A Year at the Chateau

by Dick Strawbridge

  Once home, there was a lot to fit in and this was made worse by my decision to pop in to visit a dealer of original fairground memorabilia. Wolfe Antiques is run by a young lad called Jack. I actually found him on eBay when I bid for a couple of scary clown heads for the playroom. I had agreed to swing by and pick them up en route to my hen party. The problem was, when I turned up at his warehouse, I discovered it was full of amazing fairground treasures: there were original metal signs, a penny arcade mutoscope, parts from old rides and even ornate coving from carousels. It was my dream to have fairground treasures filling the walls and I knew I would regret not buying more (a plan was already forming in my head for the wedding). Firstly, I got the clown heads in the car, then I went back to talk. I knew I could fit nothing else in the car, but I managed to persuade our plumber friend Lee to find space to bring some things with him on his next trip, so I also purchased two fairground signs and the old penny machine.

  After Wolfe Antiques it was straight on to my grandma’s for a family hen party filled with hugs. That night I celebrated with my mum, my grandma, five aunts and seven cousins, plus lots of Greek cuisine and laughter. The next day I was off to Hoxton in east London. The party began with a corset fitting by my friend Katie. Then I got my hair and nails done (for the first time in months) before heading on to a meal and a party with all my nearest and dearest friends. We danced till very late to our favourite songs and drank far too many cocktails. Then on Sunday we headed to a brilliant pub near Kings Cross for a big farewell lunch with friends and family, including my ninety-three-year-old nan. There was just time for lots of hugs and ‘see you at your wedding!’ before Mum and I had to drive back, having not taken a breath.

  When Angela headed off to London for a couple of days for her hen party, I had the opportunity to burn the candle at both ends and get the service kitchen sorted. When we first moved in, we didn’t know how we were going to use the kitchens in the château. The service kitchen by the dining room would originally have been the ‘receiver’ for the cooking done down in the main kitchen in the basement. We were in discussions about possibly putting a spiral staircase in the tower to join the dining room and the main kitchen below rather than using the servants’ stairs at the rear of the chateau, though that would have to be a later phase, but luckily the dumb waiter was a thing of beauty and still had life in it, so would continue to link upstairs and downstairs. The kitchen is the heart of most homes and we planned to make the main kitchen somewhere for the family to cook and eat, with the ability to also ‘supply’ the service kitchen if we wished to dine more formally.

  However, we also saw breakfast and possibly simple lunches being catered for in the service kitchen. It was handy to the main living rooms and, after using it for six months, we had proven it was big enough, even if it was not somewhere to gather. When we first managed to get water to the old sink in the service kitchen, one of our first purchases was a simple €100 gas cooker that had four rings and an oven. That, with some cupboards, a fridge and some make-do work surfaces, had been a lifesaver and was what had kept the family and troops fed until now. However, it did need to be given a significant amount of love.

  We had done our research and found the work surfaces we were going to use both upstairs and downstairs. As this was our forever home, we invested in work surfaces that had both function and form. When we saw Dekton we both agreed that was what we wanted. It is made by fusing quartz porcelain and glass under high pressure and temperature, which means it is stain and scratch resistant and you can put very hot pans on it without worrying. It would probably still be there if the château ever suffered a nuclear blast. It also came in lots of colours and finishes. With the work surfaces, sink, taps and hobs decided, it was now just a matter of putting it on our priority list and doing the work. We had deliveries piling up in the basement and were putting in the time to get as much done as we could. With Angela and her mum away in London, this was my window to get the service kitchen sorted.

  Steve was dispatched to IKEA to collect a carload of carcasses and miscellaneous kitchen items. We hadn’t decided on the doors yet but everything else was ready to go. We always try to plan ahead so we had mains gas and electrical power points available in the service kitchen, hot and cold water and waste with enough slack to reach the destination of our final sink and even water and waste for a dishwasher, should we ever decide we needed one in the little kitchen. As Angela and Jenny headed to Caen, I had space to spread everything out.

