Kitchen progress: Eßecke

Something I just love about the new kitchen is that we now have an Eßecke (eating corner). Our last kitchen was far too small for one and you had to walk through the entryway to get to the eating area in our old living room. It made for lonely cooking and was a total hassle to set and clear the table! Many times we'd have our evening Brötchen just standing at the old tall counter just because we didn't feel like dragging all the dinner trappings out to the table!
We have another chair coming....later. I had this feeling that something would be missing a part when I put the bench and chairs together, and lo and behold, surprise surprise, Ikea had given us a wrong part. But we love the bench. It's a tad too long for the table, but I actually like it that way. You get to start your slide in before a table leg, and there's a place for my oft-used shopping basket.
I'm pleased with how the stuff we already owned looks good together. I bought the table cloth years ago at a little vintage linens shop in NYC, and the S&P came from a little shop on Boston's North Shore. I have some other fabric somewhere that I'd like to use for seat cushions, but that will require more digging. Somebody once said marriage is full of compromises and I'd argue that decorating our home together is one of them =) We both love red and blue, so we've figured out how to make that work. More on that later.
We still need to put a light fixture in. I'm determined to give my jam-jar-lamp idea a try. I've already set out my little collection of jars. I just have to wait until July 11th, when Stefan starts his 6 week summer break. Then we'll try to figure out this project.
Meanwhile there's still plenty of unpacking and organizing to do. We're still playing with the trash sorting situation. I wasn't wild about putting the dryer in the little storage room, but it works. It collects the water in a container, so we don't need a hole outside, but sometimes it makes it's space damp/humid, hence getting shoved in here. This means a lot of stuff I'd rather keep in our dining room storage is now in here. It might get dusty, but a little moisture won't hurt it. This space is our current catch-all....in fact, we have a lot of those at the moment! Better go attend to them!

Entryway conundrum (and a few others)

I'm pondering decorating issues since I'm down for the day thanks to what's probably/hopefully just a weird pulled muscle from all the moving. So I'm forced to sit and look at the chaos around me. We have twice the square footage here in the new apartment, which is a good thing. But it's also overwhelming because I have all these new corners/problems to figure out. Stefan commented that we'll be doing a lot of walking in this apartment - everything feels so far away suddenly!
First we have the kitchen. A total mess. I bought a frozen pizza as a back-up meal and realized I couldn't even cook it until I sat down and read our oven's instruction manual. Stefan read the dishwasher manual and ran a half-load that takes three hours and 25 minutes to run on the energy efficient cycle. That is just crazy. Crazy!
We haven't eaten at the kitchen table yet for obvious reasons. I'm trying to figure out what stuff should go where. Some things have been put away, but I know I'll end up rearranging it all in the end. I thought I knew this when I designed the kitchen...???
Ah, the living room. It is ENORMOUS! Once we bolt our storage to the walls we can unpack all those boxes and slide the couch down closer to the fireplace. We really wish the chaise were on the other end of the sofa, but oh well. We're in some serious need of side tables. Our budget's so bleak I'm half-considering slipcovering a cardboard box and slapping a tray on top. Those U-Haul size Medium boxes are looking about the right height...
Our central hall is also huge. Full of boxes, too. (slipcovered book boxes would be the right size for a bedside table... half-kidding again!) Once we figure out what we're doing in the yellow room I can unpack some of those. The rest will go to Stefan's office once we assemble his shelves. Then it will be large and empty. I think our largest Afghan rug will hit the floor here.
Looking back on the other side of the hall you can see our only two walls of real width. This hall has 8, yes 8, doors in it, so finding a spot for a closet is kind of tough. We need a wardrobe with doors you can close for our current coats. I would also like some kind of covered shoe storage/bench/shelf combination over on the glass block wall. This is tricky since we can't attach anything to the wall there. Ideally a shelf for phones, keys, purses/wallets/small lamp would be there as well as a spot to sit and put your shoes on. A hidden place to stash said shoes would be great, too. It's really hard finding something that doesn't have to be attached to the wall. I'm thinking of a small bench and tall shelf combo...hm. This post on AT was particularly inspiring with it's desk/stool/mirror/lamp arrangement. That could work with our glass block wall. Any other ideas?
At the top of our stairwell we have this behemoth. At one point it was one of three in Stefan's family hobby room growing up and structurally it shows the wear and tear of it's many lives. However, the insides are in good condition and since throwing it out would have meant having to buy something else, we kept it. There was no good place for it inside the apartment so we put it outside for our off-season coats and outdoor gear.
Our new building's stairway smells a tad funny, so we like how this beast at least shuts tightly. We had it in our last basement, filled with stuff and lots of lavender sachets. Lavender sachets are wonderful for deterring insects and keeping potentially musty places smelling fresh.

