Archive for February, 2009
Wall decoration
Our flat still leaves much room for improvement in terms of decoration, however, there is one piece of art that we are quite proud of: the oil painting in our living room. The wall had been left blank for a while after we moved in, and we knew we had to do something in terms [...]
Now: Living Room
In order to transform the old bedroom into a preliminary living room we got ourselves a tiny, cheapo TV, and stole Richard’s mum’s old couch, which she didn’t need anymore. Then we added a Lack bookcase from Ikea and a cool retro lamp. Together with a low coffee table that we got on clearance, it [...]
In Progress: Bedroom to Living Room
In the old bedroom, after we had taken out all the furniture (that huge closet was a bastard to get out, let me tell you!), four more walls of awful, old, sticky wallpaper awaited us.
Once this was removed too, we started painting one wall in a warm chocolate brown. The rest were kept minimalistically white. [...]
Before: Bedroom
On the other side of the kitchen, there was the former bedroom. It was dominated by the bed and the big, boxy, mahogany closet. Someone must have really loved dark brown.
You can also see the throughway to the bathroom in this pic. The bathroom is still the same horrible, dark 70ies room that it is [...]
Now: Kitchen and Dining Room
This is what our kitchen/dining room looks like right now:
We changed the tiles of the kitchen backsplash, and added light fixtures. The dining table was made by my granddad from walnut wood. We got the eight chairs from a local furniture shop on sale. The kitchen island plus the bar stools came from that same [...]
In Progress: Kitchen and Living Room
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We knew that the long and narrow kitchen that had no (real) windows wouldn’t do it for us. So we decided to take down the wall between the kitchen and the living room, and turn it all into a kitchen/dining room area. Tearing down the wall was not as much fun as we had thought. [...]
Before: Living Room
Next to the kitchen, there was the living room, which was inhabitated by a leather couch in dusky pink:
Two walls were covered with really dark mahogany shelves, which my grandpa had built all by himself.
Knowing all the work that had gone into them, I felt terrible for tearing them down, but such is life, and [...]
Before: Kitchen
Overall, the flat was definitely a bit mingy, however, there was a new kitchen, which my grandparents had installed only two years earlier in hopes of luring me into the flat once I graduated. I am obviously very predictable, since their little trick worked like a charm. Here she is:
Notice that tasteful, bright blue vinyl [...]
Before and Now
Before we started, the place felt like a dingy museum. Noone had lived in that part of the house since my mother and me had left in 1988. Yep, 1988. We started renovating in 2007. That’s nearly 20 years of dust.
I resisted calling this post before and after, because we really aren’t finished with the [...]
