interior design – Page 2

Shuffling the cards

January 7, 2011January 7, 2011 Mirthful 2 Comments

You know the room where I just tore down the horrid, horrid carpet wall covering? Where we meant to have the hobby/guest room? Well, progress is being made. There is now paper up on the wall where the carpet used to be, the moulding is all white (one more coat needed) and paint is going to come up on the walls quite soon. And on one wall? Probably pink paint.

See, we’ve come to the realisation that we have to move the lass from her current room. We did absolutely nothing in there, luckily, so no work gone to waste. The problem with her in there is it’s next to the bathroom and when someone takes a shower it sounds like a really bad storm or something. Which means we can’t really have a shower when she’s sleeping, whether it’s in the evening or the morning. This is, you could say, a tad inconvenient.

So. Since we’re so good a procrastinating* this realisation came to us at the perfect time, just in time to change the plans for paint in the room we’re working on and move her in there, then we can do a little bit of work on the room she’s in now and get the hobby room set up there. The shower thing will be a problem whenever we have guests, but that’s not going to happen often enough to warrant worrying about it. Once we get around to doing up the bathroom – a few years down the line, probably – we can consider a little measure of noise insulation.

And, yes, pink. I told her we would paint three walls white and that she could choose a colour for the fourth. So far she’s insisting on either green or “girl colour” (jentefarge) with a heavy leaning toward the latter. So I’ve told her she can have pink, as long as she starts calling it pink, not “girl colour”, since there is no such thing. It seems to be sinking in. Well, the calling it pink part, anyway, I guess I can’t expect to conquer the combined force of society’s genderization of colour in just a few sentences, but I’ll settle for the naming part for now.

I’d try to convince her to go for green, except I’m planning on buying closets and such from IKEA in the new Stuva series with green fronts (mainly because the pink and blue are of such insipid hues) and figure it will be easier to match with a pink than finding the perfect shade of green paint. Also, I figure it’s better to let her have SOME pink, then hopefully she’ll grow out of it at some point. If we were to be militantly against it might become an obsession, which would not be a good thing.

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* And boy am I glad we have been procrastinating on this, it would have been a major pain in the ass to discover this after having set the hobby room up with desks, computers, sewing machines and craft supplies. Major, major pain. Procrastination FTW

Somebody else’s kitchen

December 8, 2010December 8, 2010 Mirthful 3 Comments

There is very little happening on the interior front at the moment, partly because we’re slow, partly because Christmas is not the right time to have the place all ahoo (though my mother and mother-in-law would obviously claim it’s all ahoo right now, but who listens to them, anyway?) and partly because all three of us have been knocked out by some sort of thing going round. The husband seems to have a straightforward cold, but the lass and I have something more complicated and fluey. She seems to be better, though, and is back in daycare today, while I finally get to sit down and simply be sick instead of also being mother, at least for a few hours. Bliss.

Anyway, we visited with friends in Sweden a little over a week ago, and I grabbed the chance to shoot a few pictures of their excellent refurbishment job, mainly for my own reference, since they’ve managed to get quite a few details in that I really want to make sure we remember whenever we get around to doing something with the kitchen here. But since I’ve got the shots I thought I’d share. They were shot at night, which was a bit stupid of me, but I didn’t get around to it earlier, and there was no attempt at styling (which will be obvious). Still, here goes:

I love the red tiles with the white fronts and black floor. I also love the lamp over the dining table, which is unusual, since I hate most lamps I see. The table is a natural gathering area, I’m a sofa-person myself, but even I tend to sit at the table here – it’s in the centre of the open-plan living space (the sofa area being off to the left of where I’m standing to take this picture), and it works really well.

Ignore the dirty dishes, look at that countertop, and most especially look at that sink! It’s huge! Certainly big enough to get full-size baking sheets and oven dishes in without any sort of maneuvering. The countertop, with sink, was made to specifications, so it fits the whole counter seamlessly. This is top of my list of WANTS for our own kitchen.

