Canadutch » Home Renovation

Kitchen Idiot

Breigh — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 07:48:53 +0000

Remember a while back when we renovated our Kitchen? One of my favorite things was my new oven. It’s an Atag and we payed a somewhat ridiculous amount extra so that we could have one that opens sideways rather than downwards. I’m short and in order to have our oven above the fridge it was essential that I would be able to reach inside. Yes, that is our itty bitty euro fridge beneath the oven, but that’s an entirely different story.

Who needs Vanna White when you have Xander ‘Showman Hands’ Soldaat in the house.

Anyhow, the kitchen renovation took place back in 2007 and one thing has been bothering me the entire time. The oven was crooked! Whenever I would try to bake a cake, the back side would be higher. When I’d make something with sauce, one side would have loads while the other side dried out… it made me crazy! I spoke to the people who installed it and they insisted it was installed properly. Yet one lopsided meal after another, I was convinced that they had done something wrong and were lying to me. Those bastards.

This morning I am making my very first baked cheesecake. A delicious looking Turtle Cheesecake that makes me drool just looking at it. It’s my friend Penny’s birthday this weekend and she is having some close friends and family over for a Fuck The Diet Let’s Eat Cake party! Ok I think she may have worded it a bit differently but that’s what I got out of it. We are having a no Weight Watchers, eat some sweets and don’t feel guilty evening, which I thought was a good opportunity to try to make my first cheesecake.

Getting back to the kitchen… I was worried that because of my lopsided oven, that I’d end up with a lopsided cheesecake and I was growing frustrated before I even started making it. Xander got out his level and checked the wire shelves, and sure enough they were tilted down towards the back. I knew it! Those sneaky bastards ruined my kitchen and got away with it! I was already planning the phone call in my head…

In the meantime, I was thinking on how I could remedy this so I could get my cheesecake made today, perhaps putting some tinfoil in the back to rest the back edge of the pan on when it hit me…

What happens if we put the shelf in the other way around, upside down?

We took the shelf out and turned it over and I thought OH hey, look! That little rail on the edge would be handy to stop stuff from slipping off!

Xander slid the shelf in upside down and as he was doing so he mentioned that the tilt of the rail going in seemed to work better than it did before. There was a curve in the metal that appeared to make it less easy to pull the shelf all the way out.

Then out came the level.

He exclaimed, “HEY! Whattaya know! It’s perfectly level!”

After I picked my jaw up off the floor I swore a little, laughed a little and then smacked my forehead in disbelief.

Yes, that’s right. The last three years of torment and all those lopsided, uneven and tilted meals were my own doing, because I put the shelves in upside down… and it took me THREE FREAKIN’ YEARS to figure it out. THREE YEARS!

I’ve always said that I’m no whiz in the kitchen, and was disappointed when I realized the kitchen didn’t come complete with cooking skills after managing to ruin cookies that didn’t even require baking… but this literally TAKES THE CAKE. Sometimes even I am amazed by my own stupidity.

Now, I am off to make a cheesecake, which is something that excites and frightens me at the same time. There are any number of things I can possibly do to ruin it… over cooking, under cooking, forgetting ingredients, not using that weird pan properly or maybe even dropping it… but at least I know it won’t be lopsided!

She Loves Me Too!!

Breigh — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 07:28:03 +0000

Yesterday Michelle over at Laundromat gave me this best blogger award. YAY, I FEEL LOVED!! I must say I was surprised and totally stoked to get it, as the whole little blog awards thing always seem to pass me by. Over the past few weeks there’s been one going through all the expats here like a brush fire and I kept thinking someone pick me!!! … but nobody did. Yeah that’s me whining, and I’m talking about you!! Yeah you, expat person reading this who doesn’t love me and didn’t give me the award when they got it! I’m just yanking your chains. I don’t mind. It’s only absolute and utter rejection… I’m fine… REALLY!

Honestly, no worries, I’m just messin’ with ya… not really.

Seriously though, Michelle had some really nice things to say about my blog, which felt great. I have had a few periods where I totally neglected this place because I wasn’t sure what to do with it anymore. It was made to be a place for me to complain and rant about how difficult my life was here when I had no friends to talk to, but when life started to not be so bad I wasn’t sure what to write about anymore.

DUH, write about the good stuff, dumbass! That’s what your thinking, right? I’ve never claimed to be the sharpest knife in the drawer, ya know!