I'm glad at least the bemoth is useful. If it didn't have giant cracks and horrid wallpaper in weird spots I think we'd paint it and put it in the yellow room. Unfortunately it really is on it's last legs. Pun intended.

Need some entryway inspiration? Check out SimplyGrove, the Domino entryway pool on Flickr, and AT's entryway round up.

My old Danish apartment

Here are the pictures of our old Danish apartment.

It looks nearly the same as it did 18 years ago.
Run-down.We had the whole first floor and there was no greenhouse then.

Thankfully we got out of the apartment often because there were enough business trips around Europe that my dad would elect to drive to. Ha ha, and add his family to the carload! Tack on a few of the 30 days vacation he qualified for or one of the many holiday weekends, add in the Kroner my mother collected from the Danish government as a registered stay-at-home mother, and you had a nice family trip to somewhere in Europe with a few days of business in the middle. Worked for us!

Awesome Neighbors

We're once again reeling from the thoughtfulness of our new neighbors. Tomorrow's the big, noisy move-in day and this afternoon we did a load of boxes to get a head start. Upon arrival we see they've cleared the common stairway of all their decorations, allowing us a wider path and no fear of trampling the chocolates. Then in front of our door we find a beautiful potted flower!
They were away for the weekend (smart, because I'm sure it'll be a loud weekend) and wanted to leave us a welcome gift. A lovely potted flower plant for our balcony and a nice card. Also included were 3 pages of information on the type of flower and it's care. Herr Tille had the florist fax information and instructions so we would have them for our reference. They are so thoughtful! I cannot believe what nice neighbors we have!!

Denmark 18yrs later and Mid-Century Modern

My dad is presently in Copenhagen on a business trip, and since it was so last minute, it wasn't until he arrived that the whole family got wrapped up in Trans-Atlantic reminiscence. Phones were ringing and emails were flying. Remember Jacob-Bulls-Alle?! we cried. Dad, do a drive by and take a picture with your Blackberry! (A picture has yet to happen, but if one arrives I'll post it.) Here's a lovely Google image for you.
Living overseas really makes an impression. I read this article from England today about expats and kids. I have to say as a former expat kid I can empathize with those in this article. Also as a kid who moved a lot, period. And although we don't have kids yet, I can also sympathize with the adults in this article as well. Transitions are just that, not part of the daily grind, so they can leave indelible marks on us, and sometimes in strange ways.

Yesterday my dad mused that perhaps our time living in DK was what got me going with my current life. I definitely think it was part of it. I'm sure the threat of being sent to the Embassy School if my sister and I didn't keep detailed scrapbooks of our time abroad was part of me later wanting tangible and digital collections to process an experience. (6 months later I moved back to the States with 2 3-inch binders full of stuff.) Besides, what 13yr old do you know who loves school anyhow?

Our Danish apartment was pretty hideous. Even in 1991 it looked like the basements of 4 Danish grandmothers from 3 eras had been ejected and thrown all over our new home. I'm not just talking about style here either, I'm talking about cleanliness (icky poo), condition (threadbare and sometimes ripped or broken), and the fact that it looked hodge-podgey in general. That was not cool. The company my dad worked for at the time did a terrible job finding a furnished apartment for us. Mid-Century Scandinavian design was not in vogue with Americans in 1991 and since that experience was our first...well, maybe now you can understand why I have this aversion to the revival of the whole Mid-Century Modern style. The majority of the pieces I see make me think of the apartment on Jacob-Bulls-Alle, it's dark and sour basement, and Cecilia, the little girl upstairs who used to pee on the grass under our clothesline.

*images found on eBay

Isn't it amazing how deep an impression that made? Like a scent or a song, the interior of our Danish apartment gave me a permenant aversion to a certain style of furniture.
There were fond memories to be had in Denmark: our first interaction with spaghetti ice cream at our favorite Italian restaurant, the castle at Helsingor (probably part of why Hamlet is my favorite Shakespeare play), the Karen Blixen museum, and when my sister and I would pull our shirts over our noses as we would sprint past the stinky cheese shop en route to the ice cream stand, Kroner jingling in our pockets.

Anywho. I will not be going with the 70's theme our new apartment was built in. We had three Germans already comment on how old the place looks with it's wood ceiling and flourescent curtain lights. The lights are a riot and we hate them. But that's easy, we just don't turn them on! As for the wood ceiling, well, I don't care. I think it looks cozy somehow. Kind of boat-ish.
We have zero energy or funds to paint that ceiling white anyhow. I just can't even imagine what a pain it would be to paint such narrow and deep wood paneling!