Some open shelving in the corner provides an opportunity to display a few decorative (and useful) items.

But this, this is perfect. It’s located at the dining table end of the kitchen island and can be hidden when not in use. It provides power for laptops used at the dining table or in the kitchen for recepies, and for charging mobiles and other devices right there where people congregate. Such a brilliant detail.

In fact, apart from changing the black laminate for linoleum flooring, I’d quite like to simply adopt the whole kitchen as it is. Problem is, it won’t fit in our flat. Pity. Still, inspiration is good, too.

Strange and unnatural carpet wall begone

November 22, 2010November 22, 2010 Mirthful 3 Comments

Since I finally got around to buying goggles and mask, I thought I might as well get to it and tackle that horrible unnaturalness on the wall in the soon-to-be hobby room.

The goggles and mask were necessary, because the glue holding the monstrosity to the wall was very dry and brittle. Thus tearing the carpet down was a cinch, getting the glue off was somewhat trickier. That is, it turned out to be easier than expected, using this tool:

And some elbow grease, it took less than an hour in all, I think. It resulted in a lot of this, though:

Which is why I thought the goggles and mask were required accessories for the job. Because, frankly, this would not normally be how I dress up of a Sunday afternoon:

However, it’s gone. The strange and unnatural and mind-boggling wall covering carpet is gone.

I dare you to try to explain to me how this is not "carpet" but perfectly normal wallpaper.

I realise I might now offend someone out there who just looooves their wooly walls, and, well, to each his own and ours is not to judge. But first stones aside: Are you mad? I mean, fine, you’re mad, I don’t really care. Whatever makes you happy. As long as the shit’s down off our wall.

On the subject of mad: What’s with mothers? Mine thinks we should have been all moved in by now (including having emptied the storage facility). I commented that as long as we were still refurbishing it would take a while, and that the magic carpet wall was next in turn (this was before I attacked it this weekend, obviously). She then let me know that she’d thought about it and had decided we should leave it as it was (and I mean “should” not “ought to”). Apparently she thinks it might help noice reduction between the rooms. Well, I granted her the point but wondered why she thought we would be in dire need of noise reduction between the hobby room and our bedroom. Well, it might be handy whenever it was used as a guest room, she argued. Which might happen, oh, I don’t know, at least once every blue moon, I guess, but I didn’t argue, just pointed out that I’d already started pulling it down to see if I could. In which case it was ok, apparently, to continue.

Why does she care, anyway? She lives in town, she’s hardly likely to ever need to sleep over. Besides: I HATE THAT WALL. Seriously, isn’t that reason enough to tear it down? Knowing us we’ll more or less cover the wall in shelving anyway, there’s noise reduction for you.

And what’s with everyone’s haste on our behalf? I don’t care if it takes us years to be done “moving in”, it’s not as if I’m planning on moving out again. I just said hello to our downstairs neighbour for the first time yesterday and she said they’ve lived here for 39 years. THAT’s what I’m planning on. Fine, I know, I know, life doesn’t actually always work out according to plan, but does that mean we should treat this place like we’re on a short term lease? Fuck that.

More hooks

November 15, 2010November 15, 2010 Mirthful 3 Comments

We followed up the Oslo Whiskyfestival with a short cruise to Fredrikshavn, and with 12 hours ashore, we decided to take the bus down to Ålborg instead of hanging around Fredrikshavn. In Ålborg I had noted down a couple of shops I wanted to visit, and one of them was Tiger. They had a lot of almost interesting things, but very few interesting enough to tempt me, but I did find some more wall hooks, or coat hangers or whatever you’d call them. Blatant rip-offs, obviously, and normally I don’t hold with buying designer rip-offs, but what with the problems I’ve been having finding any hooks I like and that actually work, in that it’s possible to hang something on them and expect that it stays there, I thought I’d go for them. Also, they were only 30 DKR each. Later the same day I saw some others, also quite blatantly rip-offs, more or less identical, at 6 times that. I mean, if you’re buying rip-offs, why pay more than you have to?

