studyroom reveal (part I)

"Hi Joost and Marije! So, I'm gonna come by this weekend, and I really want to demolish something!"
That could only be one person: Joost's oldest friend Bram. He was ready to get the crowbars out!

It didn't matter that we only had received the keys to our house two weeks prior. It didn't matter that we hadn't really had the time to have a plan on what should actually be demolished. I mean: where else can you find such friendly and cheap helpers?

I rubbed my nose, thinking about where to unleash this unlimited power. "A room upstairs maybe?" I offered "which one?" Joost asked. "Doesn't matter, really.. pick one" So both boys grabbed a crowbar and thundered upstairs, making quick work of our lowered ceilings. 

In the morning the room looked more or less like this...

minus the bed though)

And only one hour later later - no exaggerating here- it looked like this:

utter chaos!!

How on earth is it possible that Joost, who takes an hour to eat breakfast, can demolish an entire room in one hour? Have I accidentally married a typhoon in human form? 

Unfortunately, demolishing is usually quicker than rebuilding, and for more than 8 months, the study room looked like this:

Sad!!

In fact: it was even worse than this, as in this picture there was a light installed, and the (lack of) ceiling was cleaned of all the cobwebs. before that, it really was nightmare-stuff.

When I showed my oldest niece the room, she almost began to cry, no kidding. 

Luckily, this spring we decided it was time to pick up the upstairs rooms again, beginning with a good bit of insulating.

It's getting hot in here...

Rather than reinstalling that frumpy lowered ceiling, we decided to get the old wooden beams back in sight. It took a lot of swearing -luckily we are experts in that- and measuring, because honestly, our house is more crooked than a mugger with a humpback. But we managed to get all the insulation and plasterboard in place! 

all insulated!

Next step was a bit of flooring. We decided to get creative, and rather than buying a normal laminated floor, we went for a floor of underlayment (which is a type of plywood sheet of a certain thickness, used to build floors) It's much cheaper, and it worked like a charm! We bought 60x240cm boards, with tongue and groove edges, so laying it was basically like laying an average floor, but quicker.

I would marry underlayment if I could, so pretty! 

hot floor action!

I varnished the floor in two layers of whitewash (not only for a more subtle colour, but also to protect the wood), and with the basics more or less done, we were almost finished. No of course not! because why would I buy a desk and a set of drawers if I could make them myself? I just love making things complicated like that ;)

So I began... 

This is a combination of two of Joost's most regular faces, his :"Why did I choose that girl?"- face, and his "Well at least you can operate the electric drill yourself"-face

I wanted a floating wall-to-wall desk, so I we(okay Joost helped, he's a good guy) basically mounted two beams: one to the wall, and one resting on two cupboards, supported by two support-thingies in the middle. You might think that that's quite a bit of trouble to go through for a desk, but since the room is fairly small, I think that the lack of legs is a wise choice, as it creates loads of floor-space. And the wall-to-wall desk creates both enormous amount of desk space, and makes the room look much bigger than it is. win-win!

and I simply placed another board of underlayment on top. 

bit of screwing and that's that!

I build a cupboard next to it, assembled from many salvaged parts, which I will write about in the next post.

still looking quite scratchy to be honest..

And then the last thing to do was applying loads and loads (and loads and loads and "why are you still painting, please come to bed, it's 1 am" loads) of paint. I actually mixed the colour for walls and cupboards myself by adding drops of acrylic paint (brown, green and black) to white wall paint, for a powdery green/greyish hue.

and this is what it looks like now!

love this space!

I think the exposed ceiling beams work wonderfully in this room (and no, I have no intention of painting them; the old wood is lovely as-is. 

the reading nook with me in it -still shocked..

the pouffe in that picture was from my last post,

the chair is a thrifted 30 euro chair from Jan des Bouvrie, that I really need to upholster (but who's got time for upholstering chairs when you can smash down ceilings instead? indeed: nobody)

The sheepskin (nicknamed Vladimir) was bought on a holiday with my parents in Budapest.

Behind my is a storage space with sliding doors, that was luckily already there.

plants in tin cans, simply screwed to the wall, for a bit of extra oxygen

the mirror was a 7,50 euro thrift find, though I unfortunately chipped it when moving houses,
but I like it too much to let go.

Another lucky thrift find.
 Those wooden shutters were 4,50. I kind of eyeballed the size in the shop, but luckily it's a perfect fit!

the handmade sideboard is basically an assemblage of different cupboards screwed together, but it works quite brilliantly, as it creates a maximum amount of storage space in this small room. 

with a little nook for the incredible refashion-machine!

From a dark and scary room that made my niece sob, to a light space suited for working and diy'ing, and to fill with the things I love. 

like this wine vase (a French brocante find) the gemstone Joost gifted me for my graduation,
and the paper rabbit we bought on our 'honeymoon'.

or just to relax in..

yet another thrift find ( 3 euros I think?) that I've come to love. It's handmade and adorable. And plastered in paint from all our projects, but I kind of like how it shows our hard work :)