Hallway update

Before:


After:


Not completely done yet, I want to put in a new floor someday and buy some better door handles, but I've painted the ceiling, the walls and the doors, so for now I'm done :)

More hallway pics @ Flickr

This isn't funny anymore

In my new apartment I have a living room and an open kitchen, a bedroom, a bathroom next to the bedroom and two small rooms. The kitchen and the two small rooms are all next to the "garden" and therefore all have garden doors, which is nice in summer when it's hot. The downside of having doors instead of windows (although I do have a small window above the doors in every room) all sorts of weird looking bugs like to walk in here. I'm not a person who's scared of every bug but I am seriously arachnophobic. But since I moved in here I had to deal with spiders in my apartment every day, arachnophobic or not. I've become quite tough about it too. When I see one I just get my flip-flop or the vacuum cleaner, not a big deal for me anymore. Sometimes I get a little help from Mushu.
So yeah, I'm pretty proud of myself, living all alone for the first time in my life and having to deal with spiders in my house every day. And I'm doing it!

But last night, right after a very refreshing thunderstorm, I found this one on the ceiling in one of the smaller rooms:


I guess in the photo it doesn't look all that big. I didn't dare to put my hand right next to the spider so this is the best picture I could take. But believe me, it was HUGE! I think it was about 3 inches (including the legs of course). There was no way I could remove or kill this one! So I was weak, and called someone nice enough to come all the way down here to have it removed.

I wonder how other arachnophobics deal with (big) spiders in their home?

Annoying little thingies

When I'm done painting the hallway I want to paint the garden walls. One will be white and the other two will be blue. There's just one problem:


How in the world am I going to get rid of these things?
First I tried the sanding machine, didn't work. Then I tried waterblasting, didn't work. Then a friend suggested I'd try using a gas burner but that didn't work either. I'm out of ideas now. Maybe I'm just gonna paint over it to see how that turns out.



As I said I'm currently working on the hallway. The walls are dirty and the doors were painted lime green and a grayish blue. It looked horrible. The doors are sanded now, today I will put on the primer.
Hopefully I will get some more sleep once the hallway is done. I'm so driven to finish it I'm hardly getting any sleep. I'm exhausted.
After this, I'm going to take it easy!

The bedroom

I'm living at my new apartment for 5 weeks now. Five weeks of incredibly hard work to make this place livable. The whole apartment was left extremely filthy by the previous owners and everything was painted in the utmost hideous colors. Still, I'm not even halfway yet. But it's looking better and better every day. I've been a little out of luck last week when everything suddenly seemed to break down. Three washing machines, a vacuum cleaner, my laptop (fixed now) and several smaller things. The past few days I was busy painting the bedroom, which was first painted purple, dark blue and yellow (can you imagine?) I didn't even take a before picture, but trust me, it looks so much better now! It's like the whole room suddenly comes to life!
I had a minor setback Saturday night when my wardrobe entirely collapsed leaving a huge mess. The wardrobe was repairable but I decided I deserved a nicer looking wardrobe for all my effort of the past 5 weeks and bought a new old one today. I loved the feel it instantly gave my bedroom and I'm glad I bought it. I went Ikea shopping on Saturday and bought new bed room curtains (purple Merete), new bed side lamps (white Grono) and a new Ribba frame for my Keep Calm poster. Still looking for a second night stand (has to be vintage).
No pics yet of the whole bedroom but will come soon.

So Fresh (treasury)

A treasury which reminds you of taking a dive into the ocean, that's where my 'piume di pavone' earrings are currently featured in! Check it out here - made by jezek.