Perfect interior - Riviéra Maison

Talking about the furniture, I could live in this shop!!!
One day... ;)

And meanwhile making a list of Ikea (and others) items we lack or would like to change. This time they wont be Riviéra Maison, but hopefully next time :)

Wind of change

Lately all the thoughts about sailing and sea adventures have been replaced by the needs of flat renovation :) So here comes an "interior design" post.

About one year ago when we moved in this apartment almost nothing was actually renewed. Entrance was the only room, where the wallpapers were refreshed and the new furniture was bought. Since the very moment of purchasing this place we discussed building back the third room, that was removed by the previous owner.

So the layout was such, that we had a proper bedroom + big and spaceful other room, that combined open kitchen, living room and dining room.

It took quite some time to figure out where do we want the third room to be, as rebuilding it on the old place was not an option. After the decision was made, we started selecting the building company.

And after a couple of appointments our project went to Puuppolan Talkkari who did a good job! 

So now the walls are there and to have them in place took about 5 days. And at least half a day was spent on figuring out electrical wiring we had in place here.

Mustsay that we are very happy with the result! The biggest fear was to loose the sense of big open space that we used to have. And actually with tht new room the space still remains big enough, but the use of it is much more practical. Living room is clearly difined as well as the dining area. The new room though is rather small :)

With the new walls it was obvious that all the ex-living room spaces needed to be painted. It turned out to  be a tough task to pick the rights color of the paint for the walls... and despite the fact, that I always knew, that on the sample it always looks "milder" than in real life, what did I do???? I picked up a shade of yellow that was brighter than orange :D And a shade of white which is slightly yellow/beige... :D As a result we have about 10 litres of extra paint for internal walls :D Anyone interested?

 

My only "concern" is not the funriture for the new room, it should have a couple of purposes and has to be well thought :)

Andof course now with the new walls and all I would be happy to replace all the furniture we have, as it was sort of put together "by chance", when we still rented a tiny appartment and had no clue what kind of spaces we will have and what will suit where... 

...well, one thing at a time...:) and meanwhileflat is still kind of mess, as skirting boards are missing, window frames need painting,curtains, pictures, furniture... 

But summer is getting closer :) And the "main summer project" (read boat) is also ongoing :) 

Coats and Shoes - entrance furniture

When we moved to the new flat the only "major" fixing we did was changing the wallpapers in the entrance. And of course, they could picture nothing else but little blue sailing boats :) Once the wallpapers were in place, big challenge was to find the suitable entrance furniture. I was all the time having in mind some sort of entrance bench & coat rack. Probably this was imposed to my imagination by the white wall cabinet, which would serve as a niche for the bench . Furniture color was also predetermined by the white wallpaper background, white wall cabinet and white doors.

We have checked plenty of furniture shops and online pages and were surprised to see, that generally the choice of entrance benches is extremely small... Not to mention that I wanted it white and embracing the general style of the room. At last, the dream bench was found in Riviera Maison online catalogue (Riviera Mason is the shop where I could live, it deserves a separate post! :) ), but the price was totally absurd and out of our budget for this item.

Browsing online one day I bumped into the pages suggested to me by FB. How huge my surprise was to find there THE-bench-and-rack-of-my-dreams for 1/4 of the original price! It lacks the Riviera Maison logo, but otherwise is simply perfect! And honestly, I am not ready to pay 600€ for the logo.
Look at this :) I think the final outcome is awesome. At least I am very happy with this :)

Coats & Shoes: Wihonen online store

Rug: Kodin1

Pictures: me 

...so what are those other joys? and a couple of words on sailing.

Just as the blog title states, my intention is to write about the things that I love doing and that bring joy into my life :) The biggest hobby of mine (and of my husband's too) is sailing. We own  an Elan 33 and spend all the free time in summer boating. By boating I do not necessarily mean being out in the sea under the sails, but also enjoying the long summer evenings in the home harbor, making some good food to be enjoyed on the deck, taking sun when the weather allows it, observing passing by other boats, decorating the boat interior and just having good time.

At present moment there are a couple of months to go before I can enjoy the described above, but if you ask my hubby he will tell you that the season has already started, as we have already attended Boat exhibition :) I have a feeling that you will see more posts related to boat tips in a couple of month time though. Meanwhile I will share some ideas on boating if something comes to my mind, but otherwise will mention those other joys.

And by the way, by no means I consider myself professional in sailing! I learned -or better say still learning!- sailing as an adult, spent now 4 summers boating, so in this blog I am not going to teach anybody on how things should be done, but will share how we do it or even maybe ask for an advise, if among readers there would be some more experienced people. Still some tips mentioned here might be very good for the very beginners.

So now to other joys :)

We recently moved to a new flat, thus currently I am interested a lot in interior design ideas. I always found it fascinating, but only recently got a chance to implement something  in my own space. And together with this chance I also realized how difficult it is sometimes to find the "right" stuff to match other elements and suit the space. You will get to read more about my challenges and success stories in the posts to come, I am sure!

When having a bit more free time - normally not after the working day- I enjoy making some good food. Eating at boat is a separate subject, that also deserves attention. Cooking there is different from many perspectives: not very big fridge space, little kitchen, limited ingredients availability, etc. I will try to share here some recipes we liked.

One more thing I enjoy is taking pictures. I will try to accompany my posts with own shots, though in this area I am rather rookie and just started learning how this game of light and shadow works. Picture in this post is mine :)

Enjoy!