NYE and no interwebs

First and foremost:
All the best to you and yours in this brand new year!

Also:
We’ve moved into the apartment!

Two weeks and three days ago to be exact. And it was quite the busy day with  parents, siblings and housemates helping out, driving back and forth with two family cars, loading and unloading and even picking up some online-bought second hand furniture in the outskirts of Brussels.
All of that with Tim’s broken elbow, lots of stairs and traffic jam galore. Our knackered parents drove back home at 11.30PM, leaving us with furniture and boxes all over the floor, but not before making sure the biggest pieces  had already been properly set up. Like the bed. That was awesome. So proud. So sleepy.

On moving day, we got ourselves a new second-hand Belgian designer sideboard which was near-impossible to fit into my father’s car and had turned out to be enormously heavy. But it now looks oh so b-e-a-u-tiful opposite the kitchen ❤.
We found out that the corner-cabinets we spotted online (also second-hand) are almost an exact match for Tim’s beautiful mid-century modern (hand crafted way back when near our hometowns) cabinets. The wood of the corner piece is a bit lighter and instead of a base board, like the other ones, it has 4 pretty legs. Apart from that, the handles and details turned out to be matching exactly – bliss*.

The dining room table we had our eye on was quite damaged (which was not mentioned in the advert, nor visible in the pictures – not cool  bros), so we passed up on that one, which is a bit of a pity for the wasted time, but not spending that much money on a damaged table was certainly for the best.
By consequence and necessity, my desk is moonlighting in the kitchen with a couple of tip-up seats. It doesn’t seem to mind ^_^.

Since the move we haven’t had a proper internet connection – hence this late post, but that’s supposed to get sorted this Thursday (and not on the 29th as was planned – grmblgrdamnyouinternetprovider).

Ooh! We already had our first little houseparty on NYE! And the first reactions to the place were very positive – so yay! More prouds! I made some fresh hummus and guacamole and all night long we ate and drank it up cosily/sillily –  hope you too had a great start of 2015!

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Gelukkig nieuwjaar Bonne année Happy new year 🎆

A post shared by Slinki (@silke_vh) on Dec 31, 2014 at 11:07am PST

*Never you mind that chipped nail polish! I was slaving in the kitchen and making the place look great all day, so myeah!
(also – that’s the Eames rocking chair in the back!)

Cheers babes and hunks, much love.

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Online furniture shopping

On this beautiful lazy Sunday, sitting on our almost ex-couch in our almost ex-living room, Tim and I gently slipped into an online second hand shopping spree.

After a day of looking around, we’ve got our eyes on some gorgeous mid-century modern style furniture. So we sent out some emails and did some bidding on eBay.
As I write these words our living room is morphing in my mind. If we get the cherry wooden dining room table, my desk table won’t have to be temporarily repurposed, so where do we create a working space? And if we get the corner closet, do we need to leave another piece behind? Confusing and exciting, online shopping for second hand stuff is definately keeping this moving process interesting.

One of the pieces on eBay that we actually got our hands on was this beauty!
Although a replica, it’s designed after the Eames molded plastic rocker, so I am totally psyched. It’s being delivered to our new place after our move!

It’s going to look great on our dark wooden floors, and what I love about this timeless design is just that. It’s timeless! It goes with the eclectic – bohemian? – airy style we have in mind right now.

Shopping online together was also a good experience. We’re getting to know the details about each other’s design related likes and dislikes. I’m most delighted to find that we’ve found a style we’re both happy with… Awesomesauce!

Tim’s slightly more into heavier pieces, like my street find we dragged into my room a year and a half ago (which I’m planning to revamp for the new place, maybe more later). But his purchase of a five-piece living room cupboard set last year was actually what sparked my love for the mid century modern – lighter stuff! So we’ve been growing towards each other in that sense.

Anyway, that’s where we’re at, very excited, very up for the move – now with extra seating!

 

Location, location – dislocation

Things were going so smoothly, what with our aligned stars and all, so I was kind of expecting something was going to put a kink in our moving process…

Well, the day before yesterday, something definitely got cracked. My boyfriend’s right elbow to be precise. He made a nasty fall and dislocated it, fracturing his humerus in the process.

I’ve spent all day yesterday at the hospital with him getting scans and x-rays and ultrasounds and nope, he’s not going to be able to be much of a physical help during our move. He’s getting an operation on Friday, so fingers crossed for a swift recovery!

