Action - painting

A black floor combined with white walls and a dark-grey “contrast corner”; it looks good. A white floor that would even be better. Or so I thought after having revisited our new home before we actually moved in. Not only did I think about this “whitening”, I (with lots of help from Le Boyfriend, of course) took action and painted the “blacked” square parquet in the living room snow-white. Black out!

The result: mime pictures of me, myself and I. 

At first sight it seems like a greyscale picture, it’s only when you look closer 

that you’ll see the (camel) coloured furniture.

How do you like the transcendence from floor to wall and vice versa? 

Okay, let’s paint it white, that wooden (chess) floor. 

1)   Clean the floor, meaning: sand down the wood and if necessary remove that way the old lacquer or paint as much as possible. You can do it by hand or with a sanding machine if you want to remove all of the paint. In the paint store they might well tell you that’s not necessary but the result will be much better if you do so. (We didn’t, unfortunately.)

2)   Now wipe the floor clean with a degreaser (white spirit, for example) and have it dry for half an hour. Make sure you don’t start to paint before the floor is really dry. Also, cover your mouth and nose when you work with this dangerous chemical; inhaling the smell might make you faint. A nice scarf is perfect to prevent that kind of accidents in style.

3)    Paint the floor, using special floor paint and a paint roller. (You can use a primer as to prepare the floor for the “real” colour, or do it like us and opt for an all-in-one formula.) How many layers you have to apply? It depends on the light, how well you sanded, etc. One thing I can assure you: if the instructions say two or three layers will do, it actually means at least five layers will. We waited about 10 hours in between the “sessions” and that worked pretty well. What went wrong: we didn’t remove all the black paint, which means an extra layer that makes the authentic "chess pattern" almost disappear. Anyway, we know what to do if we (ever) decide to repaint the floor.

P.S. Do you have any painting tips?

Paper, party and blues

 

Origami boats and salt dough whales combined with a turquoise tablecloth; it was like we were having our birthday party by the water (about a month ago, before we moved). A blue-triangle garland, made from old posters that I found while packing for “the move”, was up in the air as well as apple-blue-sea-green fish balloons. Matching candles shed a soft, cosy glow over the tablescape.

You know, I’m very fond of coloured bougies. At the Dutch household store Dille en Kamille they come in all colours of the rainbow, which enables you to create custom-lit tables. Always a nice final touch, right? What’s even better: they sell them per piece, basically meaning no more unused candles to store and/or get rid of as you simply can't forget you had them somewhere waiting to be lit. 

One more thing: these are the very last pictures of the old apartment ever to be posted on the blog. Next time you’ll get to see someplace new.

P.S. What summer tablescapes have you created so far?

Move made

You know how people say minutes turn into hours, hours into days, days into weeks, weeks into months and so on? It’s kind of what happened to the blog and me; me and not blogging that is. There’s no one to blame for my temporary withdrawal from the blogosphere but “the move” to a new apartment. (Check this out.) To make the “change of house” happen Le Boyfriend and I had to arrange like a trillion things (not including blogging, obviously).

A(n) (p)inspirational "moving" quote has to do it for now 
(no new-home pictures yet).

Anyway, that’s history. I guess it is clear that all moving has been taken care of and that we’re (almost) settled (we even have internet, yay!). To be honest there was nothing much to do except for driving all of our stuff and furniture from the old to the new place and installing it. Okay, one job we had to do (because we wanted to, not because it really needed to be done): whitening the floor in the living room. I hope you can wait a few more days before I reveal the result.

P.S. No need to say that I’ll be back to blog within a month this time.