Anyway, they are up now. One has replaced the very cute but completely useless (in that it would only hold two garments, and not very bulky ones) coat hanger from IKEA that we put up in the hall for the lass’ clothes:

See: More than two garments, and bulky ones at that. And still there's room for more!

The other one has been added to the bedroom wall, where some odds and ends have also come up:

The crooked (my fault, I haste to add) picture is a present from Tonbel, the angel from another good friend and the messy artwork is the lass’ “creation”, with rather a lot of help from the daycare staff.

I wish I had a massive hall

November 13, 2010November 13, 2010 Mirthful 4 Comments

In which case I’d get me one of these:

Lamp made out of 15 old globes, by Benoit Vieubled, called “Monde à l’endroit, Monde à l’envers”

Seen at Åpent hus (with more images), who found it at Recyclart (another one for the rss-feed reader, obviously).

Score!

November 4, 2010November 4, 2010 Mirthful Leave a comment

Saturday afternoon we visited IKEA. Since there were a few specific things on our list, we started in Rotekroken – the section with all the stuff that’s been displayed or returned and is being sold at reduced prices.

And what do you think we found? A limited edition Billy bookcase, that’s what.

Billy is 30 years old, and to celebrate, a special edition was designed by IKEA designer Annika Bryngelson. They were supposed to be available from 1 October, but we haven’t been able to find them. And though we are sticking with boring old oak in the living room, we thought one of these would be perfect in the craft room to hold comics.

Though it would work for Shakespeare, too, I guess. And we sure have a few volumes to host with his name on them, too.

I love it. It came with shelves, by the way, but we had to remove them to get it home, and haven’t put them back yet. All in all we were pretty happy just to find the darn thing, but the best thing? The price:

I don’t know what’s up with that. I’m pretty sure the “was” should be the same as standard Billy, which starts at 365 kr for the plain white. You won’t see me complain, though.

Oh, and three steps down we found another Billy, this one in oak, which was one of the things on our to-buy-today-list. Nice.

A blank canvas

October 23, 2010October 23, 2010 Mirthful Leave a comment

The painting in the “master bedroom” is now done.

Though the closet doors could use a lick of paint, I guess...

Have I mentioned that I love the flooring? No? Well, I do.

Now to inject some colour. And play around with the layout. Mind you, once the bed is in place, there will be limited scope for playing around.

Which might be why the lass thought it best to use the room for ballet practice while it was still empty:

She calls it "billet", though. May I also point out that she chose the socks herself.

So near, and yet sofa

October 20, 2010October 21, 2010 Mirthful 1 Comment

‘Scuse the pun.

The inlaws came by last week to “see how far we’d gotten”. Well, I suppose the conclusion was “not far”. We’re ok with that, though, we plan on living in this flat “forever” and so we feel we have time to work out how to get it right, to find out what works and what doesn’t.

My mother-in-law would probably lose her mind in a very short time if she had to live in our flat the way it looks now, though. So would my mum, come to think of it. We’re ok with that, too. They don’t have to live there. We do, and we’re comfortable in stepping around and over boxes for days, weeks and months before figuring out where the contents go – or having the energy to put them there.

There are other things we don’t see eye to eye on, too. My mother-in-law thinks the brick walls (which we’ve discovered are actually tiles made to look like bricks) look nice. We said she could have them. My father-in-law expressed, the last time they visited, the opinion that we should try to keep the amount of bookcases in the living room to a minimum. Yeah, that’s going to happen.

