THE LIVING ROOM

We finally have a living room!

Yes, there has always been a living room downstairs, but that room still has boxes and extra furniture from our former city flat everywhere, that have been waiting for the renovation to progress so they can be taken into use and the downstairs one glorious day be emptied up of extras. A day which is very much closer now than a few months ago. (Insert big choir underneath my window singing Hallelujah! the Bach way here.)  We had basically been hanging out in the kitchen for the past two years while first fixing up the boys' rooms, and this summer we finally got the upstairs hallways turned into a hang-out space. 

The hallways was always ugly, unpractical, and tended to collect junk. There are no proper before's of that exact reason. A long time ago when I first came here it made you feel like a tiny hotdog in a bun as one wall was ketchup red and the other mustard yellow. Eventually we coloured the walls white as a quick fix. The ceiling was this strange plastic-cardboard-probably-very-great-in-the-eighties-material. Here are some of last summer's progress:

New ceiling and new walls. I wanted an apricot-y shade on the walls; this is Riviera by Tikkurila. The hardwood floor was in good condition but not nice per se, so it stayed but changed it's looks with paint.

Eddi hand-painted the checks on the floors. The same as the downstairs hallway, from where the stairs lead right up to here.

A lot of things are from our old Tapiola-living room -

(The cats have totally destroyed those red chairs btw. Anyone know of a good upholsterer?)

But some found their way from other rooms, or are in one way or another new - my old movie theatre chairs that had been waiting on the front porch for, umm, five years or so finally made their way up to be put into use! Scraped a lot of old hard bubblegum off underneath those (yuck!)... We also have a tv for the first time in years

The lithography is from my late grandmother's home. She got it as a gift from a lady she had helped during ww2. I always liked the colours in it.

Haha these vases were waiting for the living room to happen, collecting dust in our bedroom forever. Eddi got me the blue-and-white one from a job trip to South Africa and I thought it was a bit ugly until I got the two small other mid-century vases from my grandmother's home when we had to empty it, and I thought of pairing them together.

The Helsinki-poster by my graphic design idol Eric Bruun hangs here now as a nod to what I still consider "my" town, next to a map-poster of where we now live (the village of Vassböle), that  my sister gave us some Christmases ago.

Nothing is ever really ready though. Doors are missing, books need to be taken out of boxes and arranged and the bedroom corridor still needs a new ceiling and walls and and and...

(And now we have no front door because the front porch is being renewed. But that is another story. Right now however I intend to hang out with Netflix on a bigger and comfier screen than the usual laptop-in-lap. Netflix, theatre chairs and red wine it is!)

AND RIVIERA IT WAS

This is the best part of the renovation!

Choosing colours and getting to paint.
(or ok, second best, after actually being done. or maybe third, because getting to bring the stuff in and decorate is pretty close to being a winner as well...)

Also, note: nice floor. Handpainted by mister Eddi again, like he did downstairs.

DAG'S ROOM

At the end of last summer we renovated a room for Dag!

Ever since we moved out of the flat in the city to stay in the countryside permanently we have been living in a constant renovation state, or rather, the notion of a we-should-be-renovating state. Half of our downstairs still consists of a labyrinth of boxes, and while I knew this would be a slow process, it is driving me insane nontetheless. However, slowly but certainly we have managed to get some things done:  a year ago we turned what I had referred to as "the renovation hole" into a walk-in closet, and at the end of summer we finally got around fixing Dag a proper room!
(Earlier this year we renovated a room for Dag's older brother -the oldest boy has moved away from home to study already- and as late as then we finally also got proper electricity in this room; everything had been with extention chords there forever. We also got electricity to the walk-in closet and some chords and plugs in our bedroom corrected.  That one sure was a big moment of "finally"; phew!) 

Last July we emptied the old kids room; took out the plastic carpet from the 1980's, tore down the old wall paper and renewed the walls.

The old room was a pretty ok light blue but I wanted more warmth so the walls became a sunny light yellow. We lay in wooden floor boards.

Eddi and his father built a mini walk-in closet; I find it easier to decorate when you get more corners in big rooms. Plus big closets that go all the way to the ceiling are always a win storage-wize.
I painted the floor and for a moment of mind-slip almost managed to paint me in one of those handy corners. But just almost. 