Bedroom - almost moved in!

We definitely lost a lot of square footage in the new bedroom, but we're ok with it. It makes it all a little more 'eng' (german for 'tight') but we fit. This is what happens when you move, right? We have to keep reminding ourselves that things fit perfectly in the old apartment because we started with zilch and bought everything when we moved in there. We started with this:
Now the bed is in there, not a great shot. But hey, now you see how we don't do box springs in Germany. These are lattenrost. If we were to really pull out the Deutsch stops we'd have two twin type mattresses on top, so if one person wanted to sit up and read while the other was sick and needed elevated feet, it would be possible. But the odds are greater that we'd rather have no grand canyon in the bed and forgo the chance of having the reading/elevated feet problem.
There's only one window here and it was stupidly installed to open away from the majority of the room, which I predict to make me crazy on hot summer nights, but that's what a fan is for, right?
We still need to hang pictures and lights as well as find some bedside tables. Some sort of window treatment is also in order, but I haven't figured out what we'll be repurposing in here. I'm not going to miss the shelf we used to have over the bed at the old place! There was more than one occasion of baptizing myself in the dark thanks to knocking over an unseen water glass!
Even though my desk was in a nice corner in the old bedroom, I'll be glad to have it be in it's own room at the new place. We're still working on that...

It's sort of fun to look back on the bedroom situation.
When we first moved to Germany we slept like this for over a month:

before the same room turned into this:

and this:

and now we're back to this. At least this time we're sleeping on our pull-out couch and not air mattresses! Saturday night we'll be sleeping in the new place...hard to imagine!
Tomorrow my mother in law comes over to help me pack the kitchen up. She's bringing her dog who will drive us nuts I predict since the dog thinks that whenever anybody's in the kitchen it's to prepare her food, so she's always underfoot! Thankfully all old German kitchens have doors, which we'll use tomorrow!

Geometry

Last night I was noticing all the lines in our old bedroom.
There are the rectangles I can always see from my bed: green, gray, blue, gray, brown:and there are lines from the light of the lamp we're using now:
and there were lines of the lamp against the walls.
I'm not trying to be all artistic here, it's just something I've really been noticing lately.

Repurposed tea cup roundup

I keep running into tea cups repurposed into all sorts of lovely things and it's got me dreaming. Our furniture has so many modern lines that I'd love to soften things up with a few of the pretty things I've been seeing lately. Check out this vase from Limetrees:
I used to always want this candelabra Anthropologie used to carry, made by Homebakes. No picture there anymore, but Homebakes makes this precious and similar version now:

as well as the stacking bunnies, which is super cute:

Then I saw Holly's post on Decor8 today featuring a new piece coming from Urban Outfitters. How cute would this be on your desk?
I'd love a cluster of these over the little kitchen table Holly blogged about in May.
But as the budget restrains, so the creative juices flow. SwissMiss posted this link to a repurposed Bonne Maman jar. We won't pay 72 Euro for one, but maybe we can rig our own...?

That's a project for AFTER we're all settled in!

UPDATE: Links for later on DiY: Etsy's drilling porcelain, teacup bird feeders one and two, and a teacup windchime. AT's post on Anthropologie's take on mason jar lights, and Design*Sponge's DiY post on making your own mason jar lights. We're on it! (after the move in is complete...)

It goes on and on...

This week we've finalized the storage systems by going with our gut, and your votes. Two stand in the dining room like so:

and two stand in the living room around the corner, like so:

The top of the back dining room unit wouldn't fit with the slanted ceiling, so we put some mini feet on it for now and created a little shelf area for our stereo and *gasp* CDs. Yes folks, we still have CDs. Just like we still only take 'digital' pictures with our cell phones. Hence the pathetic photo quality. Sorry.

Yesterday we had to empty all our wardrobes and take over the drawers and lay the hang-ups on the floor. Today a couple of friends came over to help disassemble all the wardrobes and bed and then reassemble in the new place.

This business of taking so much of your furniture apart and having to rebuild it before you can unpack or hang up stuff is a royal pain. I have lived in over 30 different houses, mainly in the US, and can say that only in Germany have I ever had to take apart so much furniture just to move it!! We are once again SO GLAD we have all these weekends to make the move!

Chocolate on the stairs, for real!

