Kitchen - photos

Starting point: very cluttered

It's been a bit of a challenge, sorting out the kitchen. We could have made our lives easier if we hadn't decided to paint the really badly stained wall...

Lots of stuff stored here temporarily

But now that the wall has been filled, stain-stopped and has two coats of paint on it we are already not 'seeing' it; we're only aware of the dresser in front of it, rather than the awful stains and bits of building materials spattered all over it.

Starting the cleaning/putting away process

So that was worth the pain! By moving the big dresser into the kitchen we have gained a lot of additional storage, and have moved not-used-very-often things into the entrance hall.

Emptying the dressers

All similar things are in a cupboard together, we have a "new" bit of worktop, and by repairing the sideboard we have an extra three cupboards, too.

Moving the dressers

We've managed to arrange all the saucepans together, under where we have the little hob, and have the everyday crockery in one cupboard.

Contents of dressers

I've separated out the food into cooking ingredients, and things that are more likely to be used from the table, and put them into two different places.

Dressers in the right place

We are trying out an arrangement of having a bank of units between the table and the sink (so that we get more storage/worktop when we get around to installing a fitted kitchen).

Cleaning the floor

The trickiest part of deciding where to put the furniture is the fact that the stove is about 3' to the left of where we'd planned it; if Jean-Marie had had his thinking head on, it could have gone there, and we would have had loads of space for the other run of units that we wanted.

Herding the furniture to clean the floor

I'm trying very hard to avoid having the second sofa with its back to the door; that's a really unwelcoming room layout. So much so, that I'm considering asking M. Waeber whether we can lift the steel plate under the stove and move it to where it should have been...

Everything in its new place

I'll have to speak to M. Monnier, too, to see if the stove can be moved. But logically there is no reason it couldn't be. Even if we have to move the flue above the ceiling, I think it should be possible.  Still, that's something to think about in the future.

And we can move around, too!

Oddly, today I'm still not feeling very lively, but I'm hoping that tomorrow I won't feel quite as wiped out!

And I've had enough spring cleaning for a while!