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Right hand view from door showing worktop & stove.

Essential elements Here’s a list of things we considered essential. Drawers, not cabinets for storage. Two ovens. Vertical storage. Tough counter tops. An American style fridge. Quality dishwasher. A large gas cook top. Storage, storage, storage. Cookbook shelves. There’s probably more that I’ll think of as I go along.



Left hand view from door. More worktop & sink. Note the mansard window & just up at the top corner the cut down cabinet.

Again couldn't do the drawing, but the photos should make thing clear. All of the under counter storage is drawers. Above are shallower cabinets. At the right end there is a 12” wide vertical storage unit & at the left end underneath are two book shelves. The banquette has benches with hinged tops & storage underneath. The counter at the left of the door is a narrow set of cupboard & drawers designed for wall mounting, but in this case helping us have just enough space for the table & benches. The big larder unit is terrific, everyone should have one.



Larder unit with Fridge & wall oven beyond. The other mansard window & dogs bowl.

Equipment Pretty standard fridge/freezer with ice maker (not so standard here in France), Wall mounted oven with all the latest features, Bosch dishwasher, hood & extractor fan. The big decision was the stove/cook top. Not having 2 ovens was not an option. After a lot of thought we ended up with a 36”, 5 burner range with full width gas over & electric grill. This was not an expensive stove (about $1,000), but it performs & we’re very happy with it. We bought everything from one store having given our detailed list of equipment to several. Lowest bid got the order.



The stove top. 36", simple, space for big pots. Love the oven; big enough for a turkey & extras

Cabinets Here’s where you can blow a ton of money so we came up with a strategy. We bought all IKEA cabinets with the cheapest possible fronts. The quality of IKEA hardware, fit and range of cabinets is second to none. BUT, you don’t get the best choice of fronts. We just never unpacked the IKEA fronts & took them back for credit which was happily given. At this point we worked with Gerard (see [|here] for more about him) to choose our wood & the design we wanted. His prices were reasonable, we got exactly what we wanted and the quality of his work was excellent. We conservatively estimate that we saved over $5,000 by doing this. Consider searching out a retired cabinet maker or individual craftsman to try this yourself.



The table & banquette area.



Looking towards the banquette area.

Worktops Another area where you can eat up money. We’re lucky in that in our area granite is fairly cheap so it was our obvious choice. If affordable, the best worktop in our humble opinion. We’ve done laminates in the past; Ok but not for the long haul. Tiles are our second favorite and have always worked well for us & at reasonable cost.

Flooring We opted for tiles and they have worked out very well. They look good & are very easy to keep clean.



Drawers, beautiful drawers. Can't have enought of them.

Ok, I think in the course of this long winded essay I’ve answered most of the questions I posed. What kind of cooking? We do lots of entertaining, dinner parties for 8-12 & a few larger holiday events.