Kitchen Plans

I have a lot of soft furnishings to complete in the sitting room, and I keep getting interrupted by my husband or the little ones, so it’s something I’m going to return to when he goes away again on business. The last touch for the dining room is similar -I want to stencil the ceiling, but I need a bit of time and space to do it. As the kiddos are at school most of the day I’d planned on doing it when my darling man was out of the way too. That and, to be honest, I’ve kind of run out of steam for that room. I’ll get to it, just not yet.

So, I’ve started on the kitchen.

We have a small working kitchen at present, but in the other side of the house is the old doctor’s surgery which is a very large room -and we plan to have a kitchen in it.

When we moved in I’d thought I’d make a kitchen diner in the centre of the house and have a formal sitting dining room one end and an informal sitting room the other, This would have taken a lot of work, walls knocked down etc. This is an ancient house. Pre 1850s, though we don’t know the exact date as records weren’t kept prior to then. As a result the stone walls are super thick and therefor a huge, (HUGE!) task.

Gradually over time my plans have changed and changed again until we’ve got to the point were we’re just keeping everything pretty much the way it is and getting it to work. Happy about that.

Today I’m on the couch, sprained ankle, and I thought I’d share with you my plans.

The kitchen had a suspended ceiling – an ugly, functional, polystyrene thing – which had large, square electric lights. perfect for a doctors surgery, terrible for a cosy and stylish home. So I’ve managed to get the tiles down and I’m working on the light fittings, but I need the help of my pops who’s unavailable at the moment; as a result my attention has turned to what I can do next.

I’ll just outline the make up of the room at the moment. There are some built in bookcases that aren’t too shabby….

a doorway with two doors attached (I presume for privacy reasons due to the surgery), a large stone fireplace….

a staircase…

and a window and door onto the garden…

with a sink in the corner.

I’ve checked under the laminate flooring and there isn’t a glorious tiled floor, or some other such wonderful find, just concrete. Pah!

My initial thought was to buy kitchen cupboards second hand and then paint them. But this HUGE piece of furniture was sat in the room and we couldn’t move it to another one. Gradually an idea started to emerge of a room with some free standing furniture and then maybe cupboards too, which developed into keeping the bookcases as open shelving with some free standing vintage pieces.

One of my favourite pins to do with kitchens have been to do with yellow kitchens….

I love the yellow with the dark wood and a oak floor. I also like the black range rather than the cream one so I’m thinking of getting one like this….

or this…

It may well be the smaller one as we already have a bread oven and woodburner and we’re thinking of building it in next to the range (you can see the bread oven in the picture of the chimney breast). Originally I wondered if this would look lopsided, but if you take a look at this picture here of a range next to another oven I think it’s could work.

I don’t think I’ll keep the exposed stone work as I plan on putting two light fixtures on the chimney breast and would really like sconces and a shelf too, like the images above.

Here in France they often sell an iron backplate for fireplaces. I’d previously thought of using one with tiles and then I saw an image on Pinterest with one already done.

There’s is a window by the stairs and like the idea of a window seat, along with a relaxed blind and maybe something café like curtains below.

I’ve already measured the space and I think our old, marble topped wash stand will fit underneath with the picture you can see at the bottom of the staircase.

Underneath I plan on keeping  veg in a large wicker basket, as well as a bowl to hold onions and garlic in. I already keep my spice bottles in a salvaged, wooden draw which can sit on the shelf in the washstand.

We just bought this central island dresser from the local Brocante. I’ll probably change the curtains and the colour and stain the top dark brown. I may add some mouldings too, as it’s  a little plain. That or I might add some detail with paint.

I’ve started painting the dresser and a dresser top with glass doors that I had previously to moving to France. I also already have a wooden dish rack which I plan on painting and staining the top in a dark brown. We’ll lower the dresser by reducing the legs and cutting a hole in the top of one of the cupboards to hold a porcelain sink unit with a drainer like this….

In fact I have a wooden dresser back and I’m thinking of using as a splack back like this….

I’ve also found some lovely vintage plates that I want to put above the sink in this kind of style…

I’vw a cupboard that I’ve previously painted white but I’ll now paint yellow to be a larder.

With the bookshelves I’m going to paint them completely yellow, but as you can see there backs have this ugly wallpaper. I’m thinking of replacing this with this paintable wallpaper with an embossed finish, which is excellent for old, uneven walls….

This is especially good in this kitchen as the walls have been lined with thin polystyrene sheets for insulation, so I’d prefer not to remove all the paper and put this on over the top.

So in the end I’ll have open shelves displays like these…

These are my plans that I’m gradually working on. I can see this taking anywhere between six months and a year (😐). I can’t wait until that first morning coffee at that island looking through our kitchen door window. Bliss!

Repurposed Armoire Carvings

These actually aren’t just repurposed armoire carving tops, I’ve also used some brackets from a dressing table.

