Chez Larsson

A Day in the Life

So I get this request from time to time. What is a normal day like in my life. Not a weekend day, but a weekday one. Well here goes:

1.30 or 3.30’ish am Bonus wakes me up and wants to go outside if he’s at home. I don’t want to let him out at night so I end up with him walking all over me or with him cuddling next to me. Usually not the best sleep. (Currently he’s not at home as he went wandering off again on Saturday so while I’m worrying about him during the day at least I get to sleep at night…)

5 am My alarm goes off.

5.30 am I’ve snoozed for too long and get up to feed the cat (s) and hit the shower.

6 am I have breakfast, oatmeal with cinnamon and milk (that’s it above). Wille gets up later and I’ve prepped his tray the night before. I ‘m fully aware that he can do it all himself but I like to do this for him so when he wakes up he eats a proper breakfast.

6.15 am Get dressed.

6.30 am Leave for work. Ride my bike to the subway station and then go on the subway for about 35 minutes.

7.15 am arrive at work. This varies a little bit between 7-7.30 am depending on how long the snoozing went on.

7.30 am Have tea and a sandwich I brought with me. Read e-mails, intranet messages, check our company Facebook and company website and read blogs. I work with social media nowadays so I spend a lot of time online. I also read my personal e-mail and check and answer blog comments. In case you’re wondering, I don’t have a problem doing these personal things during my work hours because I never ever take the daily coffee break most of my coworkers do in the afternoons. Oh, and to clarify, Facebook, I only do it for work, so if you’ve tried to contact me through there I’m afraid I’ve ignored it. Facebook is great but for me personally, blogging is enough. After doing the daily checking in to see everything is running smoothly, I continue working.

11.30 am Take 45 minute lunch break. I either stay at my desk eating some yoghurt and catch up on blogs or go to the nearby shopping center and run some errands (library, DIY store etc).

12.15 pm Continue working which involves planning what goes on Facebook and our website, different marketing campaigns etc.

4 pm Go home on the subway.

4.45 pm Do some grocery shopping before hopping on my bike for the five minute ride home.

5.15 I’m home, feed Mini and Bonus (or just Mini…) and start making dinner.

6 pm Have dinner with Willle while watching TV (I know we’re bad…).

6.30 pm Depending on how much homework Wille has we’ll either move to the Galaxy chairs and continue watching TV or Wille goes upstairs and I start clearing the kitchen.

7.30 pm I do some project or other such as a coat of paint, a bit of sewing or simply some house cleaning or organizing. Blogging usually takes place on Sundays but if I didn’t get all the weeks posts done this is when I catch up. If Wille needs help with school work I do that.

9 pm I check with Wille if he wants to watch one of the shows we’ve “taped”. Usually if he’s not swamped we watch CSI New York, House or NCIS,

10 pm Start saying I need to go to bed.

11 pm Hopefully in bed by now after tidying up a little bit, prepping breakfast, emptying the dish washer and stuff like that. Try to read a little or do a word on Wordfeud but I’m usually too tired.

That’s a normal day in my life.

~

Ps. Happy Halloween!

 

Candle Drawer(s)

This photo of the kitchen was sort of accurate as of last week. I did feel that the tray storage didn’t really use that space to it’s fullest and since I have so few drawers in the kitchen I decided to add some…

 

… in the shape of the Muji boxes I used to keep inside the kitchen cabinets. Candle season is in full swing over here with the evenings getting darker and darker and I really wanted easier access to the candles (and paper napkins too).

 

I keep tapers in one “drawer”, votives in another, napkins in a third and assorted candles in the forth. Since these boxes aren’t as deep as the unit I’ve placed large outdoor candles and grave candles (which I’ll use for our pumpkins) behind the boxes. It’s just a matter of pulling one box out and reach in there for those seldom used things.

Fun fact; My image of the candle drawer at the old house was one of my first Flickr photos that made the blog rounds back in 2007. I kept seeing my candles pop up on blogs around the world which was so exciting and surprising. I don’t think candle drawers are that uncommon over here in Sweden but apparently the rest of the world was amazed that I’d sacrifice a whole drawer for them. Us Swedes do use up way more candles than other nationalities, to us candles are a way to cozy up weekday evenings as well as weekends and special occasions.

Oh, if you’re wondering where the trays went, the small ones are in one of the wall cabinets, the one with the rim is being used as a makeshift coffee table on an ottoman and the large cat trays are simply leaning against the wall on the counter. The chopping board is in the deepest of the three drawers I showed you earlier where it fits perfectly.

And yes, I need to get a fifth “drawer”. Haven’t decided what goes in there yet though after I've bought it. I'm sure I'll think of something.

~

Ps. Yay, it's Friday! Have a lovely weekend, friends!

How to Paint a Concrete Floor

After I’ve posted about having painted floors in the basement I’ve had quite a few questions on the process and requests for a how-to. So while I painted the floor in the main room downstairs a couple of weeks ago I took step by step photos to try and explain how I’ve done it. Please don’t just take my word for how it’s done though, check with your local paint store to make sure you get the proper paint for your floor. Anyway here’s how I do it (and it’s according to the instructions on the can of the paint I use which is Alcro Entré).

