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Weekend haul

What a weekend we’ve had! About 6 hours of walking on Saturday, divided between the Albert Cuypmarkt and the Overtoom, a long, busy avenue in the west of the city that runs parallel to the Vondelpark. Then even more walking on Sunday—this time to Ikea for a few things for the guest bedroom, the last frontier of mess in this house. 
It’s Monday afternoon already and I still feel exhausted. I remember that after our lemonade Saturday spent exploring the city, Marlon said: “It’s like we’re on vacation every weekend.” True… because I only seem to get this tired on vacation! But it’s a good kind of tired, one that comes from hurling yourself into a new home and a new life. I’m not complaining. 
On long, busy weekends like this you tend to pick up a few things along the way. Please agree with me! I can’t be the only shopaholic around here. Some of my favorite finds from the weekend:

A brand spankin’ new leather jacket! Since the sun has been coming out more these days, I’ve been hankering to put my heavy wool coat away and switch to something lighter. I was in love with this blush-colored leather jacket on Net-a-porter, but after shopping around a bit, I realized I could get four leather jackets for the price of this one!

 On Saturday morning I stepped into the leather shop at Albert Cuypmarkt and found this soft tan beauty, which not only looked great and fit perfectly, but was reasonably priced as well. I ditched my wool coat at home and changed into it for our afternoon outing at the Overtoom (more on that later). I love it!

Also from Albert Cuypmarkt, I found gray linen lampshades to replace the white lampshades we use in the living room. The lamps are actually ex-hotel lamps, and used to be in our bedroom. The white lampshades had started to look really grotty and we almost left the lamps in Singapore! It’s a good thing we didn’t; I guess all they needed were some new shades.

From a dirt-cheap thrift shop on the Overtoom, two huge old woven sacks that were once mailbags from Hungary. How random is that? I love that I can find stuff like that here! I still have to figure out what to do with them though: maybe new covers for the big pillows on the daybed, or even upholstery for a chair. 

Pantone box from Friday Next along the Overtoom, for my many files and papers. They had other colors in stock, but I liked this Honeysuckle one.

From Ikea, a small lamp with a clear glass base for the hallway. Marlon actually hated it… until we put it on top of the hallway cabinet and switched the light on. “I was wrong, you were right, it looks great,” he admitted. Ah, victory. Maybe that was the best part of the weekend right there.

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Posted on March 21, 2011
Category: Life in Amsterdam, Personal Style · Labels: , , ,

Lock ‘em up

Marriage is about compromise. Some people seem to think this is a dirty and miserable word that hammers the final nail into the coffin of all fun and individuality (in which the first nail was, duh, marriage). Uh, no. It’s not so bad, y’all. Sometimes it’s even effortless, when two seemingly unrelated desires collide in a happy accident. And when that happens while shopping… well, that must be what they call wedded bliss.
What Marlon wanted (has always wanted): a vintage trunk or chest. Something heavy and old, with a lock. Preferably made of metal. Every time we come across one, he strokes it and says, “I’ve always wanted one of these.” Since he rarely hankers for vintage things (that’s my domain), I did consider every trunk and chest we found in our furniture forages… but none of them seemed to work for our house.
What I wanted: to never let our DVDs and CDs see the light of day. Aren’t piles of DVDs and CDs actually quite ugly? I mean, unless you have a theaterrific collection or a thousand-dollar designer shelf that makes them look like an art installation, I think these soon-to-be-relics are best hidden from view. 
Compromise found!

… In the form of these two vintage lockboxes from Raw Materials on Rozengracht. Marlon was really bowled over by these.

And as for me… did you think I really needed to be convinced? An invisibility cloak for the DVDs that’s turquoise, vintage and industrial? Hell yeah.

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Posted on March 19, 2011
Category: House & Spouse, Life in Amsterdam, Shopping & Finds · Labels: , , ,

Deck the hall

… with Indian fabric, falalala lala lala!
Marlon has the habit of coming home and emptying his pockets of coins, keys and wadded-up receipts… and they end up everywhere. And I mean everywhere. Back in our Singapore condo, I’d come across coins in the bathroom, in the closet, on the kitchen counter, floor, nightstand, bookshelf, coffee tables, dining table, you name it. I went ballistic each time I found a coin. I tried putting a specially designated canister in different locations to catch them, observing where he was most likely to empty his pockets, asking him where it was most convenient for him, to no avail. 
And so I became determined to win the war against the coins and install a catch-all solution in our new home. It came in the form of a many-drawered vintage steel cabinet, from my vintage/industrial mecca Spoor 38. The cabinet had a lovely patina (a.k.a. rust), but when we moved it into the hallway it looked lost and bare. 
Then I remembered I bought some pretty paisley fabric during our honeymoon in Rajasthan. (In case you didn’t know, I’m the biggest sucker for anything with a paisley print.) It had been sitting, unused, folded quietly in a box for the last three years, waiting for its moment.