Firstly the armoire top. I’d been wondering in my local brocante when I saw this amongst the furniture in the less, ahem, showy items (yep, the junky section). It’s dirty and my first thought was ‘20€, what a joke’. Off home I went. Then literally in the night it popped in my head. In fact, it was more an image of it above our bifold doors.

I still think 20€ is a lot, but I’ve researched carvings like this to do the same job and they’re at least 130€. It doesn’t seem so bad in comparison does it?

So Monday morning I was there and home it came with me (with a light fitting for our soon to be kitchen, but I’ll tell you about that later). As I was driving home I remembered the arms to a mirror from a dressing table mirror that I’d kept. I was going to use it for a different project, but my plans have changed and I’d spotted them recently making me wonder what I’d now do with them.

I was thinking about the abrupt, dead end the carving would have when I removed the side struts. My initial thought was that I could match the three together. However when I put them in place it was evident this wouldn’t work as the straight sides where too big for ends of the carving.

Looking at them again I realised that if I joined them together they might make a nice heading to the other side of the bi fold doors.

I put the carving above the doors – too big; they hit the dado rail I’d put up in the room. My mind turned to the mirror struts, but then I remembered something else. When my family and I had moved here we bought an armoire for our rented property. Long story short (unlike this one) it broke. I kept lots of bits to use elsewhere, including the top. I sought it out in the garage and, with it’s intericate, traditional carvings, it was perfect for above the door in the dining room.

So this is how we’re looking now. A large armoire top which is going in the hallway, mirror scrolls to be joined together and put above the bifold doors between the sitting room and dining room and another armoire top above the other side of those doors in the dining room.

The dining rooms colours of teal green and blush pink are being used in the doors too. I’m not going to show you a full picture of this yet, as there’s more work to be done in the dining room and the lights not good today. The next thing I’m working on in there is a possible stencilled ceiling.

Id rather gotten bored of finishing this room off, I’ve been waiting for someone to make a patters for a dolly light switch before I showed the whole room, this has ré-energised me.

Little Details

Just the door – don’t look at what’s around it (ha).

The bedroom is still a strong yellow, but I’m planning to have decorative paneling half way up the wall in this dusky pink and toning down the yellow above. But after we broke through the doorway I couldn’t resist painting the door after I did added this glad she door handle.

If you look at the other post you’ll see the door had wall paper on the paneling which actually had a fabric like mesh underneath. The only way I could completely remove it was with a heat gun – the kind you use to strip paint.

The top panel felt funny as I was working and then when I heard a cracking sound I realised why – it was a window. The other side of the door is padded and I didn’t  have a clue.

I carried on carefully working round the broken glass anyway as I remembered I had this ‘Josette’ window film from Laura Ashley tucked away. You can see in the next image the cracked glass which the film is now holding together.

The finger plate is an original, mirrored Art Deco piece and I got it from eBay along with the vintage glass handle.

I haven’t taken the other side of the door off yet so the panelling is behind the glass. It will eventually lead to a walk in wardrobe and then a bathroom if we’re able to get the plumbing in place. That’s going to take a little while yet though. In the meantime I’m loving the little vintage pieces.

What do you think?

Little Details

I’ve so wanted to share this with you, another of my little finds. This handle is of porcelain Limoges and I found it through French eBay. I put it on our bedroom door and, even though I have no intention of decorating the rest of the room yet, I couldn’t resist going to buy a can of paint to paint the door around it (hence the imperfect paint job at present).

I won’t get around to the rest of the room until next year probably, but as I said in this post it’s beginning to take shape as I find little things in brocante’s that I can’t resist.

I’m also working on the internal door we managed to open the other day. It had been locked and as there was no key so I was finding it difficult to close the door. I’d taken off the lock completely and managed to get all but one of the screws off – however that one screw meant I couldn’t get to the locking system and open it.

Faced with a choice of a new lock I took it to the chandlers across the road. The lovely couple who run it are so helpful with the husband helping me with advice on how to do things, which professionals to use (pointing at names in the phonebook and shaking his head when he thinks they’re not very good) along with the correct pronunciation of my adopted tongue! I explained the situations searching for a new lock – but he took it from me out the back and fixed it!!

I was so pleased I brought them both a bottle of wine and a box of chocolates.

I’ll post a picture of the internal door with its glass handle and mirrored finger plate when I’ve got that little bit further. (Yes, I’m still finishing those curtains – this weekend I’m hoping)

A Tour Of The Garden

 

You may have noticed that I haven’t been posting as frequently; the hubby and I have been hard at work in the garden. It’s been delightful! We’ve never had a secluded garden- ours have all been tiny to small and overlooked. So working in the peace and beauty, birds singing has been wonderful.

Hubby has been severely pruning trees and I’ve been the one to break down the trimmings and move them. We have a covered I moved them to, but now I’m stripping the branches and organising them (which you can see above). Our big plan for this year is to replace the current fireplace and insert a woodburner. So these will hopefully come in useful come the winter.

I thought I’d share some of my favourite spots with you here.