Progress - Kitchen

February 2014

While fit-out of the Kitchen will be one of the last tasks in the renovation, it was necessary to get preparatory work done as early as possible, and to renew the services (electricity, water and gas) as early as possible. Unfortunately, the timing of these latter tasks was somewhat beyond our control, since they relied on the service authorities (EDF, ERDF, Veolia) coming to do the formal installations and conversions. One of the first jobs was stripping out all the old cabinets, cupboards and appliances. This left quite a mess on the eastern wall of the Kitchen, with decades of accumulated grease and grime becoming apparent. It was also found that the floor under the cabinets was wooden, unlike the concrete floor in the rest of the kitchen, and several areas of this floor were rotten, hence requiring repair as in the Living and Dining rooms. The old (black) electrical switchboard in the top left corner of the wall was bypassed and a new (white) switchboard was installed next to it. Later, this new switchboard will be moved to the left to fit within a services cupboard to be built in the corner of the Kitchen, after the sink is removed.

March 2014

The Kitchen ceiling was also going to be lowered to just under the level of the beam currently dividing the two areas of the Kitchen. In removing the existing ceiling, which was in poor condition, an interesting sight emerged. Directly above the main part of the Kitchen is Bedroom 2, which has a marble fireplace, but there is no fireplace or chimney below this chimney. The chimney starts on the 1st Floor. The Bedroom 2 fireplace rests on a "reinforced" section of flooring attached to the bottom of the sub-floor as shown below. This area will be further reinforced before the suspended ceiling is installed in the Kitchen.

After the kitchen sink was removed, a trench was dug in the kitchen floor for pipes to carry the wastewater from the dishwasher down to the main wastewater pipes in the basement area. At the right of the photo below, the new double-glazed windows can be seen, waiting for installation.

April 2014

While doing work on the internal wall of the kitchen, between the kitchen and the Hallway Toilet, it was found that some previous renovations were not done to a high standard, and a large crack was apparent in the wall after all the wallpaper was removed. Rather than attempt to repair this crack, it was decided to build a new block wall between the two rooms.

However, building this new wall created a problem with the proposed kitchen design. As noted earlier, the new kitchen was to have a sink area on this wall between the kitchen and the old toilets, with the front of the sink bench level with the protruding section of wall, as shown at the right of the drawing below. With the thicker wall in place, this was no longer feasible, so a new design was required.

After considering a number of options, it was decided to place the sink in the end of the island bench. To do this the bench was widened to over one metre, with a new set of 35cm-deep cabinets backing onto the 60cm-deep cabinets facing the stove and facing out towards the dining area in the kitchen, as shown in the drawings below. A set of open shelves will now run along the wall where the new sink was originally placed. Once more, the HomeDesigner software was very useful in examining the feasibility and appearance of such a design. One more change that can be seen in the drawings is that the tiles on the wall behind the stove have been replaced with glass panelling, after it was found impossible to find tiles that would carry the look of the hallway into the kitchen. The same type of tiles on the Lightwell floor have also been replaced with large stone tiles that will be used on the kitchen floor.

May 2014

Work continued on the “grunt” items in the kitchen, including plumbing and cabling. ERF, the electricity company, came and installed the new meter and then work continued in earnest on the associated switchboard. Since lots of new electrical items are being installed in the house, including the domotique control system, the wiring very quickly became complex, to say the least. Once again the value of the doubled-wall became apparent, with plumbing pipes coming down from the upper floor bathrooms before heading to the waste-water pipes in the cellar, as did the suspended ceiling which hid lots of cabling and VMC ductwork.

June 2014

Another change to the Kitchen design became necessary in June when serious attention was paid to the cabinetry that was soon to be installed. We had decided a while ago that we would use IKEA cabinets as the basis of the designs. While they may not be the absolute best in cabinetry, they do provide a good cost-effective base around which to build the kitchen. While I was in Moissac in February, we had gone to IKEA in Toulouse to check out the range available, and since IKEA are the same the world over (so we thought) I had followed up with visits to IKEA in Melbourne. I had decided on using the FAKTUM range of cabinets, and had designed the ground floor Kitchen and second floor Kitchenette using these items. However, at the last moment I decided to check the prices using the French IKEA website, only to discover that after 20 years, IKEA had decided to change to a new design, METOD, and to phase out the FAKTUM range. Since one of the reasons for going with IKEA was the availability of components and replacements, we decided to switch to the new METOD range for future compatibility.