When I told my mom about this, by the way, she cackled with a triumph that was at least 24 years in the making. “See? See? Now you understand!” she cried with glee. She used to shop for fabric all the time when I was a kid, and I hated it. With a passion. Even my biggest displays of brattiness and my constant whining accusations of “You don’t even use them!” could never dissuade her from this habit. And I agreed that, yes, now I understood. (Don’t you just get the feeling sometimes that we are all turning into our mothers?)

Anyway, with several pieces of wood molding from the hardware store, some gold paint, a few nails, generous amounts of wood putty, and my trusty staple gun, Marlon and I made a “framed wallpaper” backdrop for the steel cabinet in the hallway.

And like my dining chairs and their DIY cushions, the print picks up the little bits of rust and wear on the cabinet while complementing the metal in a way that I really like. 
Those pesky coins? They end up in the drawers now, so I guess we can consider this battle won. With style. And paisley. 

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Posted on March 15, 2011
Category: Creative Projects, House & Spouse · Labels: , , ,

Blooming

We’ve had a warm streak the last few days (ranging from 10-15℃), and outside, flowers that were closed just last week have started to bloom!
I’ve finally bought vases, so even indoors, everything is in bloom as well. Fresh flowers here are shockingly cheap and thus we have flowers everywhere! In the living room, atop the crates…
On the dining table…
In the front hallway…
And on the windowsill!
Flowers are also a sign that the house has officially left the territory of mess, and crossed over into the land of the livable. I didn’t feel I ought to buy flowers for the house when it was still covered with boxes, books were piled on the floor gathering dust, and we couldn’t sit on anything. Now, it looks good enough to deserve a treat (or two, or three).
Marlon, always the sweetheart, says I should never buy flowers myself, because it’s his job to buy flowers for me :)

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Posted on March 15, 2011
Category: Life in Amsterdam · Labels: , ,

Chairs from here & there

The first time I saw mismatched dining chairs was when Italianni’s opened in Greenbelt in 1996. Before that, all I had ever seen were meticulously coordinated formal dining sets. It rocked my world, and my 15 year-old self vowed to have mismatched dining chairs one day. 
Italianni’s as a design influence sounds funny and a little bit horrific now that I think about it, but it’s true. And it’s also funny that I can now say a dream has come true, since we’ve amassed an eclectic little collection of dining chairs over the last month. 
The first two dining chairs we bought were a pair of vintage metal Tolix chairs from vintage/industrial warehouse Spoor 38. I had made up my mind to get vintage bistro chairs like these, but we could only afford the one pair, and they weren’t in the best condition with large exposed screws and seat-less, thoroughly rusted bottoms. 
So last week’s DIY project was new seats for the Tolix chairs. I traced the seat shapes onto some plywood and got Marlon to cut them out with a saw. Then I staple-gunned them with foam padding from Albert Cuypmarkt and floral-print upholstery fabric from Westermarkt. I was pretty happy with the results.

I like how the orange in the print picks up the little bits of rust and wear in each chair. 
Then last Friday, Marlon called me on his way home from work. “There are people throwing away chairs on the sidewalk… and some of them are kind of nice,” he said. “Wanna come over and help me choose?” I was over there faster than you could say may pera sa basura!
My wonderful husband not only picked out a couple of nice chairs in decent condition, but he actually sat on them to prevent other sidewalk vultures from getting them. Plus, he dug up a plastic bag with five rolls of unused Laura Ashley lining papers and wallpapers. He knows me, this man!
One of the people rummaging through the chairs with us remarked, “If our mothers could only see us now!” I think my mother wouldn’t mind. I hope. 
One of our finds was this wood and steel chair. It’s surprisingly comfortable. 
It was probably some kind of old-school office chair. I’m thinking of painting the metal white…

… to go with this cafe chair. I used to see these in very old kopitiams in Singapore. 
Well, it’s not a dining chair, but I just had to have it! This cute little wooden chair will soon be reborn in  a fresh new color, maybe a bright purple or sunny yellow. 
The two “found” chairs are by no means permanent, and will likely get rotated to other parts of the house in the future. But for now, they allow us to finally put the dining room to use and take our time to find and save up for better chairs. And they’ve helped me fulfill my Italianni’s dream! Tee hee!

