Tag: Home style

A Home Grown Flora Fascination

09/20/21

I loved the feel of the home we stayed in during our time in the more northern area of The Netherlands  🖤

Here, it’s somewhat described as ‘landelijke stijl’, roughly translated to ‘country style’. If I could replicate it to a degree with a little bit of my color love thrown in, I think I’d be pretty pleased with the result 🤪

It’s like, a classy boho/vintage with old charm thrown in, a blending of old and new, and so many textures…

New velvet, well loved leather, a sheepskin throw atop a wooden chair.

Little details all coming together to make for a home that’s not only comfortable, but also interesting.

Our hosts were also very nice, which I think in no small part lent to the homey atmosphere 😉👌🏻

Permission was asked, and granted for the sharing of these images 😉

Many of you may know them via their businesses,

Smit Kwekerijen

VIP Plants

Grow Jungle

Smit Natuurlijk

They do plants.

Like, lots of plants.

We’ve even seen their products in Wilson’s Lifestyle Centre in Saskatoon!
Which is actually a very Dutch like store, many products even say outright ‘from the Netherlands’.

But, back to the story at hand…

As they have their own business, Monday morning came with work, which Mike was able to tag along for.
I happily stayed back and enjoyed some downtime, sitting and writing, while Lake slept 👌🏻
By the time they returned it was near lunchtime and all the family returned to the house for it. Which was nice because then we got in more time to hang out even though it was a work day.
Afterwords, we packed up and headed out to visit the cousins at their perspective work places as well as the  store front.

Exploring those areas, we learned about the costs and time it takes to start new plants, how they securely pack the plants for shipping out and so on.

It’s interesting stuff, but as a non plant enthusiast/life giver, it all seems stressful to me in the fact that you can just let your profit literally die 😂

Supper was being made for us at some friends whom we previously always visited when we went to South Africa!
They moved back to her home, her being from Holland, so now we got to see them here and each of us had a new babe as well.
How things change 🤪
I had to walk outside with Lake  for a while to get him down for a nap, but after that, we had a nice dinner and visit together. Catching up, discussing houses, work, babes and all the highlighted areas adult life encompasses, before we headed away from the Groningen area, and back to Doesburg.

* I ask that you do your best to ignore any spelling mistakes, as on my iPad the set up is different, and I can’t find an easy way to do a spelling / grammar check. Thank you for your understanding 🤪

Upcycled Accent Storage

 

Back in February while Mike was away visiting his family in Holland, I finally decided to take the time and tackle the makeover of this piece we salvaged from the items in the Mac house makeover 🤓

Firstly it got a good scrubbing with some TSP cleaner.
Next it was taken apart and I gave it a light sanding, followed by another wipe down/vacuum.

The entire process ALWAYS takes longer than one first thinks when looking at a potential project, so this was done over two full days with multiple breaks, delays, movies for background noise and nourishment stops 🤪

I gave the dresser a coat of primer and while that dried, took the old hardware and gave it a vinegar/baking soda soak and scrub before spray painting it all gold ☺️

Mumsie had dark teal/blue paint in the color I had envisioned so luckily I was able to use that and love how it turned out.

It took multiple coats and I had to first brush the paint in the cracks and then roll it on the remaining surfaces to get full coverage.

After I’d got it all painted, the doors were to thick/tacky to actually close, so I had to shave them down… it was a soft wood and I was able to do it using a utility knife.

Thankfully so because I don’t like power tools and that would have meant needing Mike around for completion and I really didn’t want to wait for him to finish this thing that I had started in order to semi surprise him when he returned home 🤪

He did have to install some sleek new gold handles and magnetic cupboard latches when he retuned but after that, it was officially and totally transformed! The gold handles were purchased from Amazon.

The dried palms displayed are actually from my own palm plant.