That’s what I’ve decided to do. I’m sure there will still be frustrating moments and believe me I’ll share the shit out of them, but I also want to share the fun things I am doing now, the new things I learn and the people I meet. I know my blog has come in handy for a lot of people who are struggling here, if for not other reason than to make them feel like they aren’t crazy for finding it difficult or to know someone understands. Hopefully they still can find a connection even though things aren’t so bad. Maybe to show them that it does get better.

I’ve also decided to start writing more about non-expat stuff that I love… photography, crafts, TV shows, movies, new cooking adventures. Whatever strikes my fancy really.

Anyhow, I’m happy to be writing here again, even though it’s not constant complaining anymore it’s still therapeutic and I enjoy the connections it helps me make with other people going through the same, or even different, life experiences as me.

Thank you Michelle, I really appreciate your kind words and that you thought of me for the award!

Now, who shall I pass it on to? I’m going to go by who’s blog I make a point of looking for every time I go to my feed reader. Someone who’s blog I enjoy, that I feel I can connect with either by what is going on in our lives, what we enjoy or just because their writing style makes their blog enjoyable for me. When I tried to think of who that person is, I knew right away because her blog was the one I had checked first for updates just this morning.

Sure enough there was one and it showed we had even more in common, our blood type!

Yes, it’s Megan from Crafty Intentions!!

I first found her when I was thinking about doing my spare room over into a craft room and saw photos of her craft room. Oh … my … god. Craft room of my dreams! I swear if I ever get a house big enough to have my own craft room, I’m saving up and flying this girl over to help me set it up.

After stalking her on Flickr for a while I discovered her blog, which I have read faithfully and loved ever since. She is brutally honest about her quirks, which I love… and she’s crafty as all get out. I’m constantly looking at things she’s made and wishing I had an ounce of her creativity.

Like her FRAMED set for example. Ok these are things I could make myself having already seen her do it, but I never would have thought of it myself. That’s what I mean, I see these lovely framed craftworks and totally want to make them too, but would I have ever come up with the idea on my own? Not a chance!

One of my favorite things is when she shares her home renovations with us. Seriously, I want to live in her house. I love the bold color choices she uses and how she accessorizes in just the right way. I did our house in neutral tones because we plan to sell it but when we get our ‘forever home’, look out!! I’m totally copycatting Megan. Sorry Megan! You can just consider our new house your Euro House! You’ll be welcome to stay anytime, especially if you want to teach me crafts for room and board.

Honestly, here are just a few examples of her renovations so far.

Look at her romantic bedroom makeover. It’s a long one but worth the read. Books organized by COLOR, COLOR PEOPLE!! I’d have done by author or genre, but who sees that when they enter a room. What a cute idea. Oh, and it’s gadget friendly, and you know how much I love gadgets. I need me one of those docking stations.

This is still my favorite though…her dining room renovation *faint* I want. Plain and simple. Clearly I’m not the only one who loves her though, she got an award in that post too! Yes, that is me swooning in the comments. Leave me alone, I think I have a girl crush.

Oh, and check out what she did to her living room. I absolutely love it. I love the green, I’m crazy about the Christmas deco, but we all knew I would be, being the Christmas freak that I am. I also love her bold choices with lighting. That’s one area where I am always lost. We still have all the same ceiling lights in our house because lighting is one thing I cannot figure out. I don’t know what would look good here.

Besides the whole crafty and awesome decorator thing, she’s also a big time animal lover. Like me, she wants to take home every animal she sees. Sometimes she does! She, like me, obsesses about what animals to get, how to best care for them, and how to make sure everything is just right. I love following her through her saga with adopting a dog and all the craziness he’s brought into their lives. She is one of the most responsible and thoughtful pet owners I know, and that goes a long way with me because I’m a huge animal lover too.

Her biggest saga has just begun though, as she’s recently found out that she is pregnant. I can only assume that this will bring about a whole new range of posts, as well as a whole lot of crafts for baby. I’m looking forward to that!

Anyhow, she gets my best blogger vote this time, wholeheartedly. Thanks Megan, for keeping us all entertained, making us laugh and inspiring us with your creativity!

Bedroom Reno Part 6 – Completed: Before and After

Breigh — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 03:47:09 +0000

Well the bedroom is almost done and other than a few finishing touches (like door handles!), we are finished, whew!

Here are some before and after shots to compare.

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

Before (the shelves weren’t always that messy, I was changing the room around when I took this pic and just threw everything on there to getit out of the way):

After:

There you have it, our new super comfy and cozy bedroom!