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Posted on March 13, 2011
Category: House & Spouse, Life in Amsterdam, Shopping & Finds · Labels: , , ,

Skeletor

After having the hardest time selling our Ikea Expedit bookcase (see related cheapskate woes), Marlon and I vowed to move on from Ikea and give our beloved books storage they truly deserved. The number of books we now own have nearly doubled since we first moved into Singapore, and this time I was on the lookout for something that would be for keeps. 
I’ve realized that I’ve outgrown my Indian/ethnic phase and moved into a rustic/industrial phase, or today’s more kick-ass, far less chintzy version of shabby chic. So some form of industrial shelving was on my mind, inspired by relaxed, modern images like this.
Eep, I can’t remember where I pulled this from. 
I found a gorgeous version from Anthropologie online. But it was too bank-breaking to be even considered. Besides, they don’t ship these outside of the US or UK.

Marlon and I spent a good part of an afternoon trekking to De Troubadour in Amstelveen, where we found this. But at nearly €1,000 for the size our books required, it was just way, way over budget.
After a few weeks of obsessively searching online, I was thisclose to taking up Marlon on his offer to build it himself from steel ladders and a few planks of wood. But then I came across Roeg Holt, a website featuring some thoroughly kick-ass furniture made from recycled wood. A lot of the pieces were too chunky for my taste, but there was this. 
I emailed the designer to find out about having this made to our specifications. My first email to him started off “Dear Roeg…” thinking that Roeg Holt was a person’s name. When he answered, hindi pala Roeg ang pangalan niya. Oops! The designer, Gert Valkema, agreed to build a custom 2.1m x 2m shelf for less than €650, including delivery from Groningen, where he lives. Winner!
When he issued me an invoice, I had to laugh out loud. The bookshelf is called Skeletor! This is obviously a designer with a sense of humor.
Gert drove two hours from Groningen last Monday with Skeletor. I welcomed him with tea and some biscuits and we had a nice chat while he assembled the steel frames and wooden planks in our dining room.

The planks are recycled industrial scaffolding, so you know they’re sturdy.
Skeletor after assembly, waiting to gain control over all Eternia hold all our books.
Finally, after over a month, the books are off the floor! I was forced to give up my idea to intersperse them with little knickknacks. Stacking them made me realize how many books we actually have. And so many are still unread!
Marlon was not a fan of my color-coding scheme back in Singapore, but now he agrees with it as it just makes this whole mass of books look better and neater. He gets one shelf for his comics and business books (and for Spiderman, who is on his knees in agony after the death of Mary Jane), and I get one shelf for my notebooks, work files, and writing and creativity books. 
Since Rogue used to knock books out of our bookshelf all the time, we decided to stack the books in vertical piles to make them more Rogue-proof. Rogue also did an inaugural climb of Skeletor all the way to the top shelf yesterday (don’t ask me how) and made it safely back down. I guess that means they’re friends now!

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Posted on March 13, 2011
Category: House & Spouse · Labels: , ,

A dove’s tale

Last weekend, Marlon and I achieved another DIY milestone: painting the living room. This time around, we chose a totally different feel from the bedroom and went for Dove Tale from Farrow & Ball, a lilac-tinged dove gray. 
This time, it went a whole lot faster and smoother. Having lots more space to move around in made a huge difference. We were able to be more systematic and orderly about placing our “drop cloths”, which were reused cardboard boxes from Ikea and from our moving in, plus bubble wrap from a couple of furniture deliveries. Marlon had wanted to buy proper drop cloths from Gamma, but when he saw that one was €27, it was easy to sway him to adopt the cheaper more eco-friendly alternative.  

Goodbye boring white walls!

