An American in Provence

Kitchen Sink.


Alain has spent the first two weeks of August working on his Honey Do list:
Number 1) Finish the kitchen!
Number 2) See number one!
Number 3) What, you still haven't finished the kitchen yet?
Number 4) What are you doing looking at number 4 on the list if number 1 isn't done yet?!
And so forth.

(removed old sink and moved washer ->)

This is something that he has been waiting to have a significant block of time before attacking.

We had long ago replaced the water heater, changed the gas pipes, removed the ugly glass and metal monstrosity above the stove, removed the incredibly ugly wallpaper, repainted, and installed the cabinets. *ALL* that remained was to add some more plugs (our apartment was built in a time when they could not figure out why anyone would need more than one plug in each bedroom, and a maximum of two in the kitchen), move the piping around, and install the new sink and a dishwasher.

Back when we bought the kitchen elements (from IKEA, where else?) in Nov. 2007, we also bought the sink, coutertop, and a door for the dishwasher. We were planning on having one of those integratable ones, where you put a door on the front that looks like the rest of your cabinets.


Anyway, all of that has been sitting in our apartment, shifted from one room to the other from time to time.

As Alain has all of August off, he decided to tackle it this month. He installed three new plugs on one side of the kitchen and three on the other.

Electricity + Water = Yay!

We removed the disgusting old sink (which is now sitting in the small bedroom) and have been without a kitchen sink for almost two weeks now. I thought not having a shower was difficult but in a way this is almost more difficult. And am getting tired of washing the dishes in a bucket. Anyway.


We paid (400€ ouch) a plumber to come and move the piping around because it wasn't in the right place for what we wanted to do. As our apartment was built before there were standard sizes (and certainly nothing is straight) we had to do quite a balancing act to be able to get a dishwasher+sink+washer+stove in the area we have.


After much measuring, we finally decided that we would not be able to put a dishwasher of 60 cm wide in the space next to the sink (so now we have an extra door that will go in his parent's magical attic). We decided that we would have to go with a dishwasher of 45 cm wide.

Last Saturday we went to some hardware stores, bought some boards to rest the countertop on, and some bricks for him to build a small wall between the washer and the stove to support the other side of the countertop. This past week he mounted the boards/walls and got annoyed with me when each time I came home from work I went straight to the kitchen to see how much he had progressed. Not that I didn't think he was working fast enough, it was just interesting to see how it changes from day to day.

He cut the board, going through about 3 saw blades and filling the apartment with smoke- luckily nobody called the fire department, though it is a bit unsettling to think that our apartment could really be on fire and none of the neighbors would notice/react.

Last night we went to Ikea, bought a faucet, and then went to the discount appliance place and decided on a dishwasher, 45 cm wide. They will deliver it in about two weeks. We could have brought it to our apartment ourselves, but decided not to trouble with it for now- besides, with everything in the middle at the moment, there would be no place to put it. Better to wait for Alain to install the countertop, sink, and cabinet doors and then just put the dishwasher in place once it arrives. He has one more week to finish.


This is turning out to be an unexpectedly expensive month for us: new dishwasher, paying for plumber, paying to get the car fixed, plus taxes. Yikes. At least the taxes were less than we predicted because we got some reductions for the new windows and water heater that we installed.