 

When we moved in I wanted to get my storage shelves up asap so I painted the space where they were going and left the rest untouched until now. As you can see the floor wasn’t looing too great. Quite a lot of wear and tear and lots of flaking areas. There was probably a rug there at the far end since that area is much less used.

 

I started out by cleaning the floor with a cleaner that degreases it and leaves it with a matte finish. You mix it with water, wipe the floor with it and then rinse. “Rinsing” basically means you need to get every bit of the cleaner and dirt off before you can paint. Since I couldn’t hose the floor off I got a clean mop head out and changed the water in my bucket a zillion times until the water was no longer cloudy.

That left me with a clean matte surface but also with areas of more peeling and flaking paint which is why it’s important to do this before scraping and sanding because otherwise you’ll end up doing it twice…

After the floor had dried I used a wire brush and sandpaper to smooth out those rough patches. If It didn’t have my shelves full of stuff in that same room I’d have used my mouse sander for this but I didn’t want it all to be covered with dust so I did it by hand. Not the most fun of jobs.

 

So now the floor was clean and smooth and I’d vacuumed it to remove all the dust so I could actually start painting. As with most paint jobs the prepping time is much longer than the actual painting time so by the time I was this far ahead I knew t was the home stretch.

 

When painting a concrete floor, if there are bare concrete patches you paint those first with a 90% paint + 10% water ratio. I guess the diluted paint adheres better to the concrete that way.

 

That left my floor looking like it had typhoid fever or some similar illness. As you can see there were a lot of bare patches at the bottom of the photo and this is the highest traffic area, from the doorway and through to the hobby room door which is where I was standing taking this photo.

After that was done I left the floor to dry. It says 3 hour between coats but the advice I got from my paint store was to leave more time in between the first and second coats for a stronger floor so I left about 12 hours or so between coats and painted three coats altogether including this first spotty one.
 

 

And here’s the final result again. If you look closely (on the actual floor) you can still see a world map of where the bare concrete patches once were. I guess if you want a perfectly smooth floor you need to fill those patches first before painting. Since this is the basement I wasn’t willing to take those extra measures and this looks good enough for me. In case you’re wondering about the name of the color I chose, it’s a grey straight off the neutral gray scale; NCS N-2000.

The Locker

So here’s the latest news on the locker. I decide to paint it all white after all. I was thinking of going orange for the outside but decided against it last minute.

 

And here it is all painted. I have to say it wasn’t the easiest of jobs. So many corners, angles, nooks, hooks etc. I used both a small roller and a brush but the best method would probably have been to have it spray painted professionally or to spray it myself but since I don’t have a good place to do it I went for the roller and brush.

 

It took all in all four coats of paint to cover that dark green + some touch ups. Painting the doors was the trickiest part because I kept getting drips around the vents no matter how often I went back to catch them with my brush. In the end I left them there and went over them with a sand paper when they were dry and touched up with a smaller brush after.

 

And there it is in all its white glory. Love it!

 

And here’s a peek inside. I bought the hanging organizer and matching drawers at IKEA and they work perfectly in there for flip-flops, shoe shining stuff, mittens, umbrellas etc. And yes, those are three pairs of Stan Smiths. And they’re all mine.

 

This shot really accentuates the not so lovely floor. I so need to start the floor painting and stencil project soon. VERY soon.

 

Since I went for all white after all I decided to spruce my locker up with a tiny bit of color after finishing the paint job. There’s tassel mania over here in Sweden right now so inspired by that I made my own which matches the pale blue locker that’s in another corner of the hall.

Now my locker is both pretty and practical. And those extra coats of paint actually prevent the locker from rattling as much as before. Two flies with one stone!

Three Things for the Hall

So I’ve made three decisions for the entrance hall. After painting everything white it got a little too stark in this corner (even for me). I think it’s the fact that there are no architectural features in this extended area of the house that make all the white look boring and bland.

Here’s what I plan to do to rectify that:

1) I’m building a radiator cover. I’m thinking a white frame with rattan insert. I plan to make it easy to open so I can still hang wet mittens etc. off the radiator. Oh, for those of you who are worried about that, these radiators don’t get scorching hot so there’s no fire hazard involved. I’m also switching out the temporary shelf when building the rest. Something chunkier will take it’s place.

2) I’m going to sew a drapery in front of the door to inject some pattern. I’ll be getting more of my favorite fabric ever, the green elephants by Estrid Ericsson for Svenskt Tenn. If the door were to get draughty in winter it will also help keep the cold at bay.

3) I think I’ve made a decision on the floor stencil. I was offered a free stencil from Royal Design Studio after writing that post on floor stencils which is super nice of them but I think I’ll try my hands on making one myself after all. I don’t know if you can tell from the photo but I’m going for a hexagon pattern. Probably white on grey. Now it’s just a matter of logistics. How to keep two nosy kitties off the floor for several days. I think I need to get one of these since I don’t have a door to the hall from the first floor. I will also need to close off the sides of the stairs so the four leggers don’t get down there that way…

I'm really excited. This corner has been bugging me and now that I know what to do about it I feel happy!