Dream kitchen (or kitchen dreams)

Don't you just see the perfect 50's kitchen with yellow-black retro wallpaper and candy colour furniture? You don't? Well, I do (and am hoping the husband will keep up with the good work..)

Lazy day

I didn't have much energy to do anything today. I raked wet leaves for an hour and half and after that read interior design magazines. Luckily I have an energetic husband, he went to Rauhala and got rid of the plastic carpets in the hall and living room. The wooden floorboards were in a rather good condition so some sanding and painting is required, but no need to change the boards.

Gems for old houses

There is a new shop in Helsinki, Domus Classica (link). It's a wonderful place if you have an old house! From there you'll find everything you need...e.g. a replacement vent for an old one that your clumsy chimney sweeper broke.

Lounging on the patio

It took my husband the whole of yesterday and most of today to move two huge stones (the smaller one is in the photo below) from the back yard. Now we are ready to start with the patio. This means moving a bit of gravel and then some. Can't wait to sit in the corner, sipping cool drinks under the shadow of white lilacs. Stay tuned folks, more pictures follow on a later date.

Which side do you prefer?

The left side of the back garden looked like this on last weekend:

And the right side is a work in progress:

We cut down the lilacs again as they were a bit damaged and we also need to thin out the bushes as we want to get more room to move in the front of the house. The big stones are for a wall and steps that will lead from the house to the shed. Just you wait and see, the right side will look good after a couple of weeks (years).

Straight talk

It is incredibly hard to put wallpapers on walls that are not straight. Especially when the wallpaper has 53 cm pattern hight (and if you in addition have a wife who isn't much help). Well, my husband did it, our hall now has new wallpapers and I just love them! There is still a lot to do before the room is finished, but I am happy for now. Our living room is of course a mess, as the stuff from the hall had to be moved somewhere and it is no use putting things back to their places as they would be in the way when finishing the room.

By the way, the small weights are very useful when spreading the adhesive behind the papers! Nice to have some use for things you just bought for decoration.

Watch your steps

As our living room floors are partly rotten we have to find light but sizeable things to put to the places we don't whish our gests to step on (it is no use warning them - usually they already stand on the spot when we notice and find our voice to say something - better to cover the area with stuff so that there is no room to stand). The old sewing basket is a perfect tool for this use: it is very light but takes enough room and nobody is going to try sitting on it.

By the way, the floor almost caved at this spot when we moved the furniture and my husband had to stand on the rotten boards.

Almost there

The bathroom is looking even better...most of the lists are in place and most of them are painted at least once. I even got a window shelf (which is not painted nor fastened yet).

Keep your secrets

At last, we have a latch on our bath room door! Before you had to yell that the bathroom is occupied and hope that everybody heard...

Getting there

We have at last chosen the colours for the house and my husband has painted all the new parts of the outer wall (about 3 meters...) and the frames of the door and the hall´s window. The door is a bit of a sore sight as we bought the cheapest door we could find a few years back. Well, we are not going to change it in near future as there is so much other things that are in a more immediate need of repair. I just have to live with the new ugly door and hope that someday it will either be covered with paint or changed to an older one.

Step up!

I played a shop-keeper yesterday, we had a flea market at our shop (and will have one today, too). While I slaved away at the shop (=read magazines), my husband built us new steps.

Window of opportunity

We got these windows from my husband´s work place. They are rather big, deliciously old and in a good condition. Let´s see how many years it takes before we do anything with them.