Monday, February 21, 2011

Spring flowers

This weekend came with more sunny, but very cold, days. Even without the cold the snow is making it hard to walk anywhere because the roads are all slippery and uneven.

I have been adding flowers to the house to remind us that spring is indeed on it's way even if it is hard to believe at the moment. I love the color of these tulips when the sun is shining at them and I think they are at their prettiest when they are at this stage - not bulbs anymore but still a few days of beauty left..




Wednesday, February 16, 2011

A white basket

One of my favorite finds in the thrift store are baskets. I love when I find baskets that I can paint, because the white paint really transforms them from old to brand new.

Like this one that I bought for 4€.




Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Dreaming of summer on our indoor balcony

We have an indoor balcony in our house and these days, when the sun is shining but it is too cold to be outside, I love to sit there and read, or even have my lunch there in the sun and pretend it's already summer.

The sofa group is acctually made for outside, but it is not weather persistent and we have no other protected outdoor space than our sunroom (which is already full), so it ended up here as a temporary solution. I think it fits quite well, but I long for when I can put it under the apple trees again.






Monday, February 14, 2011

Happy Valentines

Happy Valentines to you all. 

I be back tomorrow with new posts, today will be about choclate brownies, tea and lighted candles. 

I am not home in the house today, so I hid some gifts for hubby in his drawers. I like little gifts on valentines, but they should not be taken to seriously because then it only turns into preassure.

That said, back to my brownie.

Saturday, February 12, 2011

Winter wonderland

Today was truly a winter wonderland with lots of snow, a blue sky and sunshine. 

So beautiful.

But I have to admit I cant wait until everything is green instead and those bushes will be full of yellow flowers.




I have to admit I was sceptic when we got the tractor, but it's been so useful this winter.

Friday, February 11, 2011

My little blue stool

This project is an old one (as you can see on the green grass in the first picture), but I thought it would be nice to share. I found a gorgeous looking blue stool  in an ad from one of the local furniture stores, and decided to do something similiar.

The below stool is something Darling has had for ages, but it's worn and torn and doesnt really fit in the house. I rescued it from the storage room and painted it blue, simply beeing more gentle on the brush on big parts so that it would get a more distressed look. The end result turned out better than expected and the blue adds a nice touch in our white house.





(I am linking this up to Miss Mustard Seed even though the post is a bit old, because I haven't shared it before and I am still very fond of it. If you arrived that way, please click here to get to the new posts. And welcome!)

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Bedroom makeover and how to build a four poster bed for 40€

 When we moved in our bedroom was only just that - a standard bedroom with quite boring wallpaper. The picture below is from the prospect, and all furniture belongs to the previous owners. 

I quickly painted the walls white and some months later we whitewashed the ceiling. This is what is has looked like for the last two years (with some minor changes every now and then).


I really did like it as it was, but lately the house has felt a little bit too white (it might have something to do with the fact that everything outside has been covered in snow for the last three months. Even if I love white there is a limit on how much of it I can take.). I wanted to make the bedroom more cozy.

This is what it looked like when I was done. Not bad, huh?

I originally planned to paint the wall dark grey because I thought I had several containers with that shade, but upon opening them I found out that they were all light grey. Indeed they were exactly the same shade as the hallway, even though that one is called grey and these ones were dark grey. Oh well... 

Off to the paint store I went and looked at the samples. Unlike some more profesional DIY-ers I hardly ever have the patience of bringin home paint swatches and trying differend shades. I'm definitely more for panting first and thinking later.

I chose between dark grey, dark navy and brown and in the end I decided on brown. I thought that would make the room more cozy, yet elegant.

Halway through it looked like this. It felt strange to use such a dark color because I usually only paint white or other light colors.

I was a bit nervous about what Darling would say when he got home, but after the first shock he like it. This is what it looked like then when I had also changed the fauteuil for a dark one and moved the (terrible) cow skin from the living room.


However, I was not done!

I have been dreaming of a four poster bed since forever, and I am really in love with the modern one that are basically just four posters, no drapes, nothing. I have been looking for one, but as our bed is 180cm, it is almost impossible to find a moderately priced one. IKEA has a nice one, but that one is only 140, which is not enough for two people and a couple of cats.

The next day I continued my make over with a trip to the lumber store. It always make me a bit nervous because the guys there are not really used to (fairly) young women buying lumber on their own. I also could not fit the original pieces into my car so I had to cut everything right there, but maybe that was just as well because that meant I did not have to do it at home.

This is my bed-to-be, for less than 40€.

