4 friends who bought a $243,000 derelict hotel in France are renovating it with help from strangers on TikTok. Take a look.

James Turner, Boris Levy, Nicolas Delaroche, and Adrien Lachappelle are friends with a shared passion for the arts.

Turner is a musician, Levy a director of photography, Delaroche a visual artist, and Lachappelle a photographer and videographer. And for just over a year, they've co-owned an abandoned hotel and chapel in the French countryside.

Turner, whose stage name is Hēran Soun, told Insider he and the gang began mulling over the idea of finding a property where they, and others, could live and focus on their art in 2020.

"We were dreaming and talking about buying a piece of land somewhere and setting up a little eco-village community, just a nice group of people to just create a nice way of life," Turner said.

Much of the responsibility of finding the property fell to the group members living in France, as Turner said he was still living full-time in California.

Toward the end of 2021, he got a call from Levy who told him he'd found the perfect property listed on Le Bon Coin, which is the French equivalent of Craigslist, he said.

It was La Boule D'or, a 12-bedroom hotel with a medieval chapel built on-site. In English, the name translates to "The Golden Ball."

"You go and buy like a half-broken toaster there," Turner said of Le Bon Coin. "You don't go on there and buy a 12-century chapel."

One of the first features you see walking into the property is a massive courtyard, which is right next to the reception, Turner said.

Known in French as the "conciergerie," it's almost like a little home, as he said that traditionally it's where the hotel manager would've lived.

Close by is the chapel, the 12-bedroom hotel itself, a shared kitchen, and the walled garden – an ideal spot for outdoor dining.

La Boule d'Or is located in Clamecy, a small village with medieval charm, according to the tourism website French Voyage. It's a three-hour drive from Paris, where most of the group grew up, Turner said.

According to the latest population figures shared by The National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies in France, just over 3,000 people were living in Clamecy in 2019.

"I wanted building inspections, and just to see this old thing, but as soon as Boris went there and saw it he called me up in California and said 'Are you in? This is so amazing,'" Turner said. "So I said, 'Yeah, I'm in.'"

At the time, Turner said he'd just gotten an advance on his second album from his record label.

Before making a decision, he thought back to a piece of advice he'd once gotten from a business music advisor. "'If you ever make any money from music, buy a home,'" the advisor told him. "'Get settled. Don't just go and waste it.'"

Putting aside his reservations, he and his three friends did the deed and bought the hotel for 250,000 euros, or around $243,000.

Renovating a hotel and chapel with essentially no experience is no easy feat, Turner said. And it didn't help that nothing quite worked as it should at La Boule d'Or.

From burst pipes to water dripping through the lights, Turner said the group quickly discovered they had a much bigger project on their hands than they anticipated.

For example, they noticed something particularly strange with the roof. At some point, when it was damaged years ago, the previous owners decided to re-seal it over the top of a chimney, he said. This means they still can't light a fire in there, he added.

"The smoke would just fill the roof cavity," Turner said. "We're still discovering a lot of cheap fixes which people have done over hundreds and hundreds of years."

"We switched on some of the refrigerators and one of them caught on fire," Turner said. "Plugged it in and it just started smoking."

But each challenge taught them a lesson. First and foremost, to work as a team.

"We just knew if we tested anything, we needed to have someone positioned on the floor underneath just to make sure nothing happened," Turner said.

"I had no idea how hard and how long it would take to make things just white," Turner said.

For two months, the gang labored on stripping back what he describes as the most "horrendous" wallpaper from each bedroom. Each room was a different color and design, he added.

"There was a brown room," Turner said. "We had to call it the tiramisu room just because we had to give some charm to it. But why paint everything brown?"

Stepping into each room prior to renovating them was "overwhelming" for the group.

From the "horrible lighting" fixtures to the "absolutely hideous" furnishing, Turner said there wasn't much they wanted to keep.

One of Turner's best experiences to date in the transformation process of the hotel has been finding beautiful vintage pieces to furnish the rooms.

"That was one of the biggest pleasures, was to go off to all of the flea markets," he said. "Looking for bedside tables and lamps, and just cool old furniture."

After realizing just how much work needed to go into transforming the hotel and chapel into an artistic oasis, Turner, who goes by @heransoun on TikTok, started sharing videos on the platform asking for help. As of Friday, he has 123,900 followers on the platform.

As he's the only non-French citizen in the group, Turner didn't have any local friends or family who could offer to support them during the process.

"I made a couple of, like, silly videos just like saying 'We need help, we bought a 12th-century Chapel and it's too much for us,'" he said, not knowing then just how many people would respond to the call.

Turner's most popular video so far, posted on October 6, has over 3.5 million views as of Friday.

So far, the group has welcomed 15 people at La Boule d'Or after seeing Turner's call for help on social media, he said. What's more, they currently have between 40-50 individuals scheduled to arrive in 2023.

None of their visitors are being paid, but food and accommodation at the property are provided for them by the group, he said.

"It's turned into a whole organization," Turner said. And in a sense, they've already achieved their goal of creating a space for people to live and work together side by side.

"We wanted our own space and to open it up to other people," he said. "To also just have connections with people like back in the real world and have big grand dinners, 'Game of Thrones' style."

Turner said an old book in the medieval chapel informed them that it was originally used as a hospital for "the poor and travelers."

"Then it became a hospital for the crusaders," he added. Crusaders were people who fought in a set of religious wars carried out by Christians and Muslims between 1096 and 1291, according to History.com.

Today, however, the chapel has become a social hub for those living and working at La Boule d'Or, Turner said. It's where the dinner parties and disco parties are held.

"We have loads of crazy lights and mirror balls everywhere and a big sound system," he said.

"Everyone who has come here has been suffering some kind of heartache. Whether it's been like death in the family, or a relationship ending," he said. "And then they leave rejuvenated and full of love."

Among visitors they've had so far, some have written the gang letters to tell them how being there gave them a "zest for life again."

But for the four friends, the journey to completing the renovation is far from over. Turner says they have spent 100,000 euros, or around $98,000, in renovations so far, and expects they will have to double that to finish the entire project by 2024.

Until then, life is set to be filled with fun and challenges.

"It's hard work but we are laughing, we are just having the time of our lives," Turner said.