Dag keeps all his dress-up items and ninja gear in his closet.

Ninjas are his thing, still. He likes to build them out of Hama-pearls and is pretty creative with them!

Most of his ninjas are in the form of Legos though. I got myself an old-school Dymo and have been labelling a lot of things around the house as I've been organising. Dag learned to read last year so he can help keep the order of his Spinjizus and those tiny tiny claw-hands. (Mind you, these here are the smallest special-pieces only. The amount of legos in the house, after three boys, is overwhelming.)

The castle poster is a vintage school poster that Dag got when he had his short fling with knights in between ninja-phases.

The table surface is the same the older boys had in Tapiola; the old kitchen top from that flat's original kitchen.

The bunny with a view on Jupiter lives next to the moon.
Facebook ads sure know how to sell me things.

There are still some small things to be done in here like a bookshelf and curtains (and, in this room as in all the others: taking out and painting those damn windows! That work will either suck to do, or cost sooo much to have done, I have no idea when it actually will ever happen)  - but otherwise we are on the winning side of this one already!

And every now and then there's a disco in here!

PAINT AND SPARKLE

Happy new year to all of you!
2017 is SO the future already and  since I started blogging in 2007 it means that come autumn we've been haning out here on ze interwebs for a decade already. Oh my.

On New Year's Eve we went to a glitter & glam themed party.
"Must be very hard for you to find something to wear", said Eddi.

(A little show trick that works great for parties off stage too: apply some lip gloss over your lipstick and press fine loose glitter on top. Sparkly lips like whoah!)

I went for the glittery thing that was the most comfy. 

 

I made Eddi a glitter bow tie for the occasion. He added some sparkle to his to-be-or-not-to-be beard himself.

I also made Dag (I am guessing no child free New Year's eves for the next 10 years or so as no-one will babysit on nye, ever) his own sparkly bow tie so father and son could look adorable together but even though red is his favourite colour he refused to wear it. Kids.

 On this year's side I've, apart from being fluish, I've paited my head. Sort of. Put colour in my hair.

And started painting the windows. Finally, finally, finally!

I've hated the brown frames and wanted to paint them white forever, but one should actually take the windows out and do it properly; all layers (we have triple layers in Finland because of, well - Finland) which makes it possible only during the warmer months. And also hell of a job (I can be a lazy shit sometimes.) I saw mthat y sister had painted her window frames just on the inside and it looked totally fine, so decided to do the same. At least as a first step now, and perhaps one glorious day do it the proper way as well. I am painting with linseed oil which takes forever to dry, so this is a slow and somewhat of a on-the-side project.

But there are other faster projects going on here at home, i.e. I have been painting a lot more as well! But lets get back to that later.

AT THE STUDIO

Late night at the studio with a cup of the after the classes.

We are very happy with how the space turned out and also proud that we did it by ourselves (if you don't count building two walls which we had a builder do), stage and all!

Here's how it looked before:

And now:

(Our landlord said he was surprised too see what we managed to do with the space.)

Here in action rehearsing with one of our performing troupes!

The dressing room. We also have another smaller mirrored rehearsal space with storage for our costumes but that space is still just filled with said costumes, suitcases and props everywhere waiting for some law and order...

One thins I still find hard to believe is that we managed to do this without any external funding.  That was never the plan though, but as we did not start a new business - we've been doing all of this on a smaller scale for years - but was going about things the normal way while setting the studio up, and as we stumbled across the space rather quickly (suitably in the same building we have been in for years) we just did not have the time to get any. We had worked hard the years before this that made it possible - now it's time work even harder -and hope- it will continue to be so!

I will confess that the start has been rather slow though. And that is just due to ourselves. Getting our website up and running would be rather (read:very) important (NO it is still not properly up in it's final form, I know!), and doing actual marketing as well, not just running everything trough Facebok as we've done (and done well) the past years, is next on our agenda. After Along with traveling to Berlin to perform next week, doing the once-in-a-lifetime custom ordered show for Sofi Oksanen's release of her new novel Norma and producing the Pin-Up Finland competition. Oh yeah and setting up Spectac-O-Rama for this year! The autumn of stress.

