Renovating our home on a small budget and living in the middle of unfinished projects and renovation plans it’s always such a great feeling to get something done, to be able to cross something off from the never-ending To Do -list. It doesn’t even have to be a big thing, anything completed is a cause for celebration. One of those little projects that we’ve been talking about since we moved in but never got around to until a few weeks ago was finishing the little laundry area in the bathroom.
Since we don’t have a separate laundry room our small bathroom has the double duty of being also a laundry room. We have the washing machine in the corner on the left side of the doorway and above it we have two Ikea shelves. Two weeks ago we finally bought a countertop to put under the shelves. Under the countertop there’s the washing machine and Lissu’s litter box. We were a little bit worried that maybe the countertop would make the already small room feel even smaller but actually the opposite happened, somehow the room looks bigger now and the laundry area looks like a functional space designed for laundry instead of just a washing machine stashed in the corner like it did before.
I found the white laundry basket (in the first picture) from after-Christmas sales. I didn’t like the flowery fabric but because it was otherwise exactly what I had been looking for (who knew that nice laundry baskets that fit our budget were so hard to find? I’ve been looking for one since we moved in last February!) I decided to buy it anyway. I’m planning to take out the fabric bag that’s inside it and make a new one out of some nicer fabric. Oh, and in the frame is a card from Advice To Sink In Slowly postcard pack!
Today we finally started repainting the bedroom, this is what it looks like after the first coat. Goodbye weird pastel green (how did we go so wrong with that color?), hello gorgeous greyish blue! We absolutely LOVE it!
It’s been a perfect weekend to end my summer holiday with (my new studies begin tomorrow, yay!). On Friday we went to see the lovely Finnish singer Anna Puu and the Air Guitar World Championships here in Oulu, what a fun night that was! (Click here for Minna’s photos of the contestants). Yesterday we made a quick trip to the library and a few thrift stores and today we’ve been painting and planning what to do next, the renovation never seems to end… Some days it feels like renovating and decorating our home with such a small budget is a bit too much for someone like me who would like to have everything done right away. But then there are days like these past few days have been when I’m able to appreciate the slow pace and not see only the incomplete and imperfect things but focus on everything we have already done and how at home we feel here.
Here is what our (messy) office looked like before our quick project…
… and here it is now, after redoing the worktops, adding a shelf on the wall and doing some (well needed) organizing. I love how the white worktops make the whole room feel more airy and light and the space feel more uniform. The shelves are perfect for a small room like this, they don’t make the room feel crowded but offer a much needed storage space. We still need to hide the cords (there are a million of them!) so don’t mind them!
Another bigger home project during our summer holiday has been the home office, especially the worktops. We bought the solid pine worktops (IKEA Furuskog) before moving in and applied bee wax on them. The result has not been satisfying as the color of the wood changed into yellowish and the surface became sticky. We have been waiting for the summer so that we’d have the time to re-sand and treat the worktops. We didn’t want to paint or lacquer the worktops, stain didn’t sound good either. So we ended up getting different kind of wood wax that has been dyed. We chose wax because the wood’s texture and pattern can still be felt and seen.
We started this project last Sunday when we sanded the worktops in the backyard. The bee wax had soaked into the wood so the sanding took some time. On Monday we applied the Osmo wax on the back side of the worktops in the basement. On Tuesday we waxed the top sides.  The wax has a very strong smell so the whole apartment reeked for 3 days. Now we are just waiting for the wax to dry and harden. After the surface has dried completely (it takes about a week), the wax can be polished, but we probably won’t do that.
The wax gives the wood a solid surface and should help in keeping the worktops clean. In the last picture, you can see the worktop surface before and after. As you can see, earlier the worktops were dirt and dust magnets. Most importantly, the new white color makes the small room brighter.
Katja is going to blog about the overall change in the room soon.
Now that we are on summer holiday for two weeks, we have time to finalize at least some parts of our renovation which we started already in December before moving in. We have a long list of tasks to do by the end of next week and we are nicely underway.
We’ve had an empty closet in the upstairs hallway while we have had unpacked boxes in the basement. We haven’t used the closet because it has required fixing, for example it had an old built-in ironing board taking up space. During the last few days, in addition to painting the floor and door mouldings in the hallway, we fixed the closet. It was an inexpensive project because we used left-over shelf boards and paint and had to buy only two rolls of shelf paper. In the top picture on the left you can see the closet after we took the ironing board out. On the right is the fixed version with freshly painted walls and floor and papered shelves. We are going to use the closet to store decorating items (Christmas ornaments, extra frames, flower pots).
As we went through the boxed in the basement, we sorted things to three piles: throw away, give to charity and sell at the thrift store. We have a spot at local thrift store for a week starting tomorrow. We have at least three boxes of items to sell and one box and a bag to donate to the Red Cross. It’s nice to get rid of extra stuff and get things finally organized.
