Le Cachet: Demolition Week
Written by Ann Huff of Huff Harington
We’re back at Le Cachet and it’s DEMO WEEK! This apartment was in pretty rough shape when we bought it, so we went in knowing it would need a full-gut renovation to bring it up to more practical living standards.
Now, demo is interesting because there’s always hidden surprises. For us, we found out that the insulation in this building was not good so we had to insulate all of the outside walls. In doing so ate into the windows and lost us some square footage, bringing the apartment to roughly 1,000 total square feet.
Additional challenges of this phase:
Unknown discoveries, spatial constraints that required construction equipment to be craned up through the balcony windows, and the Olympics, of all things. Because this apartment was located so close to some of the Olympic venues, Paris banned all but emergency vehicles to this area. It started in early July 2024 and didn’t end until the end of August, which cut our active construction timeline from five months down to three. By then, my contractors gave up and went back to Moldova!
BATHROOM BREAKTHROUGH
Remember the unknown discoveries we just mentioned? Well, in Paris, oftentimes we have to do a full demo before we know what’s really behind the walls, and sometimes we have a very pleasant surprise—as was the case with this apartment. We took down a wall in the original kitchen, and not only did we discover that we had a window, but we had an evacuation pipe—which meant that we could put an extra toilet in here. Now that is an AMAZING discovery for a Paris apartment because our biggest challenge is always the evacuation pipes. It’s very difficult to have a large apartment and just have one evacuation pipe on one end of the apartment (which is often the case), especially with Haussmann apartments. We are so fortunate to find an additional one on the opposite side of the apartment!
MOVE OVER, KITCHEN
Welcome to the kitchen… at least what was the kitchen. I’ve thought about whether or not we could renovate this and have dreamt up lots of different designs that would be fun and pretty, but ultimately, it would be very small and really challenging to turn it into a personalized space that fits our needs. So after debating the pros and cons of having a separate kitchen, we decided that in this apartment we needed to move it into the living space, which in France they call an “American kitchen,” (whatever that means!). I’m very excited about moving it, because now we have an extra room for something here, which I think I have the perfect idea for… my new office! More on that later.
TA TA, HALLWAY!
We decided to get rid of the front hallway to allow us to expand the bathrooms. It’s a little trick we’ve done from time to time when an apartment configuration allows because a hallway that takes up a lot of room isn’t always the best use of space. In this case we didn’t need a hallway, and as a matter of fact, I didn’t like that you could see into the bedroom from the living room or entry. That bothers me visually (and means you always have to have your bedroom clean!). It’s an extra layer of noise that isn’t necessarily an attractive thing. So what we decided to do here is close the hallway off completely, open it up to be a bigger bathroom than we could’ve had originally, and we have a little secret door (which you’ll see later) that will take us back into the bedrooms, meaning it won’t be exposed to any of the public spaces.
We did have the option to take the wall where the new door lives down in order to have a bigger living space, but you know, sometimes walls are a nice thing. Walls are our friends! You can put up art, you can put up mirrors, you can have some angles that are interesting. And actually, when you have built-in angles, it tends to make the room feel bigger. A win-win!
WHAT’S TO COME…
Paint colors, tile selections, secret doorways and Eiffel Tower inspiration… the fun is just beginning! Tune in next month for Phase 3 of Le Cachet, and see what secrets we have in store.
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