  First the kitchen was stripped out and usable, unwanted items made their way to an outbuilding for future use, if required. I have an aversion to flat-packed furniture, but when you buy the carcasses and shelving at IKEA you know exactly what you are getting and they are as good as anything else. The floor in the service kitchen had seen significant activity. We love it but it is worn and uneven, so the best thing to do is to ignore it and use the adjustable feet on the units to absorb the variations.

  My mum had bought me a laser level and it has been invaluable. It only took moments to mark up where the metal supporting rail and brackets for the hanging cupboards were to go, but that’s when it got interesting. It quickly became clear that one of the walls in the service kitchen was made of cheese. If you can imagine putting screws into cheese and how effective it would be you will understand my metaphor. The wall was nothing more than a single layer of skinny bricks, on their edge, supported between vertical wooden planks. Such construction is how stud walls have been put up in the past and they were never frightfully strong. I could knock most of them over in the château, especially if I was grumpy. The cupboards above the work surface needed to be hung on the rail and would undoubtedly be filled with crockery, which is heavy, so they needed to be secure. I put in more wall fixings than could have been expected and screwed into the wooden supports wherever I found them, but as a final belt and braces and piece of string I drilled holes and bolted supports all the way through. I do not want to tempt fate but the only way for the fixing to fail is for the whole wall to come down.

  Starting with the corner unit with its revolving shelves, I proceeded to put in all the units and screw them together. Installing the work surface was not as straightforward as I had hoped, but you have to be thankful for small mercies as the ‘cheese’ wall was at least flat and the surface sat on the units very easily. The outside wall is an interesting shape and, consequently, I had a choice of waiting for that part of the work surface to be recut with a bow in it or remodel the wall. No prizes for guessing that a cold chisel and hammer made the necessary adjustment.

  A new day saw a new burst of energy and, once the children were up and safe with the world’s best childcare (Grandad Steve), I was straight back into the kitchen. It’s a rule of DIY that everything takes longer than you thought. I seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time under the sink connecting the waste pipe and stopping it dripping but eventually the sink was functional and drip-free and the four-burner gas hob was working as well. With the extractor and lights above the hob in place it was just like a real kitchen. It’s funny what small things make a difference in your life: our original gas cooker required a lighter to ignite it whereas our new hob just needed to be pushed in and turned – progress!

  We had opted for a fold-down, wall-mounted table and it all but doubled our surface space. The shelving was simple to install, though we had a fair number of the pull-out tray shelves that took a while. I did feel a bit guilty making decisions on what went where but then I caught myself on and realised that Angela would just come and change everything anyway. Even without the cupboard doors, this was a fully operational kitchen. It needed to be decorated and finished so it looked lovely but all the functionality was there.

  I can’t tell you how happy I was to be home after the weekend. The drive was much longer on the way back. It’s a thing, right? It was lovely to be met with lots of hugs and, to top it off, Dick made me some tea in our remodelled service kitchen. I couldn’t wait to tell them all about
our trip but first there was a little bit of unpacking to do: clown heads, large inflatable penises that the kids thought were balloons … just your normal hen party trip away.

  With the service kitchen sorted, the main family kitchen was the next priority. This was a very important room for us. The Rayburn had been in and functioning for months but, apart from that, the main kitchen had so far been acting as a workroom and the centre of bath renovations. We had the infrastructure laid to it and the piping and radiators were in place, but we still needed to sort out the lighting and where to have sockets. The tower had a huge sink and an old cow-tail pump in it, but as we imagined the tower would be our link to the dining room it did not have to be recommissioned.

