La Cuisine (the kitchen)

The kitchen of our house in Montagnac was what first drew us to the house. The picture, on the realty site, of the medieval stone vaulted ceiling and the four stone columns seeming to hold the ceiling up, was absolutely magical. It was that picture that led us to call and set up an appointment to see the house for the first time.

Funny though, once the house was ours and we actually lived here, the kitchen was the one room we really felt needed our help. It was dark! The first thing we did was to give the walls a coat of fresh white paint - quelle différence - what a difference!

While we were painting the room, we decided to remove the cinderblock bench that had been built against the far wall.
We also painted the dark stained wood shelving, which had been only recently installed where the fireplace had been (evidenced by the soot stains on the ceiling).

We also changed out most of the furniture, which we had inherited with the house. One chair was still in beautiful shape, but not our style, so we gave that to our friends, who have others like it. A few others we gave to an antique shop owner in Pézenas, who said he would donate them for us, to someone in need. The first thing we purchased for our house here were six vintage provençal chairs for the kitchen table - almost identical to the ones we have around our French farmhouse table in our Cape Cod kitchen.

The previous owners of our house had decorated the entire place as if they were still living in the Middle ages. Yikes!
Not cozy, to say the least. This heavy, dark tapestry-like curtain in the kitchen had to go, ASAP!

I snapped a quick picture of the curtain fabric just before gleefully tossing it into the dumpster at the décheterie (dump).
Even though the photo makes it look like a red background, believe me, it was black!

After finding the chairs for our kitchen table, the fabric store was our next stop, to replace the afore-mentioned offending curtain that closed the kitchen off from the front hall. A curtain here is necessary when it's cold outside, as the all-stone front hall retains a chill. (The temperature of the ground floor is apparently one of the nicest features of this house in summer months.)

We found the cheerful yellow gingham fabric and my friend, Muriel, gave me her sewing machine to use.

I trimmed the drapes with a Souleiado trim I had already owned and brought with me in my suitcase.

Still in in my PJ's, I couldn't wait to get to sewing, right after breakfast.

We also needed to add some curtains at the windows for privacy.
The old shades with time-worn holes, that had been there for many years, were the first things to go after the tapestry.

Sheer curtains like these grace kitchen windows all over France. Pre-made and ready to cut to size,
they are wonderful at letting in the light, while also providing a sense of privacy. 

Jack found this great fabric, which matched our ochre and green tiles perfectly...and it went with the provençal theme we had in mind for the kitchen.

Note the charming brass fleur-de-lys hook for the tie back - found at our local hardware store.

I made a curtain out of the same yellow gingham, to hide the electronics and wires on the shelves (wi-fi, etc.)

The beautiful provençal paisley fabric is another that I had been saving for just the right spot. I brought it with me to France,
and decided to hire a seamstress to make the needed cushions for me. She did a beautiful job! (above & below)

This fabulous antique bench from Arles, replaced the former built-in cinderblock bench that Jack had removed.

We found it at La Brocante du Siege in Pézenas, where a charming father & son team redo old chairs with rush (paillage) or cane (cannage) seats.

The poster is one we had bought many years ago at La Petite Provence du Paradou, near St. Rémy. It is so perfect for this room.

We knew immediately that we wanted to replace the existing boring cabinet doors (white fiberboard with cheap mismatched hardware).

We found the ideal pair from Benjamin Boularand, also in Pézenas. (We later ended up buying quite a few pieces from Benjamin,

whom we now consider a friend and who came to our house to deliver a bed - story for another time).

The doors are from an antique armoire and what is remarkable about them is that they still have their complete original hinges.

Usually only the top or bottom of each hinge is still intact.

The walnut doors are so heavy that we had to hire a carpenter to help install them.

Two pillows I bought on Etsy and brought to France.

I love this exquisite chair (also provençal), which features the traditional chair back motif of a wheat sheaf. Its original rush seat is woven of three colors of straw: natural, red and green.

