The Great Renovation Project?

You've heard us say it. Our families and friends have heard us say it. Yes, it's indeed true, we not only plan on staying in our 1000 sq. foot apt. (91 m2) but we also plan on eventually raising three kids in said space.

To the French, and especially to Parisians, the square footage/family member ratio doesn't seem odd. Just look at how many Ikeas are found around Paris (6) and you'll understand that there is a great need for solutions to small space living. In fact, we know of several families who live, with 3 and even 4 children, in a lot smaller spaces than our apartment. To some Americans, it may seem kind of far-fetched to try and stretch the space of an apartment the size of ours to match the needs of a normal family (except for New York or other big cities perhaps) but to each his own. Ecologically speaking, we should all be living on top of each other anyway. Do we really need 5 rooms to one person?

Many have suggested we move to a smaller big city in France, one in which we could afford more space and even buy a townhouse or small house. But, the more we think about it the more we realize just can't pick up an move- for now, our lives are in Paris.

So, that brings us to our apartment. Our lovely apartment. We were very fortunate to come across our apartment before Louise was born. My old job gave me the right to have a sort of rent-controlled apartment in a neighborhood in which we could never afford to live. Come to think of it, we can never buy in Paris again, the prices have gone up by so much. Our only criteria for an apartment was to have 3 bedrooms. Well, our apartment has 2 bedrooms. Actually, it officially has 3 but the woman who lived there before took out a wall in one of the bedrooms to make the living room bigger. So, instead of an extra bedroom we have a dining room.

Our apartment has a lot of options, if we want to spend money. We've talked a lot about how we are going to reorganize when the need comes and of course there's always the dilemma of do you do work in an apartment you rent?

Normally, we would never throw money away like that. However, after talking to so many people in our building who have been there, raised kids there and stayed after 35 years, more and more we are realizing that our destiny is being written for us too: if we want to stay in Paris, we will be in our apartment for the long-haul.We have a long-term goal to  buy a country home, a place where we can  go on the weekends and on holiday but we will never buy in Paris and for now, we aren't interested in buying our principal place of residence in another city.

So, recently we've started talking again about what we could do to create another bedroom in our apartment that wouldn't eliminate too much space.And, we have a project in mind (one that I'm so anxious to start!): our kitchen is the size of a bedroom, a fairly good size for Paris, and it is on the same side as the bedrooms in the apartment. Why not make an open kitchen in the dining room part of the apartment and combine the dining room/kitchen/living room and have one big, open room? The, our current kitchen would become a bedroom.

We looked at what we could do with this idea, of course it would demand a certain amount of money, but there is a possibility of doing this without too much work. There's a way to bring a water pipe through the wall to hook up the sink, etc.. because the bathroom is just behind the dining room. There are also many things we can do ourselves and E's cousin specializes in kitchens so he could help us set the whole thing up for a fourth of the price it would cost for a professional to do it.

Anyway, right now it's just an idea, but we would like to materialize this idea in the near future. Will let you know when we take the first step!

Comments

[Tara]

Sounds exciting!
We have a relatively small house by American and Texan standards and we don't need all the space we have. I think Europeans have the right idea in utilizing smaller economical spaces. Your kids are probably going to end up so much better off than American kids, more balanced, and ready to cope with life by not having their own bedroom and bathroom.
Bert's sister bought an apartment in Paris and I think they spent close to 400K w/the currency ratio, it's nuts, However, we are hoping to use it for a honeymoon in Paris.

[Nicole]

When we opened up our kitchen to the living room we ran into one problem that I hadn't considered- by moving the stove, we didn't have direct access to the ventilation ducts. However, since the kitchen was open, we had even more need of a good extraction system to make sure that the whole flat didn't smell like grease, fish, etc. We could have re-built a lower ceiling across the two rooms to hide the ventilation pipes, but that made our budget explode. The builder managed to sort it out to some extent but it is definitely something to bear in mind when making your plans.

[Pauline]

I would check out a couple of things out first too:

- If you have an electric oven/stove the voltage (plug thingy) isn't a standard one. You may need this looked into.

- Will the owners expect any compensation etc … for these changes?

- I too have an open kitchen/living/dining and some sort of extraction fan is essential as entire whole place stinks when you cook otherwise. We live in an old converted place and there is no ventilation duct but a regular electric extractor. Get the best you can afford it’s worth it.

- Try installing some sort of bar between the kitchen and the living area otherwise you see all the misery in the kitchen whilst watching the TV: not nice! Our bar area is split-level: High on the living side (about 1.50) and on the kitchen side there is a second level which at a normal work surface height.

- If possible try to hide (Microwave oven fridge/freezer) in a corner than can’t be seen from the living are, it makes it less obvious that the place is “open-space”
.

[andie]

Thanks for your comments! We will keep the ventilation in mind and have definitely put it on our list for things we need to look into.

As far as the owners are concerned, it's actually a big corporation that owns our building and they are less picky about how we change it around. We're really only asking them authorization to put a water outlet in our current dining room, which shouldn't be difficult because there is a water pipe behind the wall. As far as the moving of the kitchen, the rest is just a question of furniture that can be easily moved back to the original kitchen if need be. The only stipulations in our type of apartment is that we don't change the classification (4 rooms to 5 rooms etc.) and we would still have a 4 room apartment so I don't really know what they could say.
We are definitely going to look into getting authorization from them before we proceed.

As far as TV is concerned, no problems here, we don't own a TV! Usually, our living room is used as a gathering place for us and the kids to read, use our laptops and I really think an open kitchen is conducive to our lifestyle (as in I can be with the kids while cooking dinner etc...)

We have looked into the bar possibility and are soon going to look into plans for our hopefully future kitchen to even see if it's feasible.