I Want My Stuff!

I generally think of myself as not very materialistic, I drive a real old car – if I drive one, now I don’t have a car, just a borrowed bike – designer clothing means nothing to me and I rather improvise with something creative that just hang something big, expensive and ugly on my wall.

Improvising being the operative term here; to be able to improvise one needs to have … something. At home in California I have lots of stuff, a whole garage full of stuff. Cheap stuff: old books from garage sales, torn out ads from magazines, flea market finds, old drawer knobs from architectural salvage places (better than any Gucci store for me – I LOVE architectural salvage places, love, love, love them!), and paint chips from the hardware store. Somewhere there must be a hardware store that went broke because of all the paint chips I took home from there.

My Pantone chips – fresh off the boat from the US – decorate my left hand office wall

So here I want to improvise and be creative but I have – nothing. No old books, only a few door knobs (I brought them from California) and just a few rather uninspiring paint chips. Good thing I brought paint chips, too, the cute square Pantone colored ones. If the thought crosses your mind that only really crazy people bring paint chips from the US to Europe when they move and all the have is five suitcases and six pieces of hand luggage you shall be forgiven. Even I admit that it is a bit crazy and that is even before I confess to having brought wall paper remnants as well. Only a few pieces, but you know what, it was an awesome idea. Since I have nothing to improvise with here and collecting improvisation-worthy material is not a trivial matter and can’t be rushed, really, those paint chips and wall paper remnants have been all I had to work with and I put them to good use – I think.

wall paper remnants imported from California decorate the right hand wall. Mom contributed the heart.

My formerly barren office walls look a little nicer and more colorful without clutter and cheesy prints. I am basically out of materials now, though, a few door and drawer knobs left for the coat hanger in the entry way – and then I might have to earnestly get into collecting more stuff here, if only I had room to store!

Dreams and Reality

My visions of an easier, simpler life back in old Europe are clashing with reality – majorly.  Part of it is due to the fact that we are still setting up and until the last curtain is hung and there are finally some pictures on the wall this place won’t feel like home, part of it that life in old Europe is just not that easy and simple anymore and part that my expectations where probably – I hate to say it – a bit naive at times.

To start with the last point.  I had visions, grand visions to be honest, of my how I would – from scratch and for cheap, with an overabundance of creative ideas and cunning bargain shopping – furnish this place so it would look lovely, modern, eclectic, comfortable and awe-inspiring while simultaneously spending minimal amounts of expensive Euros on lovely, one of a kind flea market finds.

That’s the vision.  Now, in reality there are hardly any flea markets in August and September and the one I found (and visited) featured way too many small porcelain rabbits, crocheted thingamajigs and toys for 3-year olds to be of any use (well, okay, I bought a 1 Euro pair of shoes for geek-boy and a few baskets but that aint exactly shopping success).  Also, surprise surprised, lovely handwork is hard to do, time consuming and needs tools – these happen to be in my garage in California (band saw, how I miss you!)

I had visions of me using mom’s sewing machine to best effect when – really – I should have known so much better.  I just don’t have the patience for sewing projects any more complex than a straight hemline.

admittedly it is a hack job – but functional and done in a flash.
(c) Tina Baumgartner

The latest casualty was my fancy reupholstering project.  Those 60s chair, when sanded, painted and reupholstered in some cute colorful but not overbearing fabric would look marvelous.  Yes they would.  But they don’t.  I have no time for sanding, no place for sanding and nobody I can outsource sanding to, the lovely fabric I brought from California is not sturdy enough and the staples in the staple gun are too big (imagining sitting down on the chair staples sticking in my thighs – yikes).  But I need a chair and I need it by tomorrow morning because I am in violation of personal prime directive #1 which should never be violated: thou shalt not use the dinning table as your makeshift office.  Ever. followed by #2: thou shall prohibit your husband and child the use of the dinning table as their makeshift offices/desks. Always. Under all circumstances. And logical insight #1: thou need to set a good example else husband and son will not comply.

So tonight I brought out the Duct tape (brought from California for adorable DIY, cheap wall improvement project) and glued the stupid boring fabric that I brought from California to reupholster the couch (that project is deader than dead) down.  I mean if the Myth Busters can suspend a car with Duct Tape I can affix some fabric .

The result is a bit embarrassing, actually quite embarrassing, but workable for now – that is unless somebody crawls under the chairs and sees the hack job I did.  What’s saving me, likely, is that guest who end up under the chair are normally no longer in a position to fairly judge the merits of a DIY project.

