Renovations Revealed

We officially got the keys to our new apartment in Stockholm, back in May – two days after we returned from our big Asia trip. The apartment needed a lot of work (including a complete new kitchen) but, as ever, I didn’t think much about taking ‘before’ pictures so the dramatic change may be a little lost here. Either way… a lot of hard work and love has gone into making this home of ours so here is the big reveal with a few ‘after’ shots…

The living room

This room needed cosmetic attention and so we re-painted, creating a feature wall with a natural theme – we used wall stickers for the tree outlines and they turned out really well:

(The curtain pole was created using a broom-handle and branches from my in-laws’ garden which we cut and painted to blend in with the tree theme.)

And in a moment of madness ‘environmentally-friendly thinking’… we decided to take on the task of completely re-upholstering our old sofa in a bid to reuse and recycle (rather than buy more ‘stuff’ when really what we had was more than sufficient). And for this… we do have a before and after photo:

It probably took three days in total to finish the sofa – with some parts, such as the re-upholstery of the main frame, definitely being a two-person job. I have to say… I’m super happy with the colour and overall finish so this is a definite win!

Our bedroom

Inspired by our travels, we have gone for a clean room, inspired (in part) by Japanese culture. The window covering on the smaller window is actually a wall-hanging we brought back from Japan (and fitted perfectly in this new space) and our scratch map helps us to plan our future adventures!  As this room is a cozy kind of size, the lack of wardrobes meant that we had to think more creatively about hanging space, so when we bought our new bed from IKEA (where else!), we decided to turn it round and use the taller end of the bed frame as a clothes rail.

The Studio Room

Part of the reason for the smaller bedroom size is that the room was originally one large room which was made into two smaller rooms… perfect for us as we now have our home studio set-up in the other room. This is where the Salt Of The Sound magic happens (complete with homemade soundproofing)…

The Guest Room… aka Anita’s work space / yoga / sewing / project room

Yes… this room gets called many things… and has many uses. Now complete with futon… it is a fully functioning guest room and is also my space where I like to blog, sew, write and just be creative…

The Kitchen

Ahh yes… the kitchen! While we did most of the renovations ourselves, we drew the line at fitting a new kitchen and used Kvik to get a good kitchen for a reasonable price. It did mean that we had to move out over the summer for a couple of weeks but we are so pleased with the finished result:

We have enjoyed adding our own finishing touches to this room too – including reupholstering these mismatched chairs that we bought second-hand from friends who were leaving Sweden. The fabric we bought from Japan – the concept behind the fabric patterns is a fusion of both modern Japanese and Scandinavian design.

Balcony

While we had a balcony in our last place, our new balcony is much bigger (more than two people can sit out there at once!) and has glass windows which can be moved across in the summer but also provide shelter in the winter, making this a real indoor-outdoor space. We relished having this space over the summer months and now, thanks to the invention of the outdoor heater, we can continue to enjoy our balcony throughout the winter months too. Oh.. and we may have even started to dabble in a spot of gardening too…

So there you have it… friends and family… we look forward to welcoming you into our new home in the near future. Our guest room is ready for you – all you need to do is to book your tickets to Sweden!

Written by Anita on 24th October 2016 in Life, Music, Sweden, Work.
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