a Curious Canadian in Provence : photography, art & renovation!
We figure that our kitchen is so tiny that in order to make it look good, everything in it has to have character and charm (well, maybe not the damn washing machine). I’ve fallen in love with all the shabby chic/farmhouse french kitchens that I’ve seen on pinterest. I’ve particularly fallen for the beautiful stone sinks. Of course, a stone sink costs about 800 euros. Not within the budget.
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Robin wanted to stick to the traditional non-baked cement tile. They add a lot of local character. Check out my Instagram for a couple photos of local cement time floors. We realize just visiting a Tile Store in Brampton would be a lot easier if we were back home in Canada, but we’re in France, so we don’t know of any well-recommended tile stores. These tiles are well known in Portugal, but have been used all over Europe. In Provence, they are quite popular and if you’re not used to them you may think they are a bit too “busy.” Finding these beautiful tiles is not difficult here in Provence. However, to make our lives more difficult, we wanted the antique tiles rather than the reproduced versions. This is our search for the patterned bathroom tile…
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Replacing the steep, narrow and dangerous staircase in our house with a space-effective spiral staircase was always part of our renovation plan. We looked online at beautiful industrial era staircases from Britain and compared those to the rickety plastic structures available at the local DIY stores. We also considered using a glass staircase too but we didn’t feel the space was quite right for this. Places like Pear Stairs offer this, so we might revisit the idea in a different space in the future. As always, it was also a question of price; we knew that this would be one of the biggest expenses of the renovation.
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The treasure and charm of antique doors.
It seems that we like to make our lives difficult; dating for 5 years long distance Montreal-London, moving to a new country without proper jobs and buying a tiny house in a rural village. If you’ve followed our journey, you will know that we’ve taken on a lot of DIY projects and this is no exception. Today’s task – trying to find beautiful Patina antique doors for our new home.
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