About a kitchen !!

It was May, and we had decided that if you were going to love the house, you would love her even without a kitchen.  A kitchen is so personal, you arrange it to suit how you live, how you cook, how you socialise.  It is the heart of the house, it is a place for cosy family suppers, and big social gatherings with friends and family.  I wanted you to be able to choose it for yourself.

But …….

I also still want to be able to enjoy being in our old home right up until the day you discover her, so in order to do that……………..  I needed a kitchen.  So we decided we would just do it, and enjoy it with our family and friends for as long as we are able.

Having put on the extension the kitchen is now 4.3m x 10.16m.  Yes, really, that is 43.68m² of kitchen.  So, how do you heat 43.68m² of kitchen?  You put in underfloor heating of course!  So that is what we did.  We have also supplemented it with some extra radiators on each end but most of the heat will come from an electric ‘mat’ under the tiles which will be controlled separately from the central heating.

It is a house deep in the French countryside, so I decided to plan one to reflect that.  It has many rustic features, we have taken the back wall down to the original stonework, we have wood style Italian tiling on the floor, two islands – one for cooking which will have it’s own small vegetable sink, and one with a small breakfast bar, an ideal place for taking your aperitif.

I am going to install a large kitchen range, with a double oven and 6 gas burners.  It is a  5 bedroomed house so lots of guests means you need a big oven which can cook multiple things.  There is a floor to ceiling fridge ‘encastré’, with a microwave next to it also ‘encastré’ in the floor to ceiling units.  A large butler sink in the kitchen and an identical one in the laundry room right next door.  There is a huge amount of storage available in the kitchen, but also, the cave, which is on the opposite side of the kitchen, has shelves so it can double up as a larder.  There is space in the laundry/boiler room to put a large upright freezer, tucked away out of sight.

At the far end is a large space for a dining table and chairs, for cosy suppers or Sunday lunches en famille.  There is extra storage outside in the small corridor leading to the dining room with space to display items as well as to hide them away.

We have lights suspended over both islands, spotlights above work units and the sink, floor lighting around the islands and a big pendant lamp over the dining table.  The work top is stone with flecks of bronze and the colour of the units is soft muted white and a sage green which reflects the colours of the garden you can see beyond through the two sets of double doors.

I can’t wait to come downstairs on a winter’s morning and feel the warmth coming up through the floor as I make my first coffee of the day.  It will be even cosier if it is snowing outside which it often does in February.  But on Summer mornings, you just throw open the windows and let the fresh air and sunlight in, and take your coffee outside to the garden or the small terrace directly outside the double doors.

I’ve attached some of the planner’s images so you can get an idea.  The green in the images is not the green it will eventually be but it will help you to see what a lovely space this new, rather large, kitchen will be.  I hope you like it.