After priming the walls on Saturday morning, we let the primer dry overnight. With Farrow & Ball, primer pa lang, maganda na! That could be the seed of a winning campaign if they ever decide to venture into the Philippine market. 
Excuse the dining room mess. We had to dump everything somewhere.
We finished both coats in a record 5.5 hours, with an hour’s lunch break. We had to work a lot faster because streak marks are more obvious with a lighter color. Also, instead of painting the corners first as we did with the bedroom, we painted them last, which turned out to be a wise decision. The paint dried smooth and a lot more even this time around. “We’re getting better at this, Mrs. Plazo,” said Marlon. 
The night before we painted, I had an anxiety dream that Dove Tale turned out to be a cheap satin bridesmaid kind of lavender that Marlon hated. I still had my doubts while we were diluting the paint, but after the first coat, I decided that I loved it. And by the time we finished the second coat, I was in love… again.

So here’s the living room before, with blah flat white walls:

And after, with Dove Tale. Tadaah! I’ve been obsessing about gray walls for the last few years, so I’m ecstatic to finally have them!
It turned out to be more lilac-tinged in our living room light than the way it looks on the website, which is more brown. I’m envisioning bright yellow accents with touches of purple here and there.
We have quite a few paintings with metallic frames, which I think will work really well against the gray. I’m excited to hang them up.
Marlon thinks it looks yummy. “If we had gone any lighter,” he said, “parang sayang lang yung effort natin mag-paint.” And a few shades darker would have swallowed up the wine crates and daybed. 
So, the living room is well on its way! We’ve still got a lot to do, like hang the paintings, put books and other knickknacks inside the crates, buy an easy chair, replace the big floor pillows and add bright throw pillows to perk up the daybed. And the dining room still looks like a war zone. But for now, I’m patting us on the back and enjoying the lovely lilac hue. 

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Posted on March 10, 2011
Category: Creative Projects, House & Spouse · Labels: , , ,

Wish list

The living room is next on the DIY hitlist (Marlon and I are painting it this weekend), but before we leave the bedroom, there are a few bedroom bits left to share.
This was the main inspiration for the current look of the bedroom. No mood boards or anything, just this image. I can’t remember if it was from the now-defunct Domino magazine or from Design*Sponge. We kept the window moldings white as well; looking at this picture now makes me think of buying faux molding for the ceiling (to cover up our masking tape messes).
The bedroom still needs a few more touches, so I also made a mood board after we painted it. Well, it’s really more of a wishlist. I don’t have Photoshop, so I apologize for the jologs Powerpoint.

Hindi uso ang fluorescent ceiling lights dito. (How do I know? The Dutch love leaving their curtains open, exposing their homes for all to see.) It’s all about beautiful fixtures and soft lighting, coupled with multiple, smaller task lights. I would love to change our boring ceiling light to the Icarus lamp by Tord Boontje for Artecnica, which you see here “hanging” from the ceiling.

Marlon and I both fell in love with it, but he worries that Rogue is going to attack it from the bed. He’s probably right *sigh* My Rogue-safe alternatives are the House of Mayflower’s Sky floor lamp for that industrial look, plus Nicolette Brunklaus’ modern take on the chandelier (first and second from left on my mood board).

Marlon, in a rare show of consumeristic desire, really loves the Block Lamp by Harri Koskonen, on the side table in this mood board.

He rarely goes gaga over little house things like these so I figured we should get it. This is why we kept the bedside tables simple and modern. It seems a little small though (madaling matabunan ng kalat) so I need to see it up close before I decide.

Hmm, I think I am officially obsessed with photo print. Because I am madly in lust with this owl pillow from Mikkili. It is the Puss in Boots of pillows!

Big Eyes + Feathers = Love

I think it would go perfectly with the cobalt blue and white color scheme without being too matchy-matchy. And, it makes me think of Ladyhawke. Yes I know Michelle Pfeiffer turned into a hawk, not an owl, but I can’t help it. Okay, maybe Legend of the Guardians would be a more appropriate reference. The only thing is it’s 60×60 cm, which is rather… huge for a throw pillow. Marlon’s suggestion: “Just put it behind the pillows we use for sleeping.” E di anong point ng owl?! Pfffft. Men.

We leave the kingdom of lust and enter into practical everyday territory, because the bedroom also needs a chest of drawers for Marlon’s stuff. My mood board just shows the Ikea chest that matches our closet, but Marlon gets the skeevies at the thought of any more Ikea in our bedroom. So we’ll probably go for a second-hand equivalent.

And the metal side table you already met in a previous post.

So in about six months, given our current budget for furnishings, the bedroom should look like this. In the meantime, the Eye of Sauron shall turn to the living room. Halflings, beware.