We ended up getting a few more things than we had anticipated, like a new mattress (which was desperately needed), but that happens in every renovation project I think.

Xander is afraid, because his ‘man cave’ (the spare room, which he uses as an office / play room) is next!

Bedroom Reno Part 5 – In Our Bedroom Again!

Breigh — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 19:40:36 +0000

Well we are back in our bedroom again! It’s all sort of make-shift at the moment but that’s how it goes when you are renovating.

I took this photo last night before crawling into bed. As you can see we have our bed together finally, and a nice big new mattress on top. We had to get a new mattress because the new bed is harder than our old one and made us realize just how crap our old mattress was.

The only problem is we went to a full support mattress from a NO support mattress, so I kinda feel like I’m sleeping on top of a brick. Hopefully I will get used to it in time, but either way it’s nice to not feel the springs anymore.

One down side, the new mattress is thicker so none of our old sheets fit. I just happened to have this sheet tucked away in a cupboard still in the package. It’s an Ikea sheet so I guess it makes sense that it fits an Ikea mattress. Clever of them to make it that way though, their own sized mattresses so you kind of have to buy their sheets.

Now I just have to get some that actually match the decor. For now I’ll just deal with it.

Today we spent the day clearing out our storage room because ‘grofvuil’ is coming tomorrow. That’s the big garbage guys that you have to make a special appointment with. It’s pretty cool though and saves you having to go to the dump. You just find out what day they can come and haul all your old junk out to the curb. We managed to clear a lot out, which is great, but it was really tiring. That was just getting it outside of our storage room… tomorrow we have to haul it up the stairs from the basement and get it outside. Ugh!

Thankfully, we managed to pawn a lot of the stuff off on our new upstairs neighbours. Yeah, I forgot to mention we have new people living upstairs! The asshole neighbour’s flat has been occupied now for the last few months by a couple of mysterious Mongolians. They don’t speak English or Dutch so communication can be difficult, but we manage. We noticed them carrying one of our old mattresses in the last time we threw out a load of stuff, which clued us in that they probably don’t have a lot at the moment. Today we told them we were going to throw out more stuff tomorrow so they went through it all and took a lot of it, including our old decrepit mattress. Tomorrow we are disassembling a cabinet from our spare bedroom and are bringing it up to them.

Hopefully tomorrow after we take out all our garbage we will still feel like mounting our new headboard. Then I can stop using an Albert Heijn crate as a bedside table.

Oh yeah, and yes I do sleep with a teddy and I am not ashamed! I know you saw it in the photo and wondered. His name is Turk Turkleton and I love him. Thankyouverymuch.

Bedroom Reno Part 4 – Blood, Sweat and Curtains

Breigh — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 19:37:07 +0000

When I say that our blood, sweat and tears have gone into our new bedroom, I’m not jokin’. At the moment I have a finger and a heel bandaged due to renovation related accidents. Xander has injured three of his fingers.

No good renovation goes without a few casualties, and if I have to give up the use of a finger for a few days, so be it!

The show must go on!

Yesterday we put up our new curtains. We cut them a tiny bit too long so I’ll be hemming them at some point. They aren’t that bad that it requires urgent attention though. We also need to get another set to put up with them as they don’t cover the window properly with just the one set. Otherwise, I love how they fit in with the room.

When we bought our curtains, we also bought our new bedroom furniture. It arrived today and we have started putting it together. It arrived later in the afternoon and when dinner time rolled around we decided we’d finish it tomorrow.

This is my favorite part… when it starts actually looking like a bedroom!

Bedroom Reno Part 3 – We Have a Floor!

Breigh — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 19:48:21 +0000

I finally finished painting the bedroom the other day. God what a task. As I mentioned in my previous post about it the texture of the wall made painting it an absolute hell.

It’s done though! The walls are finished and the molding has been painted and put up at the edge of the ceiling.

Now that it’s all finished I’m happy with it and glad I did it. Even if I did bitch loads in the process. I really like the molding, partially because I think it finishes things off well, but also because it hides any mistakes made at the top of the wall!

Today was floors day. We had initially planned on having our usual DIY guy come in and do them but he flaked out on us so after some convincing I agreed to give it a go ourselves.

I’m so glad we did! It wasn’t nearly as hard as I thought it was and I think they have come out really well!

Tomorrow we need to put the edging around by the baseboards and then the floor will be done. I’m so so so happy with it!