Another sign that we are moving to a better place is that our new neighbors decorate their section of the public stairs with chocolate. I'm not kidding, look:
Each step has a tiny plant and three chocolates covered in foil to look like Marienkäfer -ladybugs - (good luck sign in Germany). The little green guy at the top is holding a sign that says "Funny every day!".Ridiculously cute! Not my style per se, but so cheery! Like somebody actually cares, let alone cleans their section of the stairs! SO much better than what normally greats us as we enter our current building, below. Our current view is just gross.
In a building with several apartments in Germany you'll either be paying collectively for somebody to clean the common stairs, or you take turns, or you just clean your section. None of this happens where we currently live and it's horrid. Since we're in the middle, cleaning is futile when filth like this is on the surrounding floors, so I try to sweep often. I'm looking forward to our new apartment, but also our new common areas, full of light, cleanliness, and cheer!

Yes, it's really hard to walk by these chocolates without wanting to pick one up! We've noticed Frau Tille changes the stair decor each month, so it'll be a while longer to resist temptation!

Impasse: storage location and a POLL

On Friday my mother-in-law came over to help pack up our china and vintage glass. The rest of the weekend my husband and I packed up the linens, winter apparel, books, photos, and misc. kitchen things that were in the rest of the storage cupboards. Then we took the cupboards apart.
In Germany we don't get apartments with closets built in. You have to supply your own. So when you move, you have to empty the cupboards, take them apart, transport them, rebuild them, and then you can unpack now that you have a cupboard to put things in! A few good things here: 1) the new apartment is open for us to renovate and take stuff over. 2) the new apt is MUCH bigger, so walking around with long boards is easier than navigating around our current mini-apt. This makes assembling easier too. 3) With all the cardboard from the kitchen cabinets, we have padding for assembly in the new place.

However. Cabinets made from MDF are not light. And when each apartment has 3 sets of stairs, it's not fun. We both have aching muscles. I felt bad when Stefan had to shove off for a full day of work this morning and I got to camp on the couch for the morning! We are not looking forward to moving the clothing wardrobes!! But now I also have time to contemplate the impasse at which we arrived yesterday:
Our dining/living room is L-shaped. We were going to put a row of 3 storage units on the living room wall (above) and then one in the dining area that would hold the china. Like below (missing it's top).
Upon lining them up, we discovered we would have a huge wall of white cabinets, with only a bit of blue at the top. All the surrounding walls were white. We forgot how tall our storage pieces are! So what if we put 2 in the dining room leaving one without a tall top to accommodate the slant like below? It would work, but then we're worried about seating comfort in the dining room. The resulting narrow area is technically enough for the table and chairs, but it's tight. It actually doesn't get too much roomier if we only have one cabinet in the dining room.
Leaving only 2 in the living room at the far end to leaves us some blue wall and a spot for us to roll out the tv to, and/or put a small shelf or picture on the wall. (We rarely use our dvd-only television, so finding a tv spot isn't critical since it's on wheels and kept hidden.) Part of us thinks it looks weird to have the living room cabinets scrunched down towards the door of the room.
Last night we were too tired to make a decision and thought we'd better sleep on it. This morning I thought I'd throw it out to our readers and see what you think. Take the poll and let us know!

Kitchen = Küche = Finished = Fertig!

We spent 6 hours today with the assembly guy. Then we spent another 2 hours cleaning up the sawdust mess from inside the drawers and all over the apartment floors.

There was lots of cutting with the jigsaw for random holes like this:

The countertop was installed, as was the range, sink, and the oven. The faucet looks a little big for the sink, but we didn't have a lot of choice there. I wish we could have had a bigger sink, but then I'd be left with no counter space to work on. It was a trade-off. Another trade-off is having a seam in the counter. At least it was able to be slipped under the sink edge, which was not ideal, but left my prep area seamless. Custom sized countertops are pricey.
We like how the dishwasher has a unified front and we love all the drawers (even though they are a pain to put together)!
The oven is looking good too. All the new appliances are so high tech looking and I'll have to spend a week reading all the new manuals and figuring out what button does what!
I think the weirdest thing is that we OWN the kitchen. We rent the apartment, but we own everything that isn't a wall or window in the kitchen room. We even own the flooring. This morning we were saying how we'll probably invest in better dishwasher soap now, ha! Whenever we move out, we can take the kitchen sink with us if we want. So weird! So German!

Before:

After:

I think we're both in relief mode right now; relieved that this monumental task is over. I don't think we'll enter 'pride mode' until the whole move over here is complete. Now we just see the verrrry long road ahead of us regarding packing, taking apart the old apartment and reassembling everything at the new place. The kitchen was only the tip of the iceberg! Tomorrow I'll start packing up our living room and this weekend we hope to get all the living room storage moved. It's going to be nuts.