I virtually live in my kitchen - it is 10mx6m & has 5 stupidly placed but not movable doors & 2 windows and a big fireplace so it was a bit complicated to organise. I drew lots of plans on the backs of envelopes & then went & had a chat with a menuisier ébéniste, the gravestone maker & a sheet metal factory (for a big rectangle behind the gas hob).
The end result is probably hopeless from other people's point of view but just right for me, there are lots of low cupboards, some of them oddly shaped so you don't bang yourself on them, and deep drawers for pans, I haven't got any cupboards high up and have a normal sized oven & a huge one and a huge gas hob spread around so people don't get in each other's way, There is a big (2.2x1.2m) island at one end with a granite top for making pastry etc, dumping hot pans. There are also two huge old dressers painted jolly colours for hiding things & 3 big bookcases because I feel sick if there isn't a book to hand. I also have a larder which is a room off the kitchen on the way to the laundry room, v handy for stocking cat food, sacks of pasta, multipacks of things... useful when we are snowed in for 10 days as happened the winter before last! I'm not a fan of tiles on the wall but there's a tiny bit of tiling (bright turquoise emaux de Briare swimming pool type tiles, a discontinued box because otherwise they cost the skin of your bum).
If there was one thing I could change it would be the floor which looks as if somebody spilt coffee all over it - the tiles were in situ when I bought the house though so I kept them. Their only good point is they don't show dirt because they already look filthy (thus saving me a lot of time wasted cleaning) so although I loathe brown I'm finally not that bothered by them.
Yeah right Andrew. Most of my neighbours here have decent size houses with pokey kitchens or corners of the lounge with a work top & a few units. We have a 11m x 3.5m kitchen & a 5m x 3.5m scullery which I built onto the rear of the house using the original pig sty footings so we're a bit spoilt. Our kitchen serves as a day room with table, chairs , settee, woody & tele. It looks out over our fields so is a great space.
I think I would be a bit more 'adventurous' if I was intending staying in the property but I think I need to be fairly conservative with colour in order to appeal to the majority of potential clients.
Also Shirley as mentioned earlier it's important to get the colour scheme of the walls correct also. Just strolling around showrooms is a great education and a veritable mine of info !
Our kitchen is also our dining room and my larder is very small, but has lots of shelves, up to the ceiling, so I can store quite a lot and see things more easily than at the back of cupboards.
It also makes my kitchen area look bigger because it is not full of wall-cupboards.
It sounds as though you have taken a step forwards today.
Err, you've obviously never seen a kitchen down here in the aveyron - our last one was over 20m², current one is a bit smaller, MIL's is about the same as are the rest of the family. Having said that, when I worked in St Brieuc, not a million miles from you, Vic, I did come across lots of pokey ones (kitchens that is!).
I'll be putting in a new one here (God knows when as I just haven't got the time) and it'll probably be But or Conforama, both of which are down the road in Albi. We've gone through the ropes with Cuisinella who came up with nice designs, plans and everything but it wasn't very practical although their kit is good, Scmitt at more reasonable prices if I remember correctly.
Ooh, I wish Jane ! Don't have ethe space unfortunately.
Just had a good look around BUT in Cahors and not the one near me. Their choice is rather different and more interesting than my branch ! However, I did get loads of ideas. I followed BUT up with a trip to Conforama. Conclusion for me was that although the selection was smaller the choice of kitchen available was more diverse. All in all a very fruitful afternoons work !
The one thing I don't understand is the size of the average French kitchen where there isn't usually room to swing a kitten. Kitchen? they're more like a breakfast bar! How a country of supposed food lovers manage anything other than re-heating a prepared meal beats me. Escoffier must be turning on his spit.
We made a new kitchen from the old one plus an adjacent bedroom and we had a problem with not enough wall space to hang the cupboards, as we have a lot of windows.
Our solution was to turn one corner into a larder and every French lady when she sees it says she wants one, so maybe that might be one of the ideas you could introduce?
Well Ikea is about 150 miles and BUT about 1 mile, makes life easier and maybe less hassle for any future problems etc. There are some good products out there but I agree Tony, it's best to change the sink etc. I fancy another stainlesss steel sink with modern taps etc but some people have suggested resin sinks which I have tried but find stain relatively easily.
We have all white but black appliances and worktop. We opted for a tiled splash back with a row of black tiles all done in a diamond pattern.
Castorama, as cheap as chips range
I have Ikea's off-white doors (no idea what they're called) with wooden worktops. The walls are off-white (Farrow & Ball something...). I thought the whole thing would be horribly clinical - it wasn't my choice, and it seemed to be, until I added some fabric-covered canvases in earth tones that picked out some of the colours in the 1930s flooring.
You can have Ikea doors painted, but everything I read (see all Ikea hack comments online), suggested that it would be best to have them done professionally. We had a sample door done, and the finish was good, but various things happened, and doors have remained white.
If you're going to sell the house, then I'd go for neutral every time. Neutral can look entirely different with a change of wall colour. I've seen kitchens in kitchen shops that I'd be able to live with for about five minutes and no longer!
Worktops: granite looks lovely, but chips are expensive to repair; granite also shows every speck of dust or flour. Wood needs sanding & oiling regularly, but at least you can sand out any little accidents...
Thanks for the info Jacquie. To be fair I would like the kitchen to be practical and easy on the eye. My added problem if you like is I want to install something with those two criteria plus with the thought in mind of finding something fairly 'neutral' as I am looking to sell the property so I suppose this could be considered as a 'makeover' to help make the property become more saleable.
Would white be considered as a neutral colour ? I do like white but would it appear to 'clinical' and invoke thoughts of a hospital or clinique maybe ? I thought about more cream colour to satisfy the majority of tastes. Ikea have some nice stuff but my nearest depot is a good two hours aaway at Bordeaux which is a pain. I had a look in BUT and the local Hygena who have deals on at the moment. Castorama also have some nice designs and i've heard the fitting service is very good.
After spending months visiting kitchen "designers" here in France, I rapidly came to the conclusion that there are two types of kitchen: those you cook in and those you look at. Most of the kitchen designers hadn't the slightest idea of the practicalities of storing pans, food processor attachments, crockery, etc - all design and no actual practical form.
Darty weren't too bad, and their designs are quite practical.
I spend hours looking at hinge quality, opening and shutting drawers, and so on. The main DIY shops had some nice stuff, but fell down seriously on the range available.
Friends who've been down the designer road shared horror stories of made-to-measure that didn't fit, companies that do most of the job and never come back to finish, etc.
In short, I now have another Ikea kitchen, and am overall happy with it. It's not perfect, but then it didn't cost the several tens of thousands more that a designer kitchen would have cost. Importantly too, I can add more to it fairly easily - or can I? Faktum has been replaced with Metod!
Although we have already bought our kitchen units you offer very sound advice there Shirley, I shall keep some of your suggestions in mind when fitting the sink/worktops especially.
Apart from the actual kitchen, the delivery charges need to be taken into consideration.
We had an Ikea kitchen in one of our houses in UK and they kept ringing us up to give a delivery date for the kitchen when we already had it. We could have had two extra!
Thanks Vic, that was my first thought but unfortunately the units were custom built and not at all standard sized ! This is a bugger as the easiest thing would be a cheapo makeover...
My other thought was to paint the units. Now, painting formica is possible of course but could I possibly do it properly so as not to make it look 'amateur' ?