AT THE STUDIO

Late night at the studio with a cup of the after the classes.

We are very happy with how the space turned out and also proud that we did it by ourselves (if you don't count building two walls which we had a builder do), stage and all!

Here's how it looked before:

And now:

(Our landlord said he was surprised too see what we managed to do with the space.)

Here in action rehearsing with one of our performing troupes!

The dressing room. We also have another smaller mirrored rehearsal space with storage for our costumes but that space is still just filled with said costumes, suitcases and props everywhere waiting for some law and order...

One thins I still find hard to believe is that we managed to do this without any external funding.  That was never the plan though, but as we did not start a new business - we've been doing all of this on a smaller scale for years - but was going about things the normal way while setting the studio up, and as we stumbled across the space rather quickly (suitably in the same building we have been in for years) we just did not have the time to get any. We had worked hard the years before this that made it possible - now it's time work even harder -and hope- it will continue to be so!

I will confess that the start has been rather slow though. And that is just due to ourselves. Getting our website up and running would be rather (read:very) important (NO it is still not properly up in it's final form, I know!), and doing actual marketing as well, not just running everything trough Facebok as we've done (and done well) the past years, is next on our agenda. After Along with traveling to Berlin to perform next week, doing the once-in-a-lifetime custom ordered show for Sofi Oksanen's release of her new novel Norma and producing the Pin-Up Finland competition. Oh yeah and setting up Spectac-O-Rama for this year! The autumn of stress.

But. Yes. Our studio is in Lauttasaari and we have classes from Monday to Thursday with special courses those weekends we are not away performing! Buy your classes *here*  and schedule+book them **here**! Pilates on Tuesday mornings and Thursday nights, Seasonal Yoga the other way around and burlesque dance classes every night! It is also possible to book the studio for personal practice (daytime, evenings available in the smaller room) or for teaching during the weekends.

THE BROWN ROOM

There is one room downstairs in the farm house, behind the door with the chipped paint, that you have not seen that much of. Well, anything of really. A room that at some point will become a proper study & guest room.

The past year it has been full of left ocrs from the renovation as well as old and nice and old and ugly furniture without a place for their own. Plus Eddi's windsurfing gear and geology stuff an my dead plants I tried to keep alive in there during winter.

We've aimed to fix it up to level one every free weekend this year we'e had but so far no luck...

It will however turn out great when it's  done, eventually. For now it has no electricity and an ugly plastic carpet on the floor which I to start with, before getting it properly done (that'd be level one), intend to cover with lots and lots of rag rugs.


It has the nicest light in the house with windows in two directions and old wallpaper that is both yucky and pretty at the same time.

THE FARMHOUSE KITCHEN

I never really made a proper post about how we finished the renovation in the countryside kitchen,

which we started fixing it up a little over a year ago. Well mainly because there was always something small left to do (and still is)... 

I was used with renovations in flats, - having done a couple before-  that take a few weeks up to a  month max two and didn't really realise that renovating a (old) house takes so much more time... Our kitchen was ready a little before summer, but as we did lots of other things too we finished up some details as late as August. Or, as I've said before, few thing are ever really ready in an old house.

Since the house is from the late twenties we wanted the style to be somewhat that, although still look kind of timeless. And as this is a farm house it could indeed look like a farm house kitchen, full of stuff, but then again I did not want it to be too "countryside romantic", shabby chic or so...

We originally intended to paint the floor with checks in grey and white, but as the hallway also got such a painted floor it would have sen too much (phew! And it saved us a lot of work.)

It's a big kitchen, and we didn't want to fill it with a lot of fixed furniture so that it'd get too "heavy" but stay airy and with a lot of work space. The old one actually had quite little work surfaces. We have a long oak board that we tinted black with natural wax. We had to custom order it to get the right depth and length, and shape, as it sort of includes a little windowsill.

So instead of fixed cupboards underneath the work surface I got carts behind the curtain that can easily be moved around to where the stuff they carry is needed. This is the same kind of cart that I have in our bedroom in the city in mint green; Råskog from ikea. I think many things easily get lost in deep cupboards. But not when you keep it on wheels! Muahahaha.

The curtain also hides our dishwasher. We didn't replace it with a new prettier or integrated one as it was still totally functional. In order for the system to work effortlessly we made our work surface a few cm deeper than standard size, so the curtain hangs far away enough for the dishwasher door to open easily. We also keep the micro wave (which we almost never use, but you never know)  hidden next to the dishwasher.

And I'm super content with the "walk in" storage space. It keeps all the food plus some extra pots and pans. I wanted the shelves quite shallow, so that everything is easily visible and not hidden and forgotten in the back. No outdated cans or jars there!

The trash and recycling buckets are inside a wood crate that we put wheels on. Works well!

Generally Finnish kitchens have lots of closed cupboards - it is after all more practical, I confess, less dust etc- but, apart from one cabinet for plates and glass,  have mainly open shelves.

I wanted the shelves to be kind of "rough", so they are made of floor boards we painted with linseed oil paint.

We had the stove unit built by adding pieces from here and there. The old wood stove is next by; we use it occasionally.