 

 

Renovation Tales

These days I sport what could almost pass for a French manicure – if it wasn’t for the telltale white paint streaks all over my hands, arms and the occasional snow white strand of hair. These signs betray the fact that I did play with paint, rather than nail polish, and lots of it.  In fact, 4 big old 11 liter paint buckets. All white.  All used up but for a small remnant.

Now everything is white, every last wall in the apartment, all the ceilings plus the curtains and the linen (not from paint of course), I covered the wooden headboard with a vintage linen as well. It looks nice and clean especially compared to the old wallpaper, in faded shades of peach, yellow and beige. I hate peach, pastelly yellow and beige with a vengeance especially mixed and faded.

Today I was on the quest for a night stand and found – a grey couch.  High up on a pile of other stuff in the warehouse of the Goodwill equivalent.  I couldn’t believe my luck.  I haven’t had the chance to inspect it in its entirety.  It was close to closing hours and not even the prospect of what must be a larger sale in the context of the local Goodwill equivalent was enough to convince the employees to stay a little longer.  It’s Germany after all and when the store closes, the store closes – and that is that.

Now the guys at the warehouse at the local Goodwill equivalent are fast becoming my best friends (in addition to Helmut,  the paint guy at the local hardware store) and I have gained regular access to the warehouse despite the fact that it is strictly speaking “verboten” to be in the warehouse.  So my new best friend today promised to hold the couch for me until tomorrow morning.

Assuming that there won’t be a huge red wine stain on the part I haven’t seen yet I have just scored one of the big remaining items I need.  Keep your fingers crossed that my new best friend will indeed be loyal and not sell the thing the minute before I get there.

That leaves me to sort out the carpet situation.  Tricky one. There are red, classically patterned carpets to be had everywhere, plus the usual “modern” ones that delight – not – with their absurd choice of colors (purple, orange and beige with black stripes anybody?) and  patterns.  Bleaching and dying a carpet seems to be a rather intimidating process with little chance of success – or so I read online.  And since I am not much into knitting and crocheting carpets that whole carpet situation is still somewhat up in the air.  The closest I have come to a cheap solution is a piece of artificial lawn.  I hear they come in different colors – but not in hot pink – and somehow the idea of a hot pink piece of artificial lawn as a carpet with all the white and grey sounds enticing.

I am sure you agree, right?

4 More Weeks

We have been quietly working away on making this Germany thing happen but after last year’s experience where we talked about it all the time to basically everybody – and then it did not happen –  I felt a little freaked about talking about it too much too early.

Well, I guess I can safely say it is not too early anymore: the house is rented out, the rental agreement for the apartment there is in the works, our son has his spot at school and the flights are booked.

Much remains to be done, a hell of a lot in fact, and I am getting a bit dizzy when thinking about emptying everything out here (we are renting furnished but still there are so many things to put away) and then starting over there.

It isn’t just putting stuff away when we get there – that’d be easy – not all that much will fit into those three or four suitcases we are allowed to take – but somehow furnishing an apartment on the cheap and fixing up whatever the previous renter left to make it fit my style (my style is really the family style, my husband does not feel too strongly about colors and things like round vs. square tables and my 10 year old doesn’t get a say in it – just to keep me sane).

My ambition is to spend very little on new stuff.  First and foremost I am cheap, buying new furniture is expensive and after a year I have to be happy if somebody pays me a few dollars to take it off my hands.  Secondly, I like the idea of reuse and upcycling, in fact I have read about it obsessively over the last months, magazines, websites, blogs, etc. Thirdly I am a tree-hugger and proud of it.  If I can keep something out of the landfill I am all for it.  The whole buy-and-toss in ever faster cycles does not make sense to me.  Finally, I am a hunter-gatherer, I truly appreciate the experience of going to a flea market or garage sale and finding something, a gem that others overlooked, seeing the potential in an ugly lamp with a new lamp shade, that wooden chair stripped of that awful fabric and reupholstered.  Really fun!

Now, I have never reupholstered a thing in my life so we’ll see whether reality lives up to my glossy-DIY magazine inspired dreams.

I keep telling myself that it will be fun and halfway believe it – then I have visions of myself staple gun in hand, glue all over my face fighting with some stubborn piece of furniture or fabric bleary-eyed some time after midnight – and I wonder whether I am a bit naive.

I probably am but then naivety might not the worst frame of mind to tackle this.