These antique plates were another of my favorite finds. They have their original brass hangers - four of which are shaped like rooster claws!

We bought the charming green pot, for utensils, at the potter's shop in Anduze, an hour to the North of us.

We also painted the lower cabinet doors white and added fun new handles. (They had been stained a very dark brown.)

Our Anduze pot. We also got one for the terrace kitchen.

(I'll write about this pottery in another post.)

I couldn't resist hanging a garlic braid and herbs from la garrigue, the wild, hilly terrain that covers much of the Languedoc and Provence.

Herbs - thyme, rosemary, lavender, laurel - grow wild all over these hills, and the air is permeated with their aroma.

These herbs and garlic are staples of southern French cuisine.

Our "new" old chandelier replaced a small one that we eventually moved to the front hall. It reminds me of a Dutch still-life painting.
It's actually made of turned wood, although it's painted to look like metal.

Finally, we gave the door to the stairway a coat of green paint, an added a curtain to the back.

Our first purchase in Pézenas was the set of six vintage provençal chairs for the kitchen table.
And the last purchase - the night before we left - were the two faux bamboo chairs on either side of the door.
The two rooster giclée prints, below, are copies of paintings by Jack. We brought them with us, since
no kitchen should be without a rooster! They echo the antique rooster plates on the opposite wall.

The finished kitchen, for now...
I found one of the key items I had been searching for,the night before we left - a heavy old copper jam pot, to hang on the wall above the shelves.
We didn't have time to hang it, so that will be on our to-do list for the next visit.

Creating a New "OLD" Kitchen - Part 1 - a Bit of Historic Background

As my regular readers know, we live in a Mediterranean style house, totally unlike a typical Cape Cod house (and yes, we do live on Cape Cod!) As a couple of francophile dreamers who have always fantasized about living in Provence or the French Pyrenees, we knew this house was for us the minute we walked into it for the first time.

We are just beginning to renovate/decorate the kitchen here, and we are making our already Mediterranean style room into an old-fashioned version of itself ...so I thought I'd give a little background history first.

Above are two photos I took before we bought the house, with the previous owner's furnishings.

Our previous house was an early American antique (300+ years old) which had reminded us of old French homes with low ceilings, antique fireplaces, wavy glass windows, etc. When we redid the kitchen in that house, we wanted it to look like a French country kitchen, even though we were starting with all new construction (including new ceiling) and new appliances. I painted just about every surface in that kitchen, to make it look rustic and antiquated.

Here are some photos of the kitchen in our old house:

An overall shot of our former kitchen showing painted walls, cabinetry and ceiling. The idea was that you felt you were in a dilapidated French farm building (specifically, a dépendence of a mas provençal), with the beamed ceiling broken away in areas, revealing the sky, and wild herbs growing on the roof above. The cabinets above the countertops were painted like windows looking outside to fruits, vegetables, olive branches, etc., and the lower cabinets were painted to look like animal pens, housing pigs, a lamb, chickens & rabbits (all edible, bien sûr!)

(Photo by Nan & Monty Abbott)

Smooth walls were transformed into faux bumpy stone ones with paint. I also added trompe l'oeil postcards, business cards from France and a French recipe, just for pure fun. People used to run their hands over this wood post to see if the items were real...and just to tease people, the Van Gogh postcard WAS real!

One corner with Italian majolica plates and an old Venetian floor lamp

 The breakfast nook with French wheat-back chairs and French linens

(Photo by Jay Elliott)

Another view of the breakfast nook with my husband, Jack Dickerson's painting, Il Contidino, a portrait of an Italian farmer at the end of the day, waiting to share wine and bread with a friend. The table, covered in an Italian tablecloth, was set with Italian and French items. The silverware is French; the plates were from a visit we made to San Gimignano in Deruta pottery country, Italy; and the glasses were some we picked up on a trip to Biot in the South of France, near where I used to live - so many happy memories!