At the start of the visit it became abundantly clear that the current seating arrangements in the living room, though fine when it’s just the three of us, is not really adequate for visitors. Well, I say “arrangements”, it’s more a “where the sofa and chair happened to be put down” situation. I commented on the fact that there was really no place for them to sit and that we’d have to think about a solution. My mother-in-law suggested that what we needed was a corner sofa. Or another sofa, I suggested, so we can make a corner. Well, yes, but she really thought a nice corner sofa would be best. Yes, but then what would I do with my beloved sofa, I wondered, as I want to keep it. Well, we could just shove it into one of the bedrooms, in her opinion. I explained that this was not happening, since we have plans for the bedrooms which do not involve a spare three seater.

I’m pretty sure she wasn’t convinced, but then she doesn’t have to be, I suppose.

This is my sofa. I love my sofa.

Cleverly styled with the husband's laptop open

I purchased it at a flea market in Oslo for 200 kr, and paid another 300 to have it delivered. It was worth it, I lived on the fourth floor, no lift. It is incredibly comfy, the material is obviously hard-wearing, it’s just long enough to sleep on, I think the shape is cool and I adore the colour. It’s also pretty much the perfect length for the husband and I to sit at either end and play footsie in the middle.

Lately, it’s been the husband’s seat more than mine, I’ve sat in the various chairs we’ve had after we moved to more than 32 square meters. But I still love it.

So now I’m surfing for new sofas, starting with finn.no. I guess we’ll be holding our eyes open at flea markets, too. And we’ll get one the husband likes, then he can have that and I can have mine “back”.

The main problem is getting one that fits the requirements: Comfy, at the right price and not butt-ugly. At best it would go with the other one, but that might be a bit too much to hope for. But I draw the line at butt-ugly. And since I think 90% of all sofas are butt-ugly and a fair few of the ones that aren’t are quite impossible to sit comfortably on, we might be searching for a while.

Seeking solutions

October 19, 2010October 19, 2010 Mirthful Leave a comment

Slowly, ever so slowly, we are starting to get – well, I was going to say we’re starting to get the flat in order, but perhaps that is a bit premature… At least we’re starting to get an idea of how we want things to be. One of the things we sort of discussed yesterday is whether or not to put up bookshelves along this wall (once the paneling is off and the painting done):

I was the hesitant one, would you belive it, but only because I have this wild idea that it would be possible to seat a bucketload of people around a long table if we could utilise the space along there. The husband chimed in with a very reasonable “So you want to base the whole layout of the flat on the one occasion where we might want to seat 30 people?” And I had to conceed that he is quite right, it would be madness not to use this space for bookshelves.

However, since the majority of our books are less than 20 cm wide, I suggested that, as a sort of compomise, it would be best if we could get shelves that are only 20 cm deep – as opposed to the 30 cm that seem to be standard. This, however, is easier said than done. IKEA has one model with 24 cm deep shelves, but that doesn’t come with enough shelves so you end up with wasted space in the other direction. We could go down the custom built route, but how easy (or difficult) is that going to be?

Well, the godawful paneling has to go first, so we have some time to think about it…

Progress

October 19, 2010October 19, 2010 Mirthful Leave a comment

I got some art up on the wall in the kitchen. This wall is concrete and h*ll to make new holes in (we had to to anchor the whisky cupboards on the other side), so I just used the nails the previous owners had left. It works, though I would have rearranged the pictures (and lined up better) if I could do so easily. As it is, I suspect this is how it will remain.

The artwork is by various Trondheim-based comic book writers/artists (most by Mads Eriksen), and was purchased a few years back at an event in aid of a local comic showcase magazine. The husband had to work quite hard to convince me to stop at four, as they were (I thought) ridiculously cheap. The two in colour went for 300 kr, as far as I can remember, with the b&w ones going for less. Bargain!

The table and the one chair you can’t really see are inherited. My brother-in-law and his fiance had it before, and they painted it this dark blue colour, which is quite nice. However, especially on the table top it is quite worn by now. Also, the set (we had five more chairs, after some breaks I think we have four left) are originally teak (or at least teak-coloured), and I’ve been meaning to try paint stripper on one chair since we got them five years ago. Perhaps I’ll get around to it someday… They badly need recovering, anyway, so it would make sense to do both.