But. Yes. Our studio is in Lauttasaari and we have classes from Monday to Thursday with special courses those weekends we are not away performing! Buy your classes *here*  and schedule+book them **here**! Pilates on Tuesday mornings and Thursday nights, Seasonal Yoga the other way around and burlesque dance classes every night! It is also possible to book the studio for personal practice (daytime, evenings available in the smaller room) or for teaching during the weekends.

THE BROWN ROOM

There is one room downstairs in the farm house, behind the door with the chipped paint, that you have not seen that much of. Well, anything of really. A room that at some point will become a proper study & guest room.

The past year it has been full of left ocrs from the renovation as well as old and nice and old and ugly furniture without a place for their own. Plus Eddi's windsurfing gear and geology stuff an my dead plants I tried to keep alive in there during winter.

We've aimed to fix it up to level one every free weekend this year we'e had but so far no luck...

It will however turn out great when it's  done, eventually. For now it has no electricity and an ugly plastic carpet on the floor which I to start with, before getting it properly done (that'd be level one), intend to cover with lots and lots of rag rugs.


It has the nicest light in the house with windows in two directions and old wallpaper that is both yucky and pretty at the same time.

THE FARMHOUSE KITCHEN

I never really made a proper post about how we finished the renovation in the countryside kitchen,

which we started fixing it up a little over a year ago. Well mainly because there was always something small left to do (and still is)... 

I was used with renovations in flats, - having done a couple before-  that take a few weeks up to a  month max two and didn't really realise that renovating a (old) house takes so much more time... Our kitchen was ready a little before summer, but as we did lots of other things too we finished up some details as late as August. Or, as I've said before, few thing are ever really ready in an old house.

Since the house is from the late twenties we wanted the style to be somewhat that, although still look kind of timeless. And as this is a farm house it could indeed look like a farm house kitchen, full of stuff, but then again I did not want it to be too "countryside romantic", shabby chic or so...

We originally intended to paint the floor with checks in grey and white, but as the hallway also got such a painted floor it would have sen too much (phew! And it saved us a lot of work.)

It's a big kitchen, and we didn't want to fill it with a lot of fixed furniture so that it'd get too "heavy" but stay airy and with a lot of work space. The old one actually had quite little work surfaces. We have a long oak board that we tinted black with natural wax. We had to custom order it to get the right depth and length, and shape, as it sort of includes a little windowsill.

So instead of fixed cupboards underneath the work surface I got carts behind the curtain that can easily be moved around to where the stuff they carry is needed. This is the same kind of cart that I have in our bedroom in the city in mint green; Råskog from ikea. I think many things easily get lost in deep cupboards. But not when you keep it on wheels! Muahahaha.

The curtain also hides our dishwasher. We didn't replace it with a new prettier or integrated one as it was still totally functional. In order for the system to work effortlessly we made our work surface a few cm deeper than standard size, so the curtain hangs far away enough for the dishwasher door to open easily. We also keep the micro wave (which we almost never use, but you never know)  hidden next to the dishwasher.

And I'm super content with the "walk in" storage space. It keeps all the food plus some extra pots and pans. I wanted the shelves quite shallow, so that everything is easily visible and not hidden and forgotten in the back. No outdated cans or jars there!

The trash and recycling buckets are inside a wood crate that we put wheels on. Works well!

Generally Finnish kitchens have lots of closed cupboards - it is after all more practical, I confess, less dust etc- but, apart from one cabinet for plates and glass,  have mainly open shelves.

I wanted the shelves to be kind of "rough", so they are made of floor boards we painted with linseed oil paint.

We had the stove unit built by adding pieces from here and there. The old wood stove is next by; we use it occasionally.

Pretty much everything was custom built in, or ordered for the kitchen. In some cases that can get rather expensive, but then again the solution with less fixed cabinets and pieces also meant less material and thus tured out to be quite economical. And in some cases custom made by a carpenter or handyman isn't necessarily more expensive at all, like with the piece we had made in the kitchen in the city, or here with the stove and shelves, for example.

The cabinets we have are from Juvi, they're all wood and painted with linseed oil paint.


 I made some faux-roman blinds for the windows. I wouldn't really ever close the curtains anyway.

And in usual manner it is full of small hands and cats.