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THE
FARMHOUSE - Kitchen
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This
room was, without doubt, the worst area on the entire
property. The stonework floors and timber had been blackened
by countless years of using the breadoven. The entire
room was brushed, sandblasted and cleaned out before
refinishing with a lime mortar coat and limewashing.
Fortunately most of the beams were in reasonably good
order, woodworm don't appear to be too keen on smoke!
The area to the right of the hearth was cleared out,
which included having to remove a large stone trough
weighing in at around half a ton. The water heater was
installed in this area and all the pipework for the
bathroom, which is actually above the breadoven at the
rear of the hearth. There is a 1 metre crawl space between
the top of the breadoven and the floor of the bathroom
which means all of the pipework and drains for the bathroom
are easily accessible from below the bathroom floor.
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The
old stove was cleaned up ( a French model from around
1901 and the forerunner of the modern Aga - complete
with a small hot water supply). The end wall of the
kitchen has worktop running down the entire length,
with units built from plaster block. The wall and shelving
units are made from tongue and groove pine board and
woodwashed. The design was copied from a a photograph
of an old french farmhouse kitchen, templates made for
the shelf supports etc and then made from scratch. The
rail running through the shelf supports is, in fact,
a piece of polished 15mm copper water pipe.
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Below
left is a close up of the kitchen shelving - all made
from good quality pine floorboards, as was the wall
unit, which used lambris for the rear panelling.
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| This was
finished with a woodwash (watered down emulsion paint)
then finished with two coats of water based acrylic
varnish to achieve the "old French" look. |
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photograph on the left below is taken from the same
position as the top left photo after the kitchen was
finished. Even we were surprised at the difference!
It just shows how much imagination you need when looking
at property - even I never believed how good it could
look. The area to the right is a pantry, although the
rear is removable to give access to the water heater.
The gas bottle was moved to its new housing outside
the house and the new oven fitted later. |
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| My
neighbour's daughter, Nadine, has always been one of
the first to inspect our finished rooms and has always
come up with the same comment "It's beautiful -
I love the English style" which was always something
of a let down considering I'd been doing my utmost to
create something French! The ultimate accolade for me
was when she saw the kitchen - "It's beautiful
- and so FRENCH!" Is that a result or what!! |
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