of followers. And then then we saw an email from the Huffington Post and we went, Oh, well, this must be legitimate or something. And then our 15 year old neighbour at the time in Western Australia said, Why don't you start Instagram? So we thought, okay, well, yeah, that's a good idea. So we did that and then we - just from that article, we got such support from media, from people in general, from around the world wanting to come and help, that we knew that for someone to come down into the region and help or come and visit for just a day, it's just it seemed like too far to travel and too much to see with just having a short visit. So my son said, well, then why don't you offer it sort of like something where someone could come and stay three, five or seven nights and be part of it. So we started to do that and that is just been very successful and also contributes to the restoration of the chateau immensely. So that has been really valuable for the chateau, because what's really important about putting the chateau back to work is that we find a way that it's sustainable for the future, whether it's our family or future generations or other families, that the Chateau will continue to exist in the future. 

Janine I hope to come and see it myself one day. I don't mind. Come in and dig in your garden for you or groom your cats! 

Karina  That would be greatly appreciated. 

Janine Can people stay with you at the Chateau? 

Karina Yes. We actually have stays. So we have three, five and seven nights last week and we had a winter wedding at the chateau. 

Janine Oh, wow. That must have been so beautiful. 

Karina It was so beautiful. Not a lot of heating because we only managed to put in electricity last year. So we have a few rooms that have a little bit of heating, but not a great deal. So we had a big firepit at the front and that helped. But at least we have electric blankets now. But in the summer and spring and fall, you know, the temperature is beautiful. 

Janine So what, you had no electricity for all those years of restoration. You were running cables to make things work. 

Karina Yeah, we had temporary power in the kitchen. So this is the first winter I've actually had electricity in my bedroom. And me. Well, I used to call it Survivor Chateau. Survivor Life a little bit there. I'd put a tent in my room and it was so funny because at one point when we received the Medal of Honour from the French government, I was offered a beautiful stay for a few nights at the newly opened Ritz in Paris. And you get these beautiful peach coloured slippers. So here I was in my my green fluoro tent with a one of those LED lights, but I still had my fluffy slippers from the Ritz. But now I have heating, which is really exciting. 

Janine Congratulations! 

Karina Really. Well, last year we did a commercial shoot for Zimmermann, so we we often have commercial shoots at the Chateau the way that it is. And as a result of that commercial shoot, we were able to upgrade our electricity from nine kilowatts to 15 and put electricity in. 

Janine I just actually can't even imagine what it must be like because you know, the rooms you must have been using all those rooms in by candlelight like it used to be. 

Karina  Yes. Yes. 

And you suddenly realise that you can actually live with candlelight and it's like, I mean, obviously you don't have TV and and I don't even think about TV. Right. So yeah, you’ve got these candle light rooms and then walking around you can actually see your own shadow on the walls. I mean you don't get to see anything like that anymore. So there's, there's lots of really beautiful, wonderful places with having candlelight now that we do have some electricity and we didn't put in much, we just put in two power points into each room, one for heating and one for a lamp, we didn't put overhead lighting in the medieval part of the chateau because I think that to go all the way and put in full electricity everywhere would be a complete shame to the history and also to experience that way of life. So it's a little bit of balance between the two, but I forget to even put the lights on anyway. I forget that it's got electricity! 

Janine And then you've got used to the shadows of the candle. Must be so hard. I remember the first year I moved to France and I live in a farmhouse and we had no electric heating or anything. We had no central heating. We had one fire in the whole house. And I honestly, I used to sit in the greenhouse crying because it was the warmest place there was to be. Even though it was in the garden. There was no heating but it was warmer than the house. And I used to make a list of things I would do, like divorce my husband for making me come out. I would go back to London where it was warm and I could have central heating. But you do know you come to terms with these things, don't you? It takes a bit of pragmatism and a bit of courage and a huge amount of determination. And I have to say, Karina, you have determination in bucketloads. 

Karina You know, I think it's just a case of making a decision, realising that there's a lot of goodness in that. And yeah sure, it's overwhelming. And you know, like for example, coming from Western Australia where I'm used to the heat - and the Catalan builders would say to me, look, you've got to get thicker blood, thicker blood. And I'm thinking, Well, how does one find thicker blood, you know, to keep warm? And you know, you adapt to different ways and, you know, chop wood, which I was never used to doing. But all of this and bringing this historical monument back to life - and it's really now working chateau, it's become such a gift of life. And I think that the work that is done is, is really just love that's now really, truly visible. And it's a remarkable thing to have that support from around the world because that makes that love so much more visible as well. 

Olivier Yes. Yeah, it's such a great story and amazing story as Janine was saying earlier. And it seems that your lives are part of the history of the chateau now. But at the same time, can you see yourself ever giving this up, selling it, or this is it for you? You found your heart's desire? 

Karina Last year someone did offer to purchase the chateau and we were offered a significant sum to for someone to purchase it. And we thought really hard and deep about it, and we just couldn't do it. We thought, what would we do if we did give it up? I mean, life would never compare to the fullness of life that we have because it's like living a life that is love, really unconditional love now. And like we were talking about Janine before with the animals, what would we even do with the animals? How could we how could we move to another place when they roam so free? And there's this beautiful symbiosis with nature? And it's a project that's just so much more than that. And not about money. And no, I can't imagine where anywhere else in the world that I could possibly live with such an abundance and an open heart. 

Janine Karina, thank you so much for joining us today. We love your story. Everyone loves your story. It's like a fairy tale, but a fairy tale with a huge amount of work. 

Karina Thank you, Janine. Thank you so much. And look, I really, you know, on behalf of my family and with the chateau, it was really your reaching out to us in the very beginning that made this story and the chateau known around the world, but in a really beautiful way. So it's us who should be thanking you. So we're very grateful for that. Janine.

Janine  It Was always going to happen. It's such a great story. 

Now - you can find out everything about the Chateau de Gudanes and Kaina's progress and see the most gorgeous photos at chateaugudanes.com 

Karina's Instagram page  is chateaugudanes. Check out the before and after photos that are absolutely amazing. We love your photos…