Le Coeur de la Maison

If home is where the heart is, the kitchen is the heart of the home!

Therefore it was essential to resuscitate the heart of my new home...la cuisine. Before I bought the house it had been standing empty for more than ten years! There was only one owner before me...Monsieur Joseph Raffier and his family. Monsieur Raffier had the house built in 1937, just before World War II. Additions were made in the 70’s: a garage on the side and another room, bathroom and toilet at the back.

As with all deceased estates in France everything goes to the family. After Monsieur Raffier’s death his widow, Madame Jeanne Marie Jacqueline Boyer inherited the house but later moved back to Limoges, where she was born in 1923. After many years she gave her daughter Madame Mireille Jacqueline Paule Raffier permission to put the house on the market. Et violà...it was sold to me on 2 October 2014...with cobwebs, dust, mould, an overgrown bramble garden and all!

I arrived with my lifelong friend Annette and her partner Werner one rainy and cold afternoon in December 2014. The key to the front door was left in a Tupperware container on the side of the house. And so, unlocking the door for the first time, my heart rate fastened considerably...like when you opened your first Lucky Dip as a child. Annette turned to me and said: “I hope there’s a B&B in Châlus!” After we had recovered from the initial shock we walked down to the local supermarket Intermarché and bought cleaning stuff, croissants, cheese and of course champagne. And then the cleaning started...after an eleven and a half hour flight from Cape Town to Paris, two crowded metro trains from Charles de Gaulle airport to Gare d’Austerlitz, a three hour train trip to Limoges and an hour taxi drive from Limoges to Châlus!!! Very tired indeed, with overloaded suitcases containing little clothing but filled with cutlery, plates, mugs, a coffee machine, duvets, pillows, groceries, etc.

We started in the kitchen before we moved upstairs to the bedrooms...

In between the kitchen and getting our rooms ready we had a quick dinner with windowsill ‘chilled’ champagne...

We only got to bed at 03h00 but the next day we were at it again. We even tried the cuisinière or coal stove and cooked up a storm...

Then followed the Annie Sloan experience...at home in South Africa I imagined a ‘Provence blue’ and ‘Country grey’ kitchen. We drove with a hired car from Intermarché all of 40 kms to ‘Deco Couleurs’ in Montbron to buy the Annie Sloan paints. By the end of our 'holiday' the kitchen cupboards were ‘Provence blue’ and half the walls ‘Country grey’. It took a further three days (and lots of exercise) to paint the wooden ceiling white...

But between then and the June 2015 trip I decided the colours were not conveying the country feel I anticipated. So, during our first week (Annette and her daughter Zee accompanied me) the kitchen changed colours...the cupboards were repainted in white (Merci Annette!), with a distressed look emphasising the patterns on the doors and drawers, and the walls a different grey...

Cornices and some decorative elements were added...

Only at the end of 2015, after the arrival of my container from South Africa, ‘finishing’ touches to the kitchen were possible...and still the work continues!