House Project: The Kitchen

Two years ago, I flew to France to take charge of the kitchen design for a house in the countryside that will be rented out.  I worked with my father-in-law who's a plumber and electrician. He's familiar with the building laws there. With his help, we worked together to design the house from scratch.  We considered the orientation of the sun  in planning the rooms, to ensure the house maximizes the use of sunlight especially during the summer, thus saving costs on electricity bills and saving on water by having a separate tank for collecting rain water to be used in toilets and cleaning.  We worked together on the architectural plans and finally transformed the drawing into reality under his supervision.

In this post, I'll be focusing on the kitchen.  We were designing a kitchen on a budget.  I turned to IKEA planner tools as a quick and effective solution. I worked on it while I was in Dubai and during my vacation in France, we bought the panels and units from IKEA located in the nearest city.  This was how it turned out.


It's still very rough because the photos were taken just right after the construction and the tenant should provide the appliances to go with it.  Imagine it with  bar stools and accessories.


The kitchen has a view of the terrace from the small window. The kitchen being open to the dining and living room allows interaction and mingling perfect for entertaining. The host could play bartender at the bar counter provided there.   Lots of light coming in which would be great during summer thus saving energy.


We modified the side a little bit due to the details, as we wanted to create a bar and a ledge.


The mosaic tiles with grey pattern was a great find at a local kitchen tile specialist within the area.  The sink was purchased from a home depot.


We had a limited budget but we were pleased with the result.  The small window next to the sliding door below is the kitchen's.   The last I heard, the current tenant likes the house so much they want to purchase it if it's open for sale.  So great to hear that!