I began putting the pieces together like this. Basically, what I had was four posters of 2,4 m (I simply decided that was good height), 4 pieces that were the length of the bed (one up on top and one down to keep it steady) and 4 pieces that were the width of the bed (same thing - two on top, two bottom). I later realized that the "bottom ones" were to high on this picture, because it meant we would sit on them when we got into bed and they could not take that pressure, so I moved them further down.

The mattresser are still standing on their own legs, the frame is simply built around them and does not support anything.

Next part was the beadframe. I chosed unpolished planks that are usually used outside the houses (but without any chemicals - of course), cut them the same width as the bed and nailed four of them together using these little metal brackets.

Then I put it up and fastened it with long screws (it will be agains the wall so it does not need that much support) and began painting the whole thing.

The finished result looked like this.

In daylight.

I am not a photographer, so the colors arent the best, but I am quite satisfied. The whole project took me maybe 1,5 days and cost less than 50€. That means I will not have to feel bad about it if I throw it out in a year, but before that I hope to add some curtains to the frames and turn it into something more romantic for the summer. Stay tuned for that.







Tuesday, February 8, 2011

No time

I am so sorry for the lack of blog posts. I have been occupied with work, but I promise to give an amazing before - after of our bedroom tomorrow.

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Some thoughts on colors

The other day when I changed the table cloth, I found that I had ended up with a spontaneous color match. The flowers, the candle holders, the table cloth and the coasters match each other perfectly without beeing the same color.

I think this is the key to why some things and places feels so much more harmonius than others and I am also so very grateful to have this eye for color (although of course there are people that are much better than me), because many people simply does not see which colors that work together. (Kind of like how I am with music - I could not pick out two keys to go with each other even if my life depended on it.)





Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Style evolution

There is a really funny link-party going on at this blog. 

I know my style has evolved quite a bit, although I never was very found of dark colours (probably because that was all the rage when I was a kid), but unfortunately I do not have many pictures. I do remember the first time I got to buy furniture for a place (after sub-renting furnished places) and I was crazy about the IKEA look that happened to be all white and a lot (and I really mean a lot) of birch wood. Some year later that evolved into white + oak and today I guess it is just white and... white? 

Mini closets

Do you see those closets next to the bed in the previous picture?

This is what they looked like before: 

They are two childrens closets that were left in the house when we moved in. I am -as you all know - not very found of wood and I did not know what to do with these, so for a while we just moved them around to wherever room we would not see them.

Then one day I finally painted them, in a light grey shade (the same one as I used in the hallway acctually - although there it looks much more blue) and they turned out great.


Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Our bedroom

The master bedroom was the second room that I painted when we moved in. In the apartment we left we had a small but very white bedroom and I found that very calming, so I painted it all white. It took a while before I figured out a good way to arrange the furniture and for a while we even had one of those big cat-scratch-trees that took up almost all of the space next to the bed. It was a futile attempt to get the cats calmer at night, and interior-wise it was a nightmare, so it eventually had to go.

I am putting these pictures up because I have re-done the bedroom recently, so these are the in-between pictures. The before pictures can be found here.


Monday, January 31, 2011

White chairs

We hosted a new years party for 12 people and I really wanted to create a cohesive look and when I stumbled upon four foldable wooden chairs with 50% off at the local thrift store it saved my day.

They werent the nicest to begin with, but two layers of paint later meant I could create a new years dinner table with all white chairs of different kinds.




 The dinner table.. although it doesnt show the chairs very well so I guess I will have to find a reason to use them again soon.

Friday, January 28, 2011

The first signs of spring

To me, tulips are the first sign that spring might eventually arrive, although it will still be three more months before it gets warmer.

I got these lovely bouquets for my birthday and they really add color and a bit of happiness to the room.



Thursday, January 27, 2011

A store I miss

Some days ago Apartment Therpy featured a post about the store BHV in Paris. I lived in Paris for two years and I really liked that store - especially once I had found the basement.

The upper floors look like any standard department store with perfumes, beddings, table ware etc (no clothing though..), but the basement is a reall "bricolage" - full of everything you need for DIY. Unfortunately my apartment was too small for any big changes, but there was still a lot of nice stuff to find there.

I wish there was a store like that here.

When we first met...

We are getting married this year and I decided that this could merit an ego wall (after all, it is our own house so where else could we put a lot of pictures of ourselves) to remind us of all the years we have spent together. The frames are RAM from IKEA painted white and the quote says

 "When we first met, I had no idea you would be so important to me." 

I found the quote on the net so I do not know who said it, but I like it because it reminds me of how hazardous meetings can be and how people you meet only briefly can be more important to you than you can ever imagine at that first moment. And vice versa.