I have posted these pictures (from the portfolio of Holly Jolliffe) before, but I keep coming back to them now that I try to tackle our bedroom. This bedroom, people. It is giving me headaches. I bought a daybed from Ebay for it and it was such a disappointment to see it in real life once it arrived at my house. The seller claimed it is vintage and from France and it certainly looked like it on the pictures - but in real life it looks more like it originates from a cheap furniture shop. I am now trying to make it work anyhow because it wasn´t exactly cheap..

In happier news, I always wanted a stripey bedspread like this and a few months ago, I started making my own. I realized it takes a lot of time and a TON of wool to crochet a bedspread so decorating this bedroom is becoming really expensive, but it´s coming along nicely and I can´t wait for it to be finished! I may have some progress pictures for you after the weekend. Have a nice one!

So there is this huge attic room in my house (see floor plan here). It´s almost 70 square meters big and a lovely space with the old wooden beams, the open ceiling (I think it must be nearly 5 meters high) and lots of light. This is a picture from when we first viewed the house but the space hasn´t really changed - we even acquired the bed from the previous owner and it´s the one room upstairs where I have not (yet) painted the floor. 

As it has an en suite bathroom the original plan was to turn this space into a separate holiday apartment which we could rent out in summer. The tricky part is that we would need to add an external staircase for it to have a separate access and after several discussions with our architect it became clear that this is not going to happen, mostly for structural reasons.

While this isn´t a tragedy per se - we still can use it as a space for visiting family and friends and right now, we don´t depend on the money - I find it a bit weird to leave such a huge space unused.

We´ve gone back and forth whether we still can rent it out without a separate access. I know that such spaces exist, but I am not sure how comfortable I would be as a guest. What do you think? Have you ever stayed in a holiday home like this? And do you have any further ideas on how we could use the space if we decide not to rent it out? A gym? A home cinema? Put a giant trampoline in it? Do tell.

We´re back in the living room, floors finished and all. I am so glad! It´s such a cozy room, and I love the new blonde floors in here. It looks so much brighter and fresher.

A few remarks... The sofa (Ikea) faces our little wood stove which you can´t see here. To make this possible, the sofa stands right in the middle of the room which works really well here I think. You already know the cabinet - it´s an Ebay find which I painted a blue-ish gray. Pillows and throw are H&M.

The little table is another Ebay find, I love it! I made the cloud lamp along the directions from Lena Corwin´s wonderful book "Printing by Hand". You can´t buy or make the cute cat, sorry.

The view back to the hallway and dining room. I think the new floors look so pretty! I always wanted to have a rocking chair like this and was so happy when I scored this beauty on Ebay. The pretty crocheted rug in the hallway is from le souk.

Happy Monday!

Don´t you just love the striped floors in this beautiful home? I am seriously considering painting my kitchen floors stripey. The husband is not so fond of the idea, but you know, I´m pretty good at lobbying. Happy Valentine´s Day!

This was not a fun weekend. We sanded our old wooden floors in the dining room, the hallway and the living room. By "we" I mean the husband - he won´t let me use the sander (he is not concerned about me but the floors). However I am responsible for the finish. We are doing the lye/soap treatment again so that means scrubbing the floor 1x with lye and 3x with soap. All in all I spent a good deal of the weekend on my knees. Ouch.

So far I have managed to finish the floors in the dining room, see above. While it is technically the same treatment as in the library, the finished floors look a whole lot different. Better, if you ask me - not as spotty. This may be due to the fact that the floors in the dining room are in much better shape but also I think I got the hang of the treatment. I think most of you would be bored by a "how to" post, but if you consider finishing your floors with lye and Swedish soap email me, I do have some recommendations for you.

I have Thursday off this week and I hope I´ll be able to finish both the living room and the hallway so that we can "move back in" on Saturday. I miss my living room so much! I realized it is my favorite room in the house. Especially now when it´s super cold and we can´t use the wood stove. Perfect timing, eh?

PS: Now that the floors are "blonde", the doors look very orange, no? Is that a bad thing? (Don´t say yes.)

This is very lovely and actually the style I am going for in my house. If you must put a tag on it I guess it would be "Swedish Country".  A little old, a little modern, a little color but still peaceful. Lots of wood, whimsical details, painted furniture. Very lovely indeed.

I am signing off for this week... let the floor sanding frenzy begin. Wish us luck.

(Picture via here.)

The winner of my little owl give-away is Mette Camilla. Congratulations! Please email me your address and little owl will be on its way to Denmark soon.

Thank you to all of you who participated.

Remember this? Here´s a picture of maybe one third of our loot. Actually what you see here are the heavy things which we barely managed to get out of the van. They´ve been standing in our entryway ever since. I´ll show you what we do with it once we get to renovating the barn! Isn´t that little dresser perfect?

I took some pictures of the walled garden this weekend. It was sunny but sooo cold! Around minus 15C on Sunday, brrr.

Anyhow, back to the walled garden. The plan is to start with this little space and then take the garden from there. Here´s a little sketch of our plans (excuse my non existing graphic design skills):

Remember the porch in front of the kitchen that I was talking about? There it is. Unusual shape but I think it will look mighty fine. We´ll also have a patio by the wall which should have sun all day. And a rather formal set up for some flower beds - I usually don´t like formal gardens much but I think it makes sense here.

We have had a very mild winter so far (except for the past two weeks which have been freezing) and the husband has already done some serious digging as you can see here. It´s rather hard work as it seems the whole space has cobble stones under that grass. We obviously need to take them out where we want to have flower beds. We briefly considered to uncover the pavement in all other areas but I rather like the grass here.. enough old stones in that space already!

Now, brace yourself...

So this is where the porch will go. It will be raised so that we can directly access it from the back door (and eventually from the kitchen door!). We´ll store firewood underneath and maybe we´ll also have a doghouse here for the dog we do not yet have.

Now isn´t that space hideous. Previously there has been a crumbling concrete staircase which we had removed while a contractor insulated the basement last year. Now there´s only this plank for the cats to reach their kitty door.  Oh and this fantastic looking rainwater pipe? It will go subsurface very very soon. Also, the back of our house has been plastered because the brick wall was too damaged. Sadly they forgot to paint over it, so this is what I´ll do come spring. Ugh.

Last but not least, I think there´s some confusion about our garden. The walled garden is only a very small part of our garden! Beyond these walls we have another 2,000 square meters of wilderness. Right now, it looks like this:

In case you wondered what we´ll do over summer. Want to come help? Free room and board? Yes?

It´s Friday. You would not believe how glad I am. We´ll try to have a slow weekend because next weekend will be not so slow. I finally convinved the husband to refinish our old wooden floors in the dining room, living room and hall. The sander is booked and I am beyond excited already.

Anyway, dou you like owls? Yes? Then today is your lucky day, because I am giving away this cute owl from Etsy seller Robin & Mould. I got it quite some time ago and was going to give it to a new mom as a gift, but then this never happened for some reason and now it needs a new home.

To enter just leave a comment. Mind I will only ship to EU-countries. Winner will be announced on Wednesday next week, because I think we all need a little pick-me-up on Wednesdays, yes?

Have a nice weekend.