He turned the lounge into a bedroom for his own use, and rented the three bedrooms to other students at his college.
"Sofas in the players' lounge, office furniture, the lot," says Archibald, who was used in his playing career to the elegant surrounds of the Nou Camp.
While the rooms are quite basic, the lounge and bar are cool and comfortable, and the restaurant showcases local vegetables, seafood and pré-salé lamb.
But this quaint resort is beginning to brighten up, with the grand Hôtel de la Plage now transformed into La Fabrique, a funky lounge bar and restaurant whose DJ gets guests dancing on the waterside terrace, while a year ago, the elegant Marie Collet, turned the top floor of her imposing house into a two-room B&B.
I tend to hoover the whole house once a week, which takes about half an hour, and the lounge once a day.
But I've also got a rechargeable sweeper, so I use that now for the lounge.
Gucci head honcho Tom Ford was booked into a room just along the corridor from mine, and ubermodel, Mark Vanderloo was practically a permanent fixture in the lounge bar.
The bar: There's a bar in the restaurant, or else you can drink in the quiet, comfortable lounge decorated in calm, serene colours.
We sit in a corner of the vast departure lounge.
Entitled Headbanging in the Mirror, it's wistful lounge music, serene and sunlit; and generally in keeping with all of Real Estate's sedate, suburban aesthetics.
The 14 rooms, seven of which have panoramic seaviews, have been decorated with giant blow-ups of vintage seaside postcards from the belle époque, while the ground floor combines a seafood restaurant, comfy lounge with vast leather armchairs and sofas, and a long wooden bar that is a popular haunt of St-Valéry locals.