When Xander first mentioned to me that we should do it, that got a big HELL no… mostly due to our lack of experience with it. He did a great job though! I played assistant running back and forth, handing him boards, coffee, water, sandwiches and standing on boards when he didn’t want them to move.

Not long now before we’ll actually be able to sleep in it!

Three Musketeers

Breigh — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 08:40:27 +0000

Did you ever get the feeling you are being watched?

Can you tell it’s dinner time? I was getting the stare down by the three of them wondering when they were getting fed. Xander doesn’t usually do it but I think he figured if it works for the dogs…

Pixel turned five months old today. She’s growing like a weed, even though it’s hard to tell because she’s still tiny. She’s also coming along nicely with her housebreaking. She’s down to five walks a day (when we get up, after her breakfast, lunch time peepoo, after her dinner, bedtime peepoo), which isn’t so bad considering a few weeks ago we had to take her out pretty much every two hours.

She’s either getting really good at holding it, or really good at HIDING it. I am a bit worried that once we clear all our bedroom furniture out of the living room, that we are going to find cleverly hidden pee spots. I’m hoping not though.

She’s ridiculously cuddly and will lay on you every chance she gets. When she’s asleep, she’s dead to the world and often ends up in crazy positions… like this one. She is taking full advantage of the living room camp-out, getting lots of cuddling in while she is able to get up on the bed.

Bailey loves it too and has taken to burrowing into our pile of pillows and making nests for himself. Either that or he’s hiding from Pixel so he can have a rest after the playing… he’s not a puppy anymore!

Bedroom Reno Part 2 – Plans and Painting Progress

Breigh — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 20:16:01 +0000

The bedroom was completely cleared out and washed down. Xander was a HUGE help with this part as he doesn’t really do painting.

On Sunday my friend Penny came over to help give me a head start on the painting, which was great. For the past 3 days I’ve been in and out of the bedroom painting. I have until the beginning of next week to have it ready for our floor to go in.

This is a collage I made of what I have planned for the bedroom. In the lower right hand corner is a photo I found of a bedroom I liked. I was searching Flickr looking for inspiration because I was torn about whether I wanted to go bright and colorful or warm and cozy.

Warm and cozy won.

The paint colors I swiped from the company’s website and doesn’t look exactly like the paint itself, but that’s good because I was a bit worried that the brown wasn’t going to be dark enough.

The curtains I am getting for absolute certain, as well as the bed and headboard. I saw the curtains at Ikea one day I was there and fell in love with them. I think I have a thing for leafy curtains… The bed and headboard (Mandal from Ikea) are all about space saving. If I was going for looks, there are other beds I would have chosen, but our bedroom is small. We need as much storage space as we can get and the four large drawers in the bottom of the bed will be much better than the empty space and dust bunnies we have had there in the past.

The headboard is also good as it gives us a place to put things we need (lamps, clocks, earplugs, books) but has no drawers and doesn’t leave us a ton of space to collect junk.

All of the decorative items in the collage are just ideas. The black cupboard is a ‘definitely later when we have money for it’ thing.

Anyhow, on with the painting…

Here are some progress pictures.

Day 1 – Painting With Penny

The chocolate or aardbruin color came out nice and dark, the way I’d hoped. Our walls are a total pain in the ass though as they have a really deep texture that even the most fluffy of rollers can’t compete with. So, it all has to be done with a brush. Not just that but you have to put a ton of paint on the brush and scrub at it to get it into the deeper grooves and pits. It makes each wall take about 10x longer to do than if I was able to use a roller.

We also got rid of the ungodly pink trim. THANK GOD!! There is not much of it left in our house now.

So that’s basically what we got done on the first day. We got a first coat of lily white on all of the trim and rolled the door (which was also pink on the backside still ugh!)… got part of the chocolate wall done and then called it quits.

Day 2 – More Chocolate

Yesterday I finished the brown wall and put a second coat of paint on the balcony door and trim around the window. I also did a first attempt at touching up the baseboard as I completely smattered it with brown paint!

In the evening we went out and looked at flooring and decided on grijs eiken (grey oak) wooden floors. I wanted something dark-ish and grainy… this seems to fit the bill! The floor will go in on Monday or Tuesday, whenever our faithful handy man is able to come over and give us a hand.

Day 3 (today) – Garen Walls

Today I put a final coat on the white trim and painted the opposite wall to the brown one garen, which when translated means thread. I guess it’s mean to be a sort of linen color.