  We had discussed the kitchen a lot and the plan was quite mature. There is a very important triangle when you consider kitchen design and it is all about the routes between the cooker, the pantry or fridge and the sink. The Rayburn was fixed due to the flue, but we knew our kitchen was to be sociable as well as functional, so we had decided that we wanted to be able to cook and chat. We had aspirations to put on ‘Food Lovers’ weekends’, which meant our guests would also be spending some time cooking and eating informally in this kitchen, so we decided we needed an island to allow us to cook and face the family, friends or guests. We also needed to ensure there was enough space to cater for weddings, though the details of what we were to offer still needed to be ironed out between us. The kitchen has windows overlooking the front of the château and the moat, so one of our criteria was definitely going to be met – we both agreed that we wanted a good view while we washed the dishes!

  Our research had turned up the most amazing style of kitchen that was exactly what was required for our château. It was called La Cornue. We both knew this was what we wanted as soon as we saw it, but it was really hard to find the price, which rang warning bells. Perseverance produced a figure that made us both stop and look at each other. There was no way we could afford the tens of thousands required for a cooker and the work surfaces, but it looked so good. There is something debilitating when you find the one, then learn it is totally out of your price range. What it does, though, is push your ability to think laterally. Eventually we came up with the answer. We’d have the same look but make it ourselves. La Cornue is a quality product and each item is bordered by brass work, which gives it a unique look and also resilience. We decided that we’d take a normal high-gloss door and attach brass plates to each side like a frame. That, combined with brass handles, would give us the look we were after. It would take a fair bit of effort but was definitely much cheaper.

  To allow us a reasonably large kitchen table, the island was to be on the same side of the room as the Rayburn, but the island needed gas and electricity. That meant there was a need to lay pipes under the floor, one of the most remarkable features of the room. But there is no point in delaying what has to be done, so the first brick tiles were removed and off we went. At the same time, Angela was still working on her two baths in the kitchen. To be honest, they were getting in my way, but she had to work on them somewhere and no one wanted to move them until they were ready to go to their actual homes. But it was a reminder that there was still a lot of parallel activity happening and a lot of mess being produced.

  We knew we would need an electrician in to connect the island electricity to the distribution box but everything else we could lay and prepare. Making as little damage as possible, I used the nine-inch and four-inch grinders to remove the mortar round a couple of rows of the herringbone-pattern floor bricks. I had some spares that would match but I wanted to replace the bricks back exactly where they came from. To do that, first I took photos on my phone, then I set them four feet away in the exact order they came out. There are few jobs in the château that you can say went smoothly but this was one. The main reason was that under the bricks and a thin layer of screed was … nothing. Just a rammed earth floor. I knew the caves were earth floors to help with the humidity and temperature control but I’d expected the workrooms to have some form of a foundation. I didn’t fret for long, though, as the rooms weren’t damp and had obviously been fine for 150 years. I dug down and placed the electrical conduits in (complete with strong string in them to pull the pipes and cables through – that’s a mistake you only make once!), then I refilled and packed down the returning screed. And with that we were just about ready to start rebuilding.

  With the position and size of the island sorted, and the relative position of the surfaces, lights and switches all decided, it was possible to do the first-fix electrics, which is basically sorting the routes for the cables and laying them in place. Thereafter it gets exciting as the room starts to improve around you. Plasterer Steve was reboarding the ceiling and boxing in an exposed beam. After that, he skimmed every bit of wall and ceiling that would be on show and that didn’t move. While he was busy plastering, waste pipes, electrics and plumbing were all put in place and the basement hall became a kitchen-carcass-modification centre. Angela and I worked out the cupboard configuration: how many would be on each of the two outside walls and which would be drawers and which would be shelving. Then the island units were agreed and the footprint was centred on a line in the middle of the window overlooking the front of the château and the centre of the Rayburn. This all sounds very logical and sensible; however, our windows are recessed in ‘reveals’ that were not made to ‘fit’ standard kitchen carcasses, so we had to put a mixture of carcasses into each, centred on the window frame, and then we made others fit into the spaces we had remaining on the left and right.

