Chez Larsson

Plaza Magazine

 
I think it's way cool that I'm getting a little bit of attention on my own turf nowadays. Being a Swedish blogger writing in English kind of makes me not really "belong" anywhere. Lately I've been given a fair amount of attention from Swedish press such as in the Amelia article, one in Swedish Cosmopolitan and also one yet to be published in Expressen Söndag.

 
 This Plaza Interiör article is about home bloggers "taking over Sweden". Lo and behold I'm mentioned already in the second paragraph!

 
 And there I am in my grey T-shirt. If you need a bigger dose of Swedish blogs than I can provide the others mentioned in the article are: Lotta Agaton, Trendenser, Husligheter, Design & Inredningsbloggen, Emmas Designblogg and Snusans Inredningsblogg.

List No.8: House Hunting Frustrations

 

I haven’t mentioned house hunting until this past week but I’ve been looking for a while already. In the beginning not so much to actually be prepared to bid because we hadn’t made a firm decision to sell but to get an idea of what’s out there in my price bracket. Not a whole lot unfortunately.

This week’s list is about what frustrates me when it comes to house hunting. In no particular order (it’s all very frustrating):

* Most of the properties in my price range are newer condominium type homes where you pay a lower price but a high “rent”. Also there are often pet restrictions.

* When the starting price on a property is set low to lure you in to view and bid: Please spare us that agony sellers!

* When the listing goes up two weeks prior to the view date? Why??? Are the sellers too lazy to prepare the viewing of the house in a week or what? The wait is agony.

* When said houses sell before the two week wait… It’s happened to me a few times already. One house we planned to view in an open house on Sunday sold on Saturday… (scrambled photo above).

 

 

* Wide angle lenses making everything look really spacious and when you arrive it’s really super poky.

* Photo shopped images where everything looks really clean and tidy and on arrival you notice it’s dingy and scuffed.

* The other potential buyers who look smug, rich and confident.

* Meeting with the bank to get approved for a loan. Nerve-wracking and frustrating since half the time I don’t 100% get what they’re saying. I’m so not good with numbers or interest rates nor am I that interested. I know what I can spend and I promise to pay you back, ok?!

* Bidding. OMG. My stomach is in knots most days anyway because of my IBS but this bidding business is so not helping (scrambled photo above…).

* Speaking of bidding and bidders; Please hurry up people! Why so slowly? Get on with it. Make up your minds, are you in or are you out?

That’s how I feel about it. What’s your experience house hunting?

Ps. Happy Friday!

Pps. Oops! I did it again. I accidentally posted this last night (in case you recognize it). See what house hunting does to me!!

Sprucing up a Paper Stack

I got this promotional paper stack a couple of weeks ago. Ugh.

 

I mean, who would put that on their desks? I know I wouldn’t, but I love having note paper handy for all those lists I constantly write so I decided to spruce it up a little.

 

I tossed the cover and dismounted the paper holder so it lay flat. Then I used permanent spray adhesive (outside!) to cover the front, where the image is.

 

I then placed the glued surface against the back of the paper I wanted to cover it with (a bit of wood grain gift wrap) and used a craft knife to cut along the sides of the cardboard using it as my template.

 

When everything was cut out I reassembled the holder with double stick tape on the side and regular tape inside and outside at the bottom and popped the paper back in.

 

And now it sits in one of the cube shelves by my craft desk and I always have a piece of paper on hand to jot down ideas or for writing yet another list.

Depersonalizing /2

Yesterday we talked about removing personal photos when prepping your house before selling it. Another thing is to remove names. We have the tricky business of our last name on the front door and we haven’t decided what to do with that yet (we’d need to replace the window pane). But here’s where the name was easily removed. This is Wille’s room quite a few years ago and you can see his name frosted there on the door.

 

All those dots and letters are actually just stuck on the back of the Perspex sheet so all I had to do was to peel the letters off…

 

… until it looked like this.

 

Then I got my frosted film out and cut circles to cover the area. I used a circle cutter for the larger ones (the eraser protects the film so I don’t get a pin prick in the middle) and a circle punch for the smaller.

 

I then stuck them on making sure I didn’t get air bubbles and then smoothed each dot out with a credit card. And there it is, Wille’s depersonalized door.

Depersonalizing /1

Now that we’re house hunting we are also prepping our house so it looks it’s best when it goes up for sale. One thing I’ve learned about selling is that you need to depersonalize your home. The idea is that the people who view your house can picture themselves there instead of picturing you there.

 

 

As you know our house is quite bare already compared to a lot of homes so there isn’t a whole lot of clutter to remove but there are a few things that can be done to make it less us.

 

Personal photos are a no-no apparently so tiny Wille will be kept in storage until we find a new place.

 

I replaced him with this framed poster with a pair of lungs. Not my lungs, not Wille’s lungs, maybe the future owner of our house’s lungs?!