Another weekend with Teddy

The past weekend we got to have SweetieS kindergarten mascot Teddy for a visit.It’s been about a year since we had him for a visit. (in case you missed it, here is the post)

Sine we last saw him Teddy has been “upgraded” with new clothes and a new buddy, Little Teddy. This time SweetieS put in a request for a new hat for Teddy. With temperature rapid falling these days, SweetieS felt Teddy need a warm hat. So I was put to work. I did a quick Google search to have a base to start with. I found this pattern. Starting with 68 stitches I knitted until I felt it was big enough.

I’m still looking for Lille Teddy. He went to bed with Teddy and SweetieS and has yet to show up…I’ve emptied the bed (SweetieS has “a few” stuffed animals) and still no sign of him…

These days the windows in our house are being changed. So the weekend was spendt clearing and getting ready for the upcoming renovation, while the girls had a sleep over at the grand parents.

- how have you spendt your weekend?

A roof over my head

Today our new roof was finished! Yay! I’ve been longing for a roof at the front of our house for ages. When I had my maternity leave with BabyS it was even more sought after. Coming home from a long stroll with the stroller I had no place to park the stroller protected from the elements.

For those who have followed my blog the past years probably remember our attempt at a roof with a gazebo at the front of our house. Unfortunately the gazebo didn’t like a huge amounts of snow that falls down here at “the top of Oslo”. And broke under the heavy, wet snow.

The company that built this roof for us is Andreassen og Fjeld Bygg AS. Super happy with these guys. Every day they cleaned up after themselves – so no worries that BabyS would get her hands on anything dangerous. A dialog with them daily gave us updates on that was done and what was left.

Already started a new dialog with them regarding the patio on the backside of our house – that is in desperate need of some “help”…

- have you done any renovation on your house lately?

A blank canvas

As I wrote in an earlier post, during Easter we renovated our hallway. We finished in just under two weeks! Everything takes so much longer with BabyS in-house. Luckily my mother didn’t mind taking care of BabyS while we worked.

With redone walls and a new floor we now have a blank canvas to decorate. I mentioned how much we liked that the hallway felt more open with everything out. So I still have to find out how we want to furnish our renovated hallway…

Took a few pictures of the hallway before, during and after renovation.

before - cluttered, during – progression, after – blank canvas

When we tore out the wall panels we found dark green painted walls. Well half way down the walls. No shocker…we have already found a blue kitchen, red living room…so a green hallway didn’t come as much of a surprise. Our new hallway is now painted in a plain cream color with Alloc Commercial Stone flooring in Skifer Grey. Don’t mind DaddyO and BabyS in the last picture…

With a blank canvas at hand it’s time to look at some storage solutions for our hallway that won’t make a big clutted hallway.

- Do you have smart ways to organize in your hallway?
- Have you renovated you hallway and want to share with me?

A renovating Easter 2013 @CasaR

While most of Norway is spending their Easter at their mountain cabins we will be renovating. It’s the last room in the house that has stayed untouched. So we thought it was about time to take on this project.

The weekend has been spent tearing out everything. As with everything else in this house, there is always a surprise. This time we found cork tiles glued to the concrete floor when we removed the worn oak wood flooring. After crawling around on all four tearing up the tiles I feel sore all over.

Before starting on this room I thought I had planned the finished result in my head.With a big sliding door wardrobe on one side of the room. However after tearing everything out we liked the open airy feel the room got. So back to the drawing board.

The house has still not been decorated for Easter. But I still have time…

a little Easter inspiration borrowed from Flickr user Moline

- have you ever started a renovation project that didn’t end quite as planned?
- what’s your latest renovation project?
- finally, as this is a Easter post, how do you decorate your house for Easter?

We @CasaR wish you all a Happy Easter

Stair case - Stage 1: complete

With an in-house baby time sure flies.

We finished with the first stage of the stair case renovation before Sophie arrived, but I haven’t had time to post about the finished result. Well here’s a little post and some pictures.

As I posted when I started thinking about the renovation of the stair case (read previous post here), the banister was gonna be painted white and the steps stained in a dark wood finish. After we started sanding and painting  I realized it was more work than we had time for. So we spilt up the renovation in two stages…Stage 1: the banister, and Stage 2: the steps.

I did a little post during the renovation (read it here) showing the progress.

Well here are a few pictures with Stage 1 completed…

Don’t know when we will start on Stage 2. But for now we will enjoy the fact that Stage 1 is completed and baby Sophie enriching our lives.

Time flies…

Can’t believe that I’m already one week into my maternity leave. Time sure flies…and the baby isn’t even here yet. Haven’t even had time to blog (!).

Thought that I would have better time when my maternity leave started. Since my midwife has been worried about me having preeklampsi I’ve had a few more check ups and follow ups than normal…just the last week I had THREE doctors appointments!

The past week has gone to some preparations for the coming baby…and just getting the house out of “renovation mode”.

Just to mention a few projects that have been going on the past week:

• assembled the baby stroller
• bought a wooden gazebo (still need to assemble though-see my earlier post)
• getting the front patio washed and ready for a new season in the Sun (crossing our fingers that the Sun grants us some presence this summer)
• finished putting down wooden flooring in the hallway on the 2^nd floor and the wooden moldings are put in place
• (finally) finished the last washing load of baby clothes and folded them nicely into the dresser in the nursery

Now if I can only find some time and inspiration to do some scrapping…

More nursery stuff

When I ordered the butterfly decals for the babys nursery I also ordered another one. One with Winnie the Pooh and Tigger.

