Things are progressing very slowly at my house in the country. Not frustratingly so, but rather lazily and relaxed.
I am still working on the walls of the small sitting room, and that’s okay; it’s a labour of love, and I don’t want it to be stressful. Still, I am looking forward to the day when I can stand in a finished room, look around me and say to myself “Yes, this is just as it should be!”
Perhaps that’s reflected in my latest purchase:
27 yards of canvas???
It’s for curtains for the house, and that greyish sage green, coarse fabric should, I hope, look good against rough walls of white, rendered bricks. The reason I ordered so much fabric is that I want the same curtains throughout the house, and a) there are a lot of windows in a house compared to a small apartment and b) it is a cheap fabric, so I’d rather have too much than too little of it so I don’t run out and find they don’t make the exact same colour or texture any more.
It will be quite a project, turning this huge pile of fabric into curtains, but there’s no rush. After all, I can live without curtains as long as I’m working on the house – and then get a friend down to help me with the task of cutting up this vast swathe of fabric and turning it into separate panes. Yeah, real men make their own curtains, right?
Planning such a thing as curtains helps me see the house as it will be, and it will be lovely! As I look around me at the salmon-coloured walls of the large sitting room, the room transforms itself inside my head; the walls change colour and texture, the dropped faux-wood ceiling disappears and exposes the beams, the mangy old carpet turns into wooden flooring. Over there by the fire is where my great-grandmother’s sofa and armchairs will go, down here in the far end is where the large book case will cover the end wall and my desk will stand just there by the window. Under the desk will be my woollen rug so my feet are nice and warm when I sit there, and under the sofa arrangement will be a new rug that I haven’t quite imagined yet.
I’ve also bought the dining table for my large kitchen (when the wall to the small sitting room is knocked down): Solid oak, contemporary but still rustic. When the leaves are added to the ends it becomes nearly 10 feet long and easily seats 12-14 if needed, but it will also be my main work space in the kitchen – hence the need for something sturdy! And it came with a set of 12 solid oak chairs, though the chairs are lighter and more organic in their shape; somehow more welcoming to sit on than if they had had the same square, heavy style as the table.
The curves of the solid wood are so nice to touch…
All these pieces of the puzzle are still only put together in my mind – the dining table and the chairs are currently stored in the garage, my great-grandmother’s sofa set is in my aunt’s attic and so on, but I can somehow see it all coming together as a coherent, relaxed space.
Oh, and I bought myself another little trinket…
Yes, Mr. I-Hate-Cars has bought a car. It’s a pretty, little thing – and would have felt dangerously small on Houston highways between pick-up trucks and SUVs, but in Denmark it fits in better. And 40 miles per gallon fits in nicely with my wallet…
A car simply makes it easier to have a house in the country. Easier to get down here, and easier to get around while I’m down here. Easier to bring a few friends down here – though of course I’d need a small bus if I were to provide transport for enough people to fill my dining table!
But… This house… I am so in love with it still! The project has expanded from merely redecorating to a rather more full-scale restoration with historic building materials and a “softly, softly” approach, so it will take me years to finish it – and that’s okay. Initially I thought I could have the internal walls repainted and the floors changed by Easter, but that’s not happening – and I really don’t mind. All delays are my own, and there are things I need to learn from scratch in order to achieve my vision (like rendering un-fired brick walls with lime-based render) but unskilled people have been working with these materials for thousands of years, so surely I can too!
(I won’t, though, be turning 27 yards of fabric into curtains by hand-sewing them! There must be limits, even for me…)
The curtain project will keep you busy for a long while. Good luck with the new house. It looks lovely.
It will be so perfect – and until it is perfect it’s still pretty great. 🙂
(And if I get a friend down with another sewing machine we could knock out those curtains in no time, but clearly I had better fix my walls first, so I have somewhere to hang them.)
At least now I have the material.
The fabric is lovely and I know exactly what you mean about having a clear vision for the house. I was the same with both my cottage in Wales and the flat in London. When we moved to the flat it was a nightmare of stainless steel, ghastly paint and even worse 60s patterned vomit inducing carpets. But from the moment I walked in I knew exactly what it would look like if someone loved it, brought in neutrals and lots of wood and maximised the opportunities of the floor to ceiling windows and amazing light in each room!
Good luck – the curtain making project will certainly keep you occupied for a while 🙂
I suspect that I could actually do the curtains in a day if I worked efficiently on it – and I suspect I won’t do that! 🙂
But with the amount of space I have in the house, obviously I also have a lot of work to do, but the house has such lovely bones… Can you imagine a sitting room cum library that’s 25 feet long? With a wood-burner? And a kitchen of the same size? And yes, with another wood-burner! It may be slow, but it will be pretty hard to make this house not-amazing! 🙂
I like the clean look of Danish architecture and decorating. I love your selection for the curtains. It will feel coherent and relaxed. Take your time and do it right. Better to restore. Your car is cute. I noticed so many little cars in Europe. They had to be small because there was nowhere to park anything larger.
This car is tiny – but plenty big for my needs, and 40mpg is a very nice thing in a car…
And I wanted something a bit clean and tidy for the kitchen, since the sitting room will mainly be furnished with inherited bits of furniture of various ages from around 1890 to the 1930’s. Nothing too ornate and nothing very old, but still a bit of a more vintage feel, even though the dining table and chairs are actually bought second hand.
But it will definitely be a house with a very Scandinavian feel. Both the dining table and the chairs are actually by named Danish designers – bought cheaply at an on-line auction – and the furniture for the sitting room is all made by unknown craftsmen.
Soren, I love all your plans and could happily live with that table and chairs. I’m glad you will have a sewing machine for those curtains; you may be surprised at how quickly they take shape once you get a system in place for making them.
I love that I was able to get a dining set in solid wood within my budget; I didn’t want to pour all that work into making the house look good and then fill it with bad furniture.
And the curtains will be postponed again and again until some day when the kitchen and the sitting room are done I bring a friend down with her sewing machine, and then the two of us can knock out those curtains and still have time to enjoy ourselves. And it’s softer than it looks, so it should drape nicely when the curtains are hung – but still sturdy enough to be easy to work with. (And at under $5 per yard I think it was a steal! 100% cotton – again, I want nice materials in my house. Things should be what they pretend to be.)
those chairs entice stroking
They really are wonderful to touch. I love their organic shapes in contrast to the much more “constructed” table.
(And they’re rather comfortable as well…)
Great to hear all the wonderful plans and a car! Wow you are living life!
I am basically being a bit hedonistic and doing whatever I want these days. (Well, not EVERYTHING I want; I’d like to go to work each day, but we’ll see when somebody wants to hire me.)