Jack and I designed this dish rack in the breakfast nook, to hold some of our French, Italian & Portuguese plates. There's a Moroccan plate in there, too, from one of Jack's mother's voyages; a vintage carved wood German bread board; and an antique copper mold inherited from Jack's ancestors in Amsterdam.

These two photos (above & below) show the kitchen after years of use - rather worn out, but still charming.

The drawers above the animals all featured herbs. Note the chicken with a special plaque - "Poulets de Bresse". I also featured these fabulously delicious French chickens in my murals at PB Boulangerie Bistro. I wrote about them here.

The real door to the basement was painted to look like a door out to a French garden, with a pear tree and rows of lavender in full bloom.

Above the door was a Della Robbia plaque we had brought back from San Gimignano.

We hung real garlic to further trick the eye (what trompe l'oeil painting is all about.) I even had to nail the antique square nail into the door at a distinct angle, so that it would seem to be in the correct perspective!

The goose waddling around the corner of the door is a foie gras producing goose, famous in the Dordogne region of France. Again, this gourmet bird had a special place in my PB Boulangerie Bistro murals. I wrote about it here.

I took this photo as we were moving out. The shelves had been full of cookbooks. The grain sheaves depict wheat, barley, oats & rye. The quote, which continues around the top of the room, is from one of my favorite French cooks, Madame Lulu Peyraud, owner of Domaine Tempier vineyards in Provence. The quote is, "You know, my food is nothing but plain old cuisine de bonne femme [traditional housewife cooking]. What makes it different from restaurant cuisine or recipes in cookbooks, is that I am always cooking for someone I love." Jack painted the lettering.

Another quote on our woodwork, which has great memories and meaning for us, is this one by our friend, Patricia Wells: "What grows together, goes together." A prolific cookbook author, Patricia also teaches fun and informative French cooking classes in both Paris and Provence. We once took a week of Provençal cooking lessons from Patricia, and learned this quote during that week.

Notice my window valences, above, and then the very similar one, below, in Lulu's kitchen. Both are traditional, hand-block-printed cotton indiennes from Souleiado, in Provence. 

Above is an absolutely charming photo of Lulu Peyraud with her dear friend, Alice Waters, photographed in Lulu's kitchen. For more about Alice Waters, see my posts here and here. Our Lulu quote came from the book, Lulu's Provençal Table, by Richard Olney, with a forward by Alice Waters.

Another picture of Lulu in her kitchen, shows the wonderful Souleiado border fabric in color. This border fabric, called La Grosse Rose, is available online here. Old French farmhouses often have a fabric valence like this one, to keep smoke and ash from going into the room, in case of a strong wind.

A third quote in the old kitchen was from Julia Child: "Life itself is the proper binge." Since Patricia Wells, Alice Waters, Lulu Peyraud and Julia Child are all culinary heroines of mine, I may have to include quotes from all of them in our new kitchen. Click here to read my post about a cooking class I once took with Julia Child.

 The tiles used for backsplashes and stairway were ones we had purchased on our honeymoon in Portugal. The marble countertops were made of slabs that had been rescued from an old bank building in Boston.

Detail showing the gorgeous ochre marble, which Jack installed himself (very heavy!!)

I went out one day and came back to discover Jack installing leftover tiles on the stair risers - I just LOVE this! Our original island, which Jack also had built, was covered in these tiles, with the floral border all around. Unfortunately, that had to be sacrificed when we had the new kitchen built. The flooring was Portuguese cork - a lovely warm color and so soft to stand on.

The new island was covered in tumbled Botticino marble, which beautifully matched the marble countertops and our faux painted walls.

This old kitchen of ours was photographed numerous times for various magazine and newspaper articles. Here it is, as featured for Christmas, in Better Homes & Gardens magazine, December 2003:

Better Homes & Gardens Christmas '03  (I will upload a better PDF, soon, I promise!)