All posts filed under: Kitchens

Our Nivito brass kitchen tap and brass sink

Today, let me tell you all about our NIVITO brass kitchen and brass tap which I think, have added a touch of luxury to our new kitchen in CASA PYLA. As you may have seen from the various images of our kitchen posted on Instagram here, and here, this is the first time I do not design an all-white kitchen like the one we did in our home in London or our recent white kitchen makeover in our Airbnb home in France. Right from the beginning when I started thinking about how to transform this old, derelict house, I was drawn to natural tones. The house is located a 2-minute walk from a sandy beach, surrounded by pine trees. The connection to nature and its surroundings feels really strong. You can feel the ocean in the morning, the smell of the trees, and watch squirrels jumping daily from one tree to another while sipping a cup of tea. Phase 1 of the renovations As you may know, redesigning a kitchen is not a cheap process. You have …

A minimal home in West London

Published by BODIE and FOU Style Blog

My heart skipped a beat when I saw the kitchen in this minimal home in West London. The layout and glass roof reminded me of our home in London (you can see some pictures from the renovations here). Before you ask, yes I miss it from time to time. Then I think where we live now… so close to the beach and realize that there is no way I will move back to London and leave the ocean behind. There is an energy there that I feel is extremely positive for our well-being. Plus we have CASA PYLA underway and soon, we will have a beautiful home to live in. Unlike this home, we laid down a concrete floor throughout the ground floor (kitchen and lounge) instead of this pale grey terrazzo flooring. Yet, there are many things I love about this minimal home. So let me show a few details I love about this extension designed by Al-Jawad Pike. There is a very soothing palette used throughout the house with soft tones of white, pale …

Kitchen makeover in CASA PYLA – phase 1

Published by BODIE and FOU Style Blog

Following our garden makeover, I’m very excited to share with you today our kitchen makeover in CASA PYLA. For those who haven’t followed this new adventure on Instagram, earlier this year, we bought a very old house in Pyla, 2 minutes walk from the beach on the French Atlantic coast and 5 minutes walk from Le Moulleau (for those who know the area). The house initially named “Bagatelle” (renamed CASA PYLA by yours truly) was in the same family for over 50 years and as we say in French “dans son jus” meaning not much had been done in those 50 years to improve it. The worst room was the kitchen. It had a large hood (the only time I had seen something similar was in my great-grandmother house), a very old, chipped ceramic sink, old tiles on the walls, some Ikea kitchen units from the 80s and was looking pretty awful. While I was planning to freshen up the bedrooms with new paint, we really had to fit in a new kitchen and bathroom to make the …

A flat with muted tones and minimalist style. The DRD apartment by Vincent Van Duysen

A Belgian flat in muted tones

Published by BODIE and FOU Style Blog

A few weeks ago, I added this beautiful kitchen to the CASA PYLA feed. I was really taken by its muted tones, simplicity and minimalist style. It’s not the first time that I find spaces designed by Belgian Architect Vincent Van Duysen beautifully stylish, simple and timeless. The man is a master at architectural spaces with muted tones and textured minimalist walls. Residence DRD is a duplex penthouse in Knokke with sea view of the Belgian coast. The main kitchen island is made of a single slab of granite to form the counters and the sink. The tap looks similar to the beautiful minimalist taps designed by Cocoon. It’s a weekend home designed to unwind as well as to be together with family and friends. The use of white and light, natural colours and natural light contribute to the feeling of calm. In the main living area, Van Duysen designed low-level storage space connected to the wall. They serve as seating too. If you pay attention, you will see that the height of these volumes also perfectly align …

Le relooking de notre cuisine blanche, minimaliste

Our white kitchen makeover

Published by BODIE and FOU Style Blog

I’m so excited to finally reveal our kitchen makeover which you may have spotted on Instagram. Having used it daily for the past three months, I’m delighted to say that this is now the perfect kitchen for us in terms of storage, usability and design. I absolutely love it! In fact, there isn’t a single thing I would change. At home, our living space (kitchen, dining, lounge) is open-plan. So this is really the heart of our home and the room we spend most of our times as a family. We eat, cook and entertain friends and family. It’s where we all gather and hang out together. I also work from there on a corner of our Norman Copenhagen dining table. SHOP OUR TABLE: The kitchen before The first time we did the kitchen up (and the whole house) was 12 years ago. At the time, I wasn’t cooking much and a lot of my decisions were based on look, design and budget. The kitchen had decent storage. Not so much after we relocated from London with …

Kitchen renovations update

Published by BODIE and FOU Style Blog

I know I owe you a full-length post on our kitchen renovations but for those who followed our adventures on Instagram, dealing with the Swedish giant hasn’t been plain sailing. Besides the 5 weeks delay, they also managed to deliver seven kitchen doors with the wrong finish. Mistake that we sadly noticed only when the doors were fitted and the protective film was off. An expensive mistake that costs me 200 euros to get the guy back to take down the wrong doors and fit the right ones. Sadly, I’m pretty sure that it is not something that IKEA will refund, despite the fact that the mistake was made by their kitchen planner at the time of my order… On the plus side, I absolutely LOVE our kitchen. It’s becoming my personal laboratory to create and test new smoothies and green juices recipes. Soon, I’m hoping to tackle protein balls so if you have any great recipes, please share!! The new layout works perfectly for us. Steve and I can be both in the kitchen without being on …

Our home renovations Part 1

Published by BODIE and FOU Style Blog

These past few months, I mentioned several times that we were planning to renovate the bathroom which is a real eye-sore (you will see that I wasn’t joking in a few weeks). Unfortunately, we also had water damages just before last Summer. As we needed to take off the oak floorboards Steve and I had painfully glued twelve years ago, I thought it was time to make a few design changes to make the kitchen work better for us. So today, I’m going to take you through the first steps of this renovation project, what they involve and the mistakes I feel I made when I designed our kitchen twelve years ago. There will be also a small section about the renovations of our hallway which took place a few days later. THE KITCHEN RENOVATIONS Our previous kitchen was a single counter running against the wall and fitted with a SMEG hob, a SMEG oven and a dishwasher. The fridge was a large American stand-alone fridge (very similar to this one). We also had a vintage …

Vipp kitchen in a Manhattan creative agency 3

The Vipp kitchen fitted in a creative agency, Manhattan

Published by BODIE and FOU Style Blog

One brand dear to my heart is Danish design company Vipp. From their kitchen accessories to their Award-Winning kitchen and the Vipp shelter which I would really love to visit once, everything is beautifully designed. In 2014, while I was still running the BODIE and FOU online concept store, we had the amazing opportunity to collaborate with Vipp to design an exclusive limited edition BODIE and FOU x Vipp bin which some of you may remember or even own. A similar collab’ had been done previously with Parisian concept store MERCI so for us, it was a big deal. The BODIE and FOU x Vipp bin was exclusively sold in their store in Copenhagen and in our shop and was even purchased by her H.R.H. Princess Marie of Denmark. It was an interesting & inspiring collaboration during which, we also launched our collection of BODIE and FOU prints (I recently found some left-over stock if you’re interested), organised a styling competition with some of the best international Bloggers and ran a week-long pop-up store in their beautiful showroom …