  I chopped and customised about a dozen carcasses and their associated shelves, still working around the baths … When fitting a kitchen, you expect to tweak some carcasses a little, for example where the sink is lowered in, but in our kitchen probably only one of the fifteen units was not butchered. For example, I made a 600mm-deep carcass 450mm deep and then the next 400mm carcass 300mm deep. The result was not bad as the front of the units all aligned where necessary and, after a little bit of feet adjustment, they were all horizontal and firmly fixed in place. The backs were not as impressive, in fact, it was properly Heath Robinson, but none of that mattered because the work surface would hide all imperfections.

  Our main family kitchen was starting to take shape and this made Angela put the baths on her priority list.

  I had not been ignoring the baths. It was just I had so much on my to-do list every day that the baths never made it to my urgent list. In my mind, as long as the bath for the honeymoon suite was taken upstairs in time for our wedding everything was OK. But actually everything had a knock-on effect. I needed the baths out of the kitchen to allow Dick and Steve to finish in there.

  In France, there are so many cast-iron objects that all the DIY shops have a huge range of enamel paints and resin sets in a variety of colours. It’s a brilliant alternative and much cheaper way to reglaze your bath. The finish will never be as good but the zero you knock off your price tag makes up for it. Like everything, the final finish depends on the amount of preparation you do to get your surface as smooth as possible. I sanded and sanded and buffed those bloody baths. Dick had a few attempts, Julian had a go or two … I think my mum even went for it. But we got to the point that enough was enough and I went in for the paint. It was a euphoric moment; the paint slid on beautifully and the baths instantly looked brilliant. The tubs come in a set size so I had purchased one for the honeymoon-suite bath and one for ‘the other bath that would go somewhere’. I finished the first bath, but would you believe I ran out of paint when I had just a couple of square inches left to do on the second?

  So the next day we ran to shops. Once the kids were in bed that night, it was back downstairs to do the remaining square. But then it was the wrong colour! At first I thought it would dry lighter, but the next morning I was back at the shops again for my third-time lucky …

  The next day the company in Laval supplying the work surfaces for the kitchen came and did a measurement ch
eck, cut out the sink and hob profiles and then shortly after came to fit the tops. I was properly excited. With the plaster on and drying and the units in we were getting very close to having our dream kitchen. I was clucking around a bit like a mother hen when the fitter arrived. Any ‘accident’ with the surface could have meant weeks of delay and the bits with the holes cut in them are more fragile than the long straight runs. Despite my complete lack of ‘work-surface-laying French’, I think he understood that he was not allowed to make a mistake and, despite the process being tortuously slow, there were no problems, and he even complimented us on the accuracy of the installation of the units.

  With all the plumbing connected, the sockets attached to the walls and the bloody baths out, we were nearly operational. We still had lots of decorating to do, but first we spent an evening on our hands and knees scrubbing the floor so we could remove all the restoration grime and henceforth any mess would be ours.

  With all the practical stuff in our main kitchen finally sorted, it was time to get creative. I had got very attached to an image I’d seen of a small but very rustic kitchen with hanging copper pans, a wonderful La Cornue oven and beautiful blue Delft tiles. We actually had the making of this look already but if I could source the tiles it would bring it all together.

  A crash course in Delft tiles later, I realised the amount I needed was way over our budget. For a kitchen our size it would cost £10,000 upwards. We were planning on hosting our wedding for that. I found companies that printed tiles on demand, but it was still a big investment. But problems like this always lead to solutions that are better in the long run. My solution came from a company called SawGrass that specialise in sublimation printing machines. They had a starter kit available for about £500. Sublimation is a chemical process that transfers ink onto a new surface (in my case, tiles). You have to use special tiles, which aren’t particularly cheap and worked out at about £1 each but it’s very clever and easy to do. The only other thing you need is a heat press, which is a handy investment if you do a lot of craft (mine has lasted more than ten years and paid for itself many times over). If you can use a printer, you can print a tile. It’s that simple. My next task was to work out the designs. I wanted them to nod to the Delft style but undoubtedly be ours. For this, I used my illustrations from our wedding invitation, broken up into different tile designs.