Made by Me

Now that most of the boxes have been unpacked and things are mostly where they’re supposed to be, I’m starting to make my ideas and plans for this house more concrete. I can’t do all of it at once, or right now because I don’t have the money or the space for it, but I also don’t want to rush it. I want to take my time and get a feel for this place and for what my personal style really is. In my first house I just bought whatever I could find that was cheap and useful. So I ended up with a lot of Ikea and a lot of hand-me-downs and thrifted stuff. And those where then often items that were okay, but not really things I loved.

Then, over the past two years in the previous house, I started acquiring furniture pieces that I loved. I bought a sofa set (Ikea’s Ektorp), a bed (from the local hardware/interior store) and drawers for the bedroom (from Ikea’s Hemnes series). As I did so, I realised my style had also changed. From being really into white and light wood and fairly straight lines with country elements to a more rustic style and darker woods with nature elements.

I now have a whole new house to work with and shape to my wishes. I’m very pleased with the bones (layout, light floor, dark wood kitchen) and I have ideas for the various rooms, but I’m taking my sweet time to see if it will stick. I plan to get a lot of things from Marktplaats and/or thrift stores, so that demands patience any way.

Last week, I struck gold, twice.

I was browsing Marktplaats when I stumbled across this really pretty low metal table. It was engraved with fancy patterns and looked like a sort of big display dish on legs. I knew I had fallen for it when I e-mailed the seller asking how sturdy it was. After getting her answer (pretty sturdy) I bid €25 and it was accepted. Friday after work, I headed to her work place, where we’d agreed to do the handover, and soon I was in the train on my way home with a small table.

It was kinda tricky getting it home while riding my bike as it was too heavy to drag alongside me, so I had to support it on one hip and hold the top 😀 I’m sure it must have looked funny to passers by to see me occasionally struggling with the wind. I made it safely home, though, and after cleaning and thinking about where to put it. I ended up with this. I’m not quite happy with the styling yet (I want a different plant and a different pot) but for now it will do.

I’d also been thinking about what to do for a coat rack. My entry way has a recessed area before the electricity closet and the toilet. I have a free standing coat rack (which is awesome, I must say). However, I use the recessed area for one of the two litter boxes (the other one is in front of the electricity closet). This means I have no space for the free standing one. I could conceivably build a platform above the box and put it up there, but then it’s too tall.

This means I will have to use the wall. But I don’t want any random coat rack, or even just hooks on the wall. I want a little shelf to put something pretty on, and maybe keys or something. And I want pretty hooks. And I think I do want a little platform thingy above the litter box. Maybe to put a box with scarves and hats on, or to sit down and take my shoes off. *gears are turning*

I decided I wanted a somewhat rustic looking piece of wood to put vintage-type hooks in and then hang that on the wall. A visit to the local hardware/interior store, however, did not help. They had pretty, rustic, wood. Which was way too thick and heavy. They had thinner wood, but not wide enough, and the pieces that were wide enough, were too thin…

Then, the week  before last, I went to the Action. And there I found the perfect thing. A ready made little shelf, with a sort of vaguely white washed look, and the cutest shaped wooden supports. Immediately I saw the potential, so I bought two. One to just hang on the wall as a shelf. The other to take apart.

I spent last week looking for hooks. At first I kept on the vintage tour, but it was hard to find something that looked like what I had in mind. I ended up browsing Bol.com, as I do, and decided to see what hooks they might have. After a few pages of fairly standard ones, I came across these and had to have them. I figured five hooks would be enough, so I settled on one set of three, and two singles.

  

The trio of hooks looking like branches are these, from Puhlmann. The other two are from The Zoo.

This morning, after I was done working, I decided it was time to build the coat rack. I had removed the supports from one of the shelves a few days before, and moved the hangers from the back of the supports to the back of the shelf. Last night I made small indentations where I wanted the various hooks.  All I had left to do, was screw them in. The hooks have a fairly large screw sticking out of them at the back so I just started manually pushing down while turning them until they stuck enough to stop wiggling. Then I could turn faster and within ten or so minutes, I had all five securely screwed in. Except the deer. Due to some paint left overs on the top end of the screw, it wasn’t as solid as the rest. Fortunately it was nothing a quick unscrew, a few drops of superglue and a rescrew couldn’t fix.

So now I have a coat rack that is almost ready to be hung. That fairly large screw on the back of the hooks is of such length they are all sticking out at the back. I’ll have to go find my metal saw to get rid of that, and then it can go up the wall. The shelf is ready as is, all I’m gonna do is screw in a hook or two on the bottom to hang keys on.