When one leaf starts to die, I cut and save it to dry and use for filler… maybe not the most beautiful thing I could find but it is free and I have contemplated being able to spray paint them if I want them to look a little more ‘purchased’.🤪

I’m super pleased with how the dresser itself turned out and am always game for extra storage 🤓👌🏻

The decor vibe in the basement is semi different from our upstairs and I’ve struggled a bit with it but I like the sort of ‘eclectic/travel vibe’ that I feel it is now starting to embody, in part to this piece 🙂

Below Deck – A Basement Renovation

To refresh your memory from long ago, we had completed the upstairs renovations in our home to a large degree but the basement was another story.

An unfinished, dirty and dark story…🤪

We decided on creating three ‘rooms’ in the area left over after having situated the laundry room under our stairs.

Mike moved the water heater from one end of the basement to the other, in order to keep all the utilities together and that opened up a lot more options for the rest of the basements layout.

A guest room with a small bathroom and an open, second seating area that could be used for a desk or couch or whatever the need would be and then the storage/utility room.

We got our basement flooring off of kijiji and it’s a nearly perfect match to our upstairs flooring (though for some reason it always shows footprints, so I’m glad our upstairs flooring was a different brand 😬).
It goes throughout the sitting and laundry area.

Glue down tiles from kijiji were installed in the storage room and then leftover flooring from our other houses makeover, was used in the guest room.

A window Mike found at the restore in Regina was installed, as the basement had no windows at all, so that of course let in much extra light👌🏻

As it goes and as you all know by now, the steps of finishing were taken.
Framing, insulating, drywall, finishing drywall, painting, floors, trim, doors etc etc. 😉

Lastly, the bro came over and helped wire the the new lighting/switches/outlets for the basement, so that Mike could install the floating ceiling to finish off the space!
Leaving it so much brighter & cleaner, in such a short amount of time 😁👌🏻

(‘Short amount of time’ referring to the ceiling install, not the reno… that took two years and counting )

The very last thing he accomplished in our basement space was the stairs!
We were tossed between paying for carpet and install or going through the work of sanding and painting them, in hopes they’d hold up.

We went for a cross between option one and three 🤪
Carpet, but it was installed by Mike on a day he had off work instead of by a company and the carpet itself was end roll pieces, resulting in a $130.00 (ish) stair treatment 😏👍🏻

I’ll share the before and after pictures side by side here, so the full impact can be… impactful 😉

There isn’t any other picture of the storage area because, well… storage. It holds not only our supply of stroopwafels, winter/summer apparel, shoes etc. but also our water softener, heater and some obtrusive plumbing.

I title the above shot, ‘Stairs’…

The washing machine and dryer were moved to live under the stairs and you can see that room here Airing Out Our Dirty Laundry .

The below photo of this nook ‘before and after’ is so satisfying to me…

And finally, the overall view!

There are still some little finishing bittles that need doing but that is to be expected… I hope 😉

The guest room is nearly done but missing just a feeeew touches so I figured I’d save that for another time, though it will be done pre June, as we have official visitors booked in for then #motivation  😉

Wow…

Friday Sept 29th –

 

After a rude awaking from the husband to start the day off right, (wrong 😒) he and I headed over to our house to begin a day of the large and small tasks that lead us ever closer to completion.

Some days I go there and I’m like, ‘wow it’s so close to being done actually!’ and other days, I look around and think ‘wow… so much still has to be done…’ 😜

 

And I haven’t even hardly done any of it 🙈💁🏻

We built the second dresser for our bedroom and Mike got that squished into place before starting the preparations for the bedroom for flooring.

 

I went to work washing out more window sills and then a painting station was set up so that I could start turning our trim, grey.

 

Mike found us a second hand bed frame from the habitat store, so I also sanded that to have it ready to paint, when I was.

Mike got most of the master bedroom floored and then we ran out of flooring so we headed home for supper.

The bro who was in town, was a champ and picked us up the remaining boxes we would need to finish upstairs the next day.

 

 

Or as Michiel has no idea of what the word ‘patience’ means, he finished the whole upstairs, that night 😏

Continue reading “Wow…”

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