Update On The Upcycled, Freestanding, Vintage Kitchen

This is taking a lot longer than I thought it would and, as a result, is a little frustrating. However this is mainly because at present the kitchen to be hasn’t any light in it, so as this is winter and the light fades early it inevitably cuts down on the time I have to work in there.

Added to that I’ve changed the colour scheme. I’ve kept the yellow, obviously, but instead of lavender I’ve added a pale, duck egg blue as well as the teal for the baguette bin.

Additionally the amount of coats I’ve had to put on the wood has lengthened the time. As it was a dark colour, even though I’d used a spray primer coat, it’s taken several coats to cover it sufficiently. I thought that spray primer would save time, but it never goes on thick enough and just seems to give me a cough. I just swapped to a normal primer and it’s seems to be going a lot quicker.

Nevertheless a glimpse of what the kitchen will be like is there. I’m hoping that if you’re in a position, like us, were funds are limited it will give you ideas about how to get the kitchen you want with minimal outlay. I’ve outlined costs of the furniture throughout to give you an idea of how much this would be as a project.

The bookcases were in situ prior to the start, so I can’t put a price on them. However it’s a good example of using what you have in an inventive way. I’ll post some picture later with close up shots of them, but there are a few to give you an idea in this post.

They have taken a long time too, because I wanted to cover the wallpaper on the back of each case. I used some polyfiller to give a rough, textured appearance to the rear. You can see I’ve painted the casing the soft, buttery yellow and left the shelves in the wood. These needed staining and a few coats of clear varnish each side to bring them back up to scratch. There have also been coats of varnish on the cupboards themselves, which I want to add more to to make it extra durable.

It might seem a little crazy, but I’ve moved some of our kitchen items in here already. Firstly so I could work out where everything would go and if there was enough cupboard space and secondly as our current kitchen that were using in another part of the house is too small for all our stuff, so it’s handy.

Here are some close ups of the shelves. I love these old, vintage, French images that I’ve put in new frames….

You can see all the storage jars which I’ve separated out into three seperate sections….

I love the black and white Virgin Mary picture.

I think the combination of wood and paint gives it a more sophisticated edge than the paint alone would have.

The sideboard you can see here in its original state….

We bought this in France for our huge living room in the house we initially rented. It was less than 30€, I think because it was so huge and old not many people would have bought it. It is really solidly built, with not a piece of flimsy board anywhere on it. The drawers and everything seem to be solid oak. I love the way the yellow paint shows up the intricate wood detail.

The dresser top you can see we brought with us from the uk. It is also a second hand buy, solid wood throughout and well made. It cost me £60.00 originally, so so far for the furniture alone we’re talking about 120,00€ maximum wth exchange rate and, as like the bookcases, we already had these items I haven’t actually spent any money on them beside the paint since we’ve moved. Heaven knows how much solid, freestanding kitchen units would cost in reality (but take a look here to get an idea).

As I was painting it I suddenly thought of the rose handles I had and gave them a try. I love the result, but you can’t see them very clearly in the pictures. I’ll put a better set on later, when we’re a little further along with the project.

I’ve yet to add some window film I already have, you can see it here. It’s Laura Ashley’s Josette pattern and features roses.

When I realised how well it would go together I also remembered that Laura Ashley did a wall tile in the same design, so I’ve got some for the splash back (about £150.00 for 3m squared). Here’s they are..

We plan on having the sideboard house the sink with brass taps. It will mean cutting a hole in the top and we’ve already reduced the height of the sideboard by cutting off the bottom of each legs.

To make it waterproof we’re going to put tiles on the top. I originally chose these Laura Ashley ones in grey as I thought they would reflect the stone chimney breast well. However they are huge, and are not really adaptable to a work top. That’s the problem of buying on the Internet I guess.

We’re going to use them in the entry way you can see just between the bookcases. I think I’m going to go for some kind mosaic tiles for the worktop, we’ll see.

We’ll need some money to have the plumber come to sort out the plumbing for the sink and also the electrics, so I have to concentrate on other areas in the meantime.

My attention has therefore turning to the kitchen island, which was an old sideboard and somebody had already turned into an island. Here it is before….

I’ve managed to find some wood mouldings (about 25€) which I’ve applied to make it more in line with the sideboard and I’ve painted it yellow and stained the top dark too. Inside, as with the inside of the side board, is the light, duck egg blue colour.

I’ve added the iron towel ring, the rose hooks, and the dark oak curtain rail as well as the paint and varnish job. In total these other fixtures were about 50€. Also the handles for the drawers, which I think reflect the iron towel ring really well, are original Art Nouveau ones that I’ve salvaged from elsewhere. I’m yet to complete it with curtains on the open side of the island.

However one thing I have added are these draw organisers with waterslide decals that designate what each compartment is for. Here’s a sneak peak….

but I’ll do a complete post on that later.

The island, at 450€, was my worst buy. I was taken in by the fact that it was already done up as an island. But, you know what? I could have bought the cupboard for about 30€ like the sideboard, which is basically what’s it is and the same size, and I did the same amount of work anyway. Annoying really, but again you live and learn.

However, having said that as every other pierce of furniture in there so far has been something we already had so far we’ve spent 500€ on the kitchen, which is pretty much the island as we had the sideboard etc. Even if we’d bought the sideboard and dresser it would have been about 600€. I think the maximum I’ve spent on paint was about 150€, and I’m over estimating that.

Again, where would you get a solid, free standing vintage kitchen for that amount?

I’m about to start painting the ceiling and hopefully we’ll at least have the lights in soon. In the meantime if you want to see more of my kitchen plans you can look at this post here.