Guide to the chateau | Chateau de La Forge

Private areas

The château is our home too for part of the year. All rooms in both floors are open to guests with plenty of household items for you to enjoy your stay. The following areas are the few exceptions which are for our own personal use (to store our personal items when we are away) and therefore will be locked and/or labelled as ‘private’. Please don’t force them open. If there is anything you need but cannot locate it in the house, let us know and we will gladly help you find it. A few considerations:

There are two rooms marked private (see the floorplan below) that are kept for our own storage when we are away.
The piano in the dining room is for personal use and therefore it is locked, and
A couple of drawers and cabinets will be locked too and will be marked as private too

Ground floor & common areas

(floorplan and key notes)

Most things in la Forge are located where you would expect to find them. The only exception is probably the microwaves oven that we rarely use and therefore we put it in the pantry.

In the pantry too, you may notice a large (blue) boiler that supplies the property with both hot water (throughout the year) and heat (in winter). The heating thermostat is located on the main hall (on the wall next to the toilet door). However, the boiler is set in automatic so please do not change any of the settings. Instead, please reach out to us if you encounter any difficulties.

The water softener is located in the pantry too and, as with the boiler, it is set up in automatic mode and will have sufficient salt in it for the duration of your stay. There is no need to interfere with it in anyway.

The dishwater is next to the sink in the kitchen, and the washing machine is the pantry. Their use is self-explanatory, but please let us or Anita know if you need any help with their operation.

The TV set is located in the Library (the TV room) and it has access to both the internet as well as to the basic orange TV package (the equivalent to the freeview channels in the UK). There are remote controls for the TV set and the orange TV box respectively next to the TV set. In case of access problems, the orange TV box may need to be reset. It is worth noting that the sofa bed in the TV room is a sofa-bed (that can be use in case of emergencies. If you need to use it, please let Anita know and she will provide extra bed linen for it.

Finally, the entrance lights (on the North façade of the house) are set up on a timer. However, they can be switched off completely with one of the switches in the entrance hall if needed.

First floor bedrooms

(floorplan & key notes)

On the first floor, the entrance to the laundry room can be found in the small landing on the way up from the ground floor. We used to have the washing machine in this room, but we have now moved it to the pantry since it has proven a more practical location in which to have it. That said, there is a clothes airer hanging from the ceiling in the laundry itself, as well as another one for use outdoors.

As you can see, there are en-suite bathrooms in all bedrooms with either traditional bathtubs or modern walk-in showers. A couple of considerations:

In order to avoid problems with the septic tanks during your stay, please do not throw anything into the toilets other than toilet issue.
All bathrooms are equipped with electrical towel rails. They are easy to operate. However, please remember to switch them off when you are not using them, since they can get really hot.

Finally, be careful when using the walk-in showers since the floor in (and around) the shower itself will be (may be) wet and slippery.