Silver lining – with this imperfection popping up in the process, at least now I know I’m not dreaming anymore. It’s something ^_^ !

My floor plan in 7 steps

As I mentioned previously, I love drawing out plans, whether I’m reorganizing my current living area or, as in this case, when I’m moving into a brand new place.

In this post, I would like to share the way I created the floor plan of our new apartment. The whole ordeal took me three hours or so, spread over two days.

what I used:

• measurements of the new apartment (got them from the sweethearts that currently live there)
• pictures to fill in the blanks (I used the ones in the online ad)
• gridded paper (mine has a 5mm grid, which came in very handy)
• a mechanical pencil and an eraser
• a ballpoint or felt pen and (just to be sure – ) some liquid paper
• a ruler
• colored pencils/ markers
• a tape measure for your furniture
• scissors (or a cutter knife if you’re up for it)
• painters tape

 step 1 – sketching

Before starting on the final plan, I puzzled the apartment together. I kind of remembered the layout of the place, but a detailed drawing tends to take a bit more information. For my first drafts I used the measurements, the pictures in the advert AND a top view of the place (satellite picture) which you can easily find online. That top view helped me figure out how far the bedroom sticks out of the back of the building. Thought to myself that that was a pret-ty clever thing to do…
I included the way the doors opened, the non-movable kitchen- and bathroom furniture and appliances and also made sure to include the heating, because that’s something important to take into account when arranging your furniture.

I kept scaling easy by using the length of two adjoining squares (= 1cm) on the paper as 1m in real size.

I sketched out 3 versions, each one a bit more realistic and complete than the last. When I figured out how every room attached to the next, I moved on to…

step 2 – positioning the plan on the paper

Which is why step 1 was so important before moving on to your final drawing. If you know the dimensions of the entire thing, you can center it on the page and decide on the scale you will use. Do this in pencil, so there’s no permanent mistakes.

I doubled the scale for this one (so 2cm = 1m), so the furniture I put in later wouldn’t turn out too tiny to cut out.

For the kitchen and bathroom, I used some symbols used in architectural floor plans to indicate the location of appliances like my refrigerator, dishwasher etc. and other non-moveable things like sinks and the bathtub. you can easily find them with a quick online search for ‘symbols for floor plans’.

step 3 – ink when ready

When you have the whole thing on there in pencil, go over your distances, pictures and other aids again. Have you included all of the windows? Do you remember which way the doors open? Did you get all the heating in there?

If so, put the whole thing in ink with a ballpoint pen or a felt pen, using your ruler to keep the lines straight. Let dry(!) and carefully erase the pencil lines.

step 4 –  add some flavor

I chose to put some color on the floors. This made it easy for myself to visualize the place, and it created a bit more contrast between the floors and the furniture, which I kept black and white. The fact that I used colored pencils turned out to be a good idea since painters tape tends to stick less to paper that’s been colored, so the risk of tearing up your plan when rearranging the furniture is reduced.

step 5 –  take measurements of your furniture

Take out your tape measure and start writing the dimensions of the furniture down. Don’t forget your carpets!

step 6 – cut out and customize

This is a pretty delicate task. Some of the furniture, like a couple of side tables, was kind of small, so it took some patience to cut out the pieces and add detail in pen. To be able to recognize each shape, I wrote a description of each piece of furniture on it’s bottom in pencil. When drawing on the detail, I added some plants on some pieces, to easily recognize them.

* I  went cut first, then draw, but in retrospect, maybe I should have reversed that order.

To finish the task, I added  masking tape to the bottom of each piece of miniature furniture, so that I could stick them gently onto my floor plan. Make sure not to stick ’em on too enthusiastically though, make sure you’ll be able to try out some different arrangements.

step 7 –  play around with it!

Victory dance for your awesome detailed floor plan! Arrange! Rearrange! Get fantasizing about what the place will look like, imagine what other pieces of furniture would go well with your brand new shared space, think up what kind materials, paints and wallpapers you would love to use! Do you think you need an extra rug to tie the place together? Are there things that you might not want to take and could consider selling for some extra cash in your decorating budget? This is your chance to go wild and visualize baby!

This little project scratched my itch to get crackin’ on the place before we actually move in, I hope making your own might do the same for you!