Tonight I finally I had time to put it up…not too bad if I say so myself

 

My sister-in-law gave us their old baby cot for the nursery. She had mentioned that her son had left some teething marks on the rails, but if we wanted it, it was ours.

I tried a little dab of paint to make the marks less visible, but soon realized that it was a loosing battle. Thanks to a tip from my friend I gave it a more creative angle…

before

after

I just stamped some strips of paper with stamps from “In the Garden” 12 x 12 stamp set from Fancy Pants. The Distress ink I used is “Seedless Preserves”  from the the Ranger seasonal fall set. The strips are than fastened to the cot using Noga teething rail for cots from IKEA. I was planning on doing this to all the sides, but I only have rails for one side.

Typically my luck, this rail is not available in any of the IKEA stores in the Oslo area. Now where am I gonna get two more Noga rails???

If you happen to live by any IKEA store that has this rail in stock, please contact me Thanx

I want, I want

At the front of our house  we have a patio, and there is just a small roof covering the front door. The plan is to build a roof over the front patio later on. But for now, as a temporary solution, we have landed on buying a wooden gazebo. This way we have a place to park the baby stroller when at home, without it being in the way and protected from the elements. Where do you park your stroller when at home? Is it in the way?

So far I’m surprised over how expensive they are!This one costs 9990 NKR!!

the next one I find, more expensive than the last one…11990 NKR!

We haven’t set a budget for the gazebo, but I feel almost 10K NKR is a little on the expensive side…

from when we bought the house

last summer we did an overhaul of the flooring

Our house has a wooden exterior, so I feel a wooden gazebo will complement the exterior. Now starts the search for a wooden gazebo at a reasonable price. Wish me luck, I really want one…

Murphys Law

Everybody knows Murphys Law, either by own experience or heard others talk about it. Just in case you really are that lucky and never had a case of Murphys Law happen around you, I wikipedia’ed it for you here.
Anyways…Right after Easter we went shopping for a new dresser to have in our bedroom, at the foot of our bed. It would double as storage and with a little help/creativity as a “bench”.

I had started with my mind set on a six drawer dresser from IKEA, until we started to look at the measurements. Realizing that the dresser would be too high, we started looking at other options. We would up with a dresser by danish Tvilum.

My husband was super nice and started the assembly while I rested on the couch. But assembly came to a full stop when he realized that we were missing two parts! Luckily the drawer could be assembled even with the parts missing as they are just for show and don’t affect the use of the dresser. And the missing parts have been ordered…hopefully it doesn’t take to long for us to receive them

the dresser used with the missing parts

Pimple free

Today we had electricians at our house to redo the floor heating system controls on the wall.

Early birds as handymen in Norway are…they showed up bright and early 7.30!

After a few hours of work..here’s the result

WAAAAYYYY better than I posted earlier. Now we just need to a dab of spackle and paint to fix the wall around…

Like a pimple on the wall…

Just before Easter we had an electrician here to install floor heating in one of the newly renovated bedrooms. Since there wasn’t any preexisting installment in the room (in the walls), the electrician installed the floor heating system controls and wiring on the outside of the walls.

“Darn it!” I thought when I saw the finished result, it looked like a a pimple on the wall. Hated that the switch was installed in a frame on top of the wall, instead of being set into the wall like we have in all the other rooms. Not to mention the plastic pipe from the switch down to the floor…

Luckily I have a super understanding husband, and he contacted the electrician about coming back to do the installment set into the wall.

The electrician will be back this coming Tuesday

One small step …

One giant step for our staircase…

For some reason I got the idea in my head that we should start on the staircase. I’ve decided on white banister and stained steps. Like I posted as an option in my previous staircase post. Still not sure if we will be closing the staircase though…

And with almost a week off from work due to Easter, we started on the huge task of the top of the staircase…After several days of sanding and painting I realize that it’s gonna take more than a week to finish. Baby steps…and eventually we WILL finish.

Vinyl takes center stage

A few weeks back I ordered some vinyl decals to decorate the nursery from a seller on eBay. I finally had some time on my hands to apply it on a wall in the nursery. I’m happy with how the wall looks now compared to how naked the picture of Tigger looked without.

This decal is ordered from a seller on Ebay that is located in Korea, feel free to check out the Ebay store.

My next project on the house: Painting the staircase?

Ever since we moved in to our house I’ve wanted to paint our staircase. Mostly because the whole pine look just isn’t for me. Besides after we laid the wood flooring in Merbau, it just didn’t look right.
As the renovation of rooms left are coming to an end, the staircase is approaching fast. I knew I wanted to paint the staircase white, but not sure about the whole case in white or just parts of it. Not to mention which shade of white. There’s like over 100 shades of white!!!
I started going online and looking at pictures of others who have painted the staircase and what shade people recommended.

This is how the staircase looks today…”furuhelvete” as we call it in Norwegian

Some ideas on the style I’m considering:

Our staircase is not a closed one…but you get the idea.

(We are also considering closing the staircase while repainting. But are we taking on more than we can handle???)

Or completely white???

I’m leaning towards this combination…white banister and stained steps

Any comments would be greatly appreciated.