So, I'll start from the beginning with the plans for our Kitchen. When we bought the house we were lucky enough to have a large amount of old oak left in our hangar. We had always planned to use as much of the resources we already had on the land as possible and so it was obvious to have a real oak floor in our country kitchen. When it came to the crunch and we really looked at the oak, we realised that some of the beams were so huge that we would need to get them to a mill to have them cut down, Stu has some pretty major table saws and stuff but nothing as big as we needed! Also, even if we had got it cut down, Stu would have spent weeks sanding all the wood down and trying to prepare it. It turned out that one of the french people that lives in the next village is a carpenter and so we decided to get a quote. He came and looked at the wood and calculated how much useable stuff we had, it was a perfect amount to do the kitchen area. He said he'd cut all the knots out for us and we were saying 'no!' 'we love the knots', he thought we were weird but agreed to keep them in. The quote was much less than we expected and we had the wood back at our house within a week, it was sanded, tongue & grooved and stunning!
We had spent some time planning the type of adhesive we were going to use, which wasn't simple as we have laid underfloor heating - but we got there in the end and bought it from the uk as we could get better advice and, as always, it was cheaper. So finally by mid February we had everything we needed, Stu's younger brother flew over to us and they laid the floor in a couple of days. The room was transformed! We sanded and treated it overnight for two nights in a row and finally it was done.
Our Kitchen had been sat in our main barn since summer last year, which had been a real stress as we had no idea how the wood was holding up through the winter and really didn't know what we would find when we unwrapped it. So, heart's in our mouth and a little prayer said, we were ready to bring the kitchen in. We were lucky, it was seemingly unharmed by the change in temperature and humidity from summer to autumn to winter and it was definitely as beautiful as I remembered it in the shop. We bought it in unit by unit and started to try and make it fit, I say try because it didn't really fit! I don't know where we got our measurements wrong but let's just say we had to make some adjustments, I don't think you'd know - but we do! It took us a few days to get it really right, levelling it and fitting the cornice etc. all take time but we got there.
The worktop was the final piece of the puzzle but Stu was too scared to cut it, we had two huge lengths of real oak and he said that if he did it wrong there would be no going back! Luckily we have an english friend here who is also a carpenter and he came over for the day and did a fantastic job. By early March we were there, I had not only a lovely kitchen, but my big oven, a beautiful butler sink and a dishwasher! Cooking is a joy again.
We had a few visitors in March, which was great but as always it did mean that the work on the house slowed down a bit, the bathroom upstairs has been finished and looks beautiful and work has started on my larder room, which is where I intend to store all our meat, jams, juices etc.
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