On a Sunday morning in Rijkevorsel, the light comes in sideways through the kitchen's wide garden-facing windows. Coffee is already brewing — the built-in machine handles that — and outside, dew is still sitting on the grass of the fully fenced rear garden. No neighbors in the sightline. Just open Flemish countryside rolling out behind the terrace. This is the pace this villa runs at, and once you've spent a weekend here, it's hard to argue with it.
Sint-Lenaartsesteenweg 80 sits on a 1,389 square meter plot in the heart of the Kempen region, one of Belgium's most underrated pockets of calm. The house itself is 267 square meters — a substantial four-bedroom villa that has been thoroughly renovated without losing the bones that gave it character in the first place. The wrought-iron interior door that separates the entrance hall from the main living area? That stayed. The oak parquet floors throughout the ground floor? Those stayed too. What changed is everything you don't see at first: the insulation, the systems, the kitchen, the bathrooms — all brought squarely into the present.
The living room revolves around a gas fireplace that earns its keep from October through March, when the Kempen afternoons turn grey and the garden takes on that particular Belgian stillness. The room is generous enough for a proper sofa arrangement without feeling cavernous, and it flows directly into the kitchen — the real centerpiece of this house. The island is the kind you actually gather around. Appliances include a cooktop with an integrated extractor, a steam oven alongside a conventional oven, a built-in coffee machine, a warming drawer, a vacuum drawer, and a dishwasher. Everything is built in, everything is considered. Whoever desig ... click here to read more