I ran out of paint at the end of the afternoon, so there is still a white spot. Hopefully the new batch of paint will match properly… if it doesn’t, I’ll just give myself a hernia and find a way to move on. Strangely, the lighter wall was no less of a pain in the ass to paint. If anything it was more difficult because I couldn’t see the grooves that didn’t get painted properly until the paint dried and darkened a little bit. Pain in the ass.

It’s all coming along though. Over the next few days I will be finishing the painting so the floor can go in, and then it’s just a matter of getting the furniture in there and putting everything back together again.

Bedroom Reno Part 1 – Camping Out!

Breigh — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 21:19:01 +0000

The time has come to tackle our bedroom and get it up to date with the rest of our house. It has been a long time coming! We’ve been living in this flat for about 8 years and we’ve not done a single thing to it since we moved in. When we bought the flat (we rented for about the first 5 years), we had to put things in order of priority and the bedroom came 2nd to last, just before the spare bedroom.

This weekend we cleared out the bedroom to clean it and get it ready to paint. That meant finding a place for the bed and everything else.

So we are camping out in our living room! It’s so cozy!

Each night we crawl into bed and watch some TV and I know we are both wishing we could just keep our house like this forever. A bed in the middle of the living room that we can lounge on whenever we want. We chatted about it and laughed as we came up with ideas about how we could turn this room into our living/bedroom and make our bedroom one big hobby room. Visions of this unbelievable craft room danced in my head… aaah someday!

The kids are enjoying it as well. Even more than Xander and I, I think!

All day they jump and play and lounge around on the bed. Each taking their separate corners when nap time rolls around. They live like kings!! … oh err, and one little princess.

Am I the only one who finds it a little funny that the cat is the biggest one of them all? Fat bastard.

Anyhow, the painting has begun and I will be around with photos soon… but for now I’m going to crawl into bed and fall asleep in front of our new TV.

Goedenavond!

Bathroom Reno Part 2 – Toilet

Breigh — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 08:26:22 +0000

The second part to the great bathroom renovation was our little toilet closet. Quite the norm by European standards but it freaked me out for the first while I was here. It literally is a closet just big enough for me and my toilet.

The weirdest thing for me in the beginning was the toilet shelf. If you’ve never been to this part of Europe you probably would have never experienced it, and that’s not a bad thing. I never did take any photos of our old toilet, probably because I was embarrassed and disgusted by it. I didn’t want anyone to know I had a toilet with an observation deck.

Here are some photos I pulled off the net to show you what I mean.

Here, you see? A shelf. I really wasn’t kidding.

You don’t notice anything really abnormal about it until your first poo, then it hits you. That’s the moment when you get the full impact of the toilet observation shelf.

Your poo is sitting there in a pile, ripe and ready for your inspection. For me, this wasn’t really necessary… but I guess there are circumstances where it comes in handy. For example, if you were a drug smuggler or if you have a child who is in the habit of eating things he shouldn’t and one day he gets his hands on your wedding rings. I prefer to think that these are the things the Dutch had in mind when they brought these toilets into play. Not that they just enjoy being able to inspect their feces regularly.

The above photo shows you the difference between a normal toilet and the observation shelf toilet. Apparently they have them in Germany too because I know the word Flachspueler isn’t Dutch, at least I don’t think it is.

In any case, you get what I’m saying.

The Dutch are very good about giving you handy tips about the toilet shelf though. When I first arrived here and commented about the odd toilets, one cloggy was kind enough to tell me that if you put toilet paper on the shelf before having a poo, it flushes away easier. Good to know!

So, in renovating our toilet room… the toilet observation shelf was the first to go! My poo was to be hidden in a pool of murky toilet water an paper where it belonged.

I didn’t take a ‘before’ photo of our toilet but I did remember to start snapping photos part way through. Probably due to the excitement that the old toilet was gone.

At this point the toilet was out and we had ripped out the ugly yellow tiles (the same as the ones that were in the shower). We had also started building the wooden frame to build in the pipes.

Oh yeah that’s another thing I forgot to mention. Here the pipes are all outside the wall, again – probably practical. Still though, it’s BUTT UGLY. So in both the shower and the toilet we had them put into the wall.

Some plastering, new tiles, new walls and a NEW NO-SHELF TOILET later, this is the final result.

That shelf now has a basket of toilet paper and a few reading materials sitting on it, but otherwise it all looks mostly the same. There’s not much more I can really say about it, I mean it’s a toilet. I guess it’s a much more pleasant place to poo now… especially now that I don’t have to look at it!