Pretty much everything was custom built in, or ordered for the kitchen. In some cases that can get rather expensive, but then again the solution with less fixed cabinets and pieces also meant less material and thus tured out to be quite economical. And in some cases custom made by a carpenter or handyman isn't necessarily more expensive at all, like with the piece we had made in the kitchen in the city, or here with the stove and shelves, for example.

The cabinets we have are from Juvi, they're all wood and painted with linseed oil paint.


 I made some faux-roman blinds for the windows. I wouldn't really ever close the curtains anyway.

And in usual manner it is full of small hands and cats.

THE FARM HOUSE LIVINGROOM, AS IT IS NOW

As you may recall we spent a great deal of the early summer painting and fixing the int living- and dining room at the farm house. As we did not have a chance to renew the floor we cleaned it up and painted over it. (One of) the problem(s) was always that there were so many different shades of wood in the rooms that did not go well together, but now all frames and boards are in white which calms the rest down.

Here's how it looked back in, hmmm, lets see: 2010, 2011 (did some re-arranging) and up to last year when I bought some new furninture from an antique market:

The whole winter and a great part of the spring it looked like this while we were renovating...


And here's how it looks now!
We're not quite there yet,  but you can do such a big difference with just paint:

As with all the other rooms, one day I will paint the windows their original white too. It's such a big job (and has to be done in summer time) that I just try and close my eyes to the difference now. Will get some curtains to help until then.

Another way of spicing up a room that you can't renew properly is to put in lots of plants. Green it up!

I think it was Eddi's grandfather who made this small violin.


A lighter floor makes such a big difference! Much of the furniture belongs to the house, so we've re-arranged them a bit and tried to make the best of them. All furniture and lighting in the living room are vintage. As noone needs thee big cup boards or cabinets (!) in one room we put some away to be put int he study, once we get that cleaned up.

 (I might have mentioned it before, that we can still put some things away and so on, but the bigger house that Eddi's brother and family lives in has some rooms that are basically not allowed to change;  that has looked the same always. It's quite nice, with old items and such, but it's also not that easy when making a home.)


My Chinese lamp I got from an auction last year now stands on the old Singer sewing machine table that we put in the dining room. Serves as a serving table too.

There's a new set of flowers in my tube collection.

The rather heavy furniture that was in the dining room also feels a little bit lighter now with the lighter frames of the room and the lighter base to stand on, and also with the new fabric I put on the chairs.

And Dag says hello!

THE HALLWAY

 We also fixed up the hallway and staircase in the country house during the renovation. I had thought of it in a yellow color resembling the ones on a well known cookie over here "carnival cookie yellow". (This however is a shade darker or two than that.) We didn't have the possibility to renew the space totally, as in re-build it, but with some wood and paint we did manage to renew it totally anyway.

Here's how it looked before:

 An absolute before picture was hard to come over as I had not exactly been taking pictures of this space, it wasn't precisely worth photographing, and they guys dug into the work so quickly I wasn't around to snap one.

The house had had some renovations done during the 80's when the original staricase had been removed and a then considered airy and more modern solution built instead in varnished wood. The wallpaper was also from those days and it had some defects from moist. The hall was rather unpractical as it had the big freezer standing on the parade spot. This pic is some random shot from 2011 of me and my photo face.

 February 2013. The hall and staircase walls covered in panel.

The handy men that built the kitchen and bathroom did the main work here. This would so not have happened if we'd try to do it ourselves...

 March 2013. The stairs being covered and a closet to keep the fridge built. Or, we had to switch to a smaller fridge as the 300-liter one was just too massive to fit anywhere.

April 2013. Painting time!

As we did not remove and re-build the stairs we didn't tear away the parquet floor underneth it but crossed our fingers and gave it a try at just grinding and painting it -and it turned out better than we'd thought! Eddi painted checks on the floor by hand.

Floor done! We had planned to do this in the kitchen all along after the bathroom renovation was over but then realized it would bee too much with both rooms having a checked floor.  Quite the relief actually when we realized that, hehe, less work.

Here's how it turned out when done!:

The floors are painted with Permo paint for wooden floors and the walls with linseed oil paint.

The furniture are old/vintage.

Back in the old-old days there used to be a window around this spot. I put up a mirror in a window frame instead.

The rest of the rooms downstairs turned out rather different after their painting jos as well but that will be for another time to look at.

THE BATHROOM

The bathroom on the countryside is basically finished, with some minor things lacking. (Well of course, there's always something left to do). I was totally sure I had a picture from before, when this room was basically just a big hole filled with stuff, but I couldn't find it. Eddi had started turning it into a bathroom many years ago already tearing everything out and doing the pre-work for pipes and tubes and such but that was the stage it was in already when we met. Anyway, here's how it turned out:

 

I always wanted ot have room (and enough light) for plants in my bathroom.


As with the winfows in all the other rooms too, we need to take them ot at some point and paint them (white). The sole idea of all that work makes me try and live with the color but one day it will have to happen.

The mirror is the old one I've had in a four different apartements already, made from an old frame I found trashd away a long time ago. It still needs hanging on the wall. (And yes I managed to sneak in my hairdo here ;)

Mommy's little "helper".