Unfortunately, the two ranges are not totally compatible with respect to sizes and fittings (bad decision, IKEA), so this required quite a bit of re-design to make things fit into the available space. We also decided to widen the island benchtop from about 1m to 1.2m, and were forced to increase the width of the tall cabinet near the window from 40cm to 80cm to accommodate all the extra switchboards and cabling. The new Kitchen layout looks more like that shown below.

July 2014

Work has continued on the installation of services in the Kitchen, but has been delayed by the problems in getting the water, gas and electricity authorities to do anything regarding official connections. Since all the connections occur in the Kitchen, we cannot proceed with the fitting of cabinets and appliances until everything has been signed off. At the moment, it’s all just a mess of cables and pipes, sufficient to allow other things to proceed in other parts of the house.

August 2014

With the electricity now officially connected (but not the gas), further work has proceeded in the Kitchen, with the eastern and northern walls being doubled, and a new concrete floor installed to replace the rotting wooden floor along the eastern wall. Unfortunately, as all the plumbing for the house was being finalised, we realised that the water pipe connecting the house with the mains water on the other side of Rue Gambetta was only a 16mm pipe, which will hardly be sufficient to enable all the new showers and toilets to function simultaneously. At attempt was made to get Veolia to install a larger pipe from the other side of the road, but were told that as part of the Rue Gambetta rejuvenation project, a new water main and connecting pipes to all properties would be installed in 2015, and that they couldn’t do anything special for any one property this year. This means that we will have to advise the band members to shower on a timetable this month, but we won’t be able to have everyone operating independently until the new water connections are finished next year. Because of the delays with the service authorities, it has been decided not to finish the Kitchen now, but to use it as a storage area during the band tour. Most cooking and meal preparation will be done in the Storeroom (where the fridges are being temporarily installed) and on the back verandah where BBQs and hot plates will be located (hoping that the weather will be relatively fine).

So the start of the band tour in late-August 2014, saw the Kitchen with new windows, some walls, a functioning switchboard, a tiled floor and plumbing connections in the middle of the room waiting for cabinets and a sink to appear over the top of them!

March 2015

During early 2015, significant work was done on the Kitchen, which was the major unfinished room. Cabinets were installed, (including the tall cabinet at left which housed all the switchboards and electronic gear), the exhaust fan was installed along with the under counter fridges, and all the wooden benchtops were constructed for the wall bench and the island bench.

One thing that was incomplete, however, was the sink and plumbing for the island bench. We had designed the island bench specifically for a Domsjö sink from IKEA to be fitted. But IKEA were letting us down again (after they changed the designs and sizes of all their cabinets last year), and we could not find any stores with one of the sinks in stock, despite trying both French and Swiss IKEA stores. In desperation, the thought occurred to me that maybe we could get one in the UK and get Stuart and Christine Barry to bring it over when they come to Moissac later in the year (they had previously asked if we wanted them to bring something with them, although I don’t think they were thinking of a kitchen sink!). So I did a quick search of IKEA UK stores and found that many UK IKEA stores apparently had Domsjö sinks in stock. So I emailed Stuart and posed the question. His reply email was fortunately not negative, so we went ahead and ordered the sink to be delivered to Stuart’s house in Reading. We are very grateful for their help, so here’s hoping it all works out OK..

July 2015

In July, Stuart and Christine arrived from England for the barging season. Importantly, they had arrived with our Domsjö sink! So we took it up to the house and put it in the kitchen for Nico to install when he returns to work later in the summer.

September 2015

In September, Nico returned from a family trip to Japan, and continued work on the Kitchen. Soon the Domsjö sink was in place and connected, and all the other small jobs in the Kitchen were finished. It was put to good use as one of the venues for our Barge Artz function in July 2016, with a carpet made from the fleece of our Alpacas at Taggerty draped over the island bench.