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Posted on March 3, 2011
Category: House & Spouse · Labels: , ,

Zinc inc.

Okay tama na ang lafang, haha. Back to our regular programming.

After searching in vain for a narrow console table for the kitchen that was long and high enough to fit over the radiator, I gave up and decided to go for tall, open metal shelving instead. This was the peg.

Luckily, with enough online sleuthing, I managed to find a reasonably priced equivalent at Gewoon Chic. It’s made of zinc instead of steel and is just €110.

In real life a.k.a. my kitchen… hmm I need to work on my styling skills, haha. But pretty styling aside, it works great as storage for the breakfast appliances (oven toaster, electric kettle and coffee maker), which used to clog up the kitchen counter. That way we now have more counter space for prepping meals. 
The shelf also fits perfectly in the space between the radiator and Rogue’s little corner with her feeding bowl and her litter box. Yes, she sh*ts where she eats, no wonder she’s trying to kill me. 
My other purchase from Gewoon Chic was a pair of side tables for the bedroom, also made of zinc. Marlon and I agreed on something silvery to go with our blue-white-metallic palette, and without closed storage so we don’t end up accumulating useless junk in drawers or behind doors. We are also considering some very… interesting bedside lamps, so the table has to be very simple. This fits the brief for €69.
It’s does the job and keeps the bedroom from tipping over into frou-frou territory. I like the zinc because it’s not too precious, i.e. I don’t have to worry about water stains. I go through at least 3L of water a day and always have a bottle of water and a glass beside the bed.
Now that I practically live in the bedroom, it’s such a relief to have a place for my assorted junk, which would otherwise end up piled on the bed or floor. 

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Posted on March 2, 2011
Category: House & Spouse · Labels: ,

Our cobalt cocoon

A little over two weeks after Marlon and I first moved in, we’ve transformed our bedroom from this…

To this! Behold the fruit of our DIY labor!

I am in love with the color on our walls. Although the paint job is far from professional, the blue to me is completely swoonworthy. Jonel referred to the color, to my mild horror, as Ateneo blue. I joked to Marlon that we should start calling our bedroom The Blue Eagle Wing.

Then I saw that it was the same blue that both Blogger and Facebook use. I’m sure if I really put my mind to it, I can come up with a dozen companies or brands that use this color. But why would I want to do that when I am already so perfectly happy with it?

The bedroom is about 75% done. The floor lamp and bedside table are temporary—the latter was actually bought for the balcony. I already ordered bedside tables from Gewoon Chic, a great Dutch home webstore that I just discovered, which will be delivered today. Then all we need are bedside lamps, plus a chest of drawers for Marlon’s clothes (since I’ve pretty much taken up most of the closet space).
Oh and speaking of closets… check out Marlon’s pride and joy! He is over the moon seeing the results of his assembly job, and so am I.
Having decided on a palette of cobalt blue and white with metallic accents, I made the bed with this white cutwork bedspread from Jaipur, one of the stops on our honeymoon in Rajasthan. It used to be on our daybed in the living room.
We bought half a dozen freaking bedspreads from this one salesman who dazzled us with the whole Bollywood song and dance. He described his wares as “sho shoft, sho fabuloush” sho often that it shtuck—Marlon and I now refer to the bedspreads as fabuloush, as in “We need to wash the fabuloush.” I think we were mired in credit card debt for the better part of a year, but we sure had a blast. And now that we have a home worthy of the fabuloush, they’ve turned out to be some of my most treasured purchases.
At night, with yellow light, the blue loses some of its cobalt zing, but still remains lovely and rich and enveloping.

I thought about repainting my dresser in the same glossy white as the bed, but that would make everything too matchy-matchy. I totally got the matchy-matchy gene from my mother, but I’m doing my best to suppress it. So it will remain a soft matte ivory.

Marlon is as in love with the blue as I am, but says it’s made it harder for him to wake up in the mornings. I have no such problem. In fact, since we moved back into the newly repainted bedroom, I’ve been waking up every morning at 7.30 a.m. to have breakfast with him before he goes off to work. And if you know me, you’ll know how abnormal that is for me. Maybe it’s the effect of having a home that inspires and excites me… a home that I can’t wait to wake up in every day!

6 Comments
Posted on February 25, 2011
Category: Creative Projects, House & Spouse · Labels: , , , ,