The house you live in or the room where you spend most of your time is a very important part of your life. It can totally affect your mood, even if you’re not aware of it. Light plays a tremendous role, just as space, tidiness, smell and overall ambiance. If you don’t feel comfortable in your bedroom or house, I suggest you find out what you can do to make it better. A few lights or colorful things can make a huge difference and it can really make you happier. (Check my Pinterest board here and see if you can find more things you like. Pinterest is pure magic.)

✨ Now let me tell you the story of our house. ✨
While I tell you all about it, I’ll show you what it looks like on the upper floor.
After that, I’ll show you what it looked like before!

A sad house

When Mark and I bought our house, it was a disaster, to say the least. It was old, dilapidated and ugly. Very. Ugly. But it was a cute two-story flat in an apartment building and I loved it the minute I walked in. It had been owned by 2 people who were now in a very bad divorce battle. One of the windows on the lowest floor was cracked because the husband had stuffed belongings of the wife in a huge plastic container in the backyard, and set the whole thing on fire. The remains of the container were still there; it was a huge chunk of melted plastic with something that looked like wheels. I remember getting some funny looks at the recycling center.

The backyard itself was very special as well. The former owner had built a platform out of non-impregnated wood. The wood was now like wet cardboard. With every step, you would sink 30 cm into the dirt. He had also built a wooden shed with holes for windows and a door, but without any actual windows or doors. Inside the shed was a pile of sand and behind that, a one-meter-deep hole. We were wondering how many bodies we would find here. It turned out he wanted to make an Asian takeaway in this shed. He was one special guy. The interior of the house was mainly pink. Pink walls and pink carpet. There was a beautiful wooden floor in the living room, but it was dark orange.

A happy house

This was a sad house. It had endured nothing but two people at war and pink for years. It had an inaccessible backyard and it had lost all its glory. I immediately wanted to adopt this house and make it awesome and happy again. So in January 2016, we bought it! And we did A LOT. At first, we hired a company to move the tiny bathroom next to the tiny kitchen from upstairs to downstairs. We could now remove the wall in between and make the kitchen two times as big. We had to camp in our house for three months, but it was worth it.

So now we had a much bigger kitchen and bathroom, and the bathroom was now next to our bedroom, which is also on the lowest floor. These were two things we couldn’t do ourselves. All the other things, we could. I knew it would take years to do it all, but it took so much longer than I thought.. 😐 We still haven’t finished it. Sometimes I don’t do anything for months because I’m so done with it, but I try not to care. And sometimes I fix ten things in a week because I’m up for it.

On the upper floor (where the living room and kitchen are), it’s almost done. I still have to fix and paint some doors and the toilet has been out of order for 2 years now, but we have a toilet downstairs so that’s not that big of a deal. We have done a tremendous amount of work here, so I’m quite proud of what we have accomplished!

I really love the Scandinavian style, which is light and cozy with some color pops. In the past years, I collected all kinds of things that I love. I try to combine them, and I keep them if I’m satisfied. Our living room is not that big, so it easily looks too full and that can overwhelm me a bit. But I love what I have now, so maybe I’ll just move things around a bit soon. Change can be good!

I just LOVE this house. It feels like home, and I think we made it happy again. It just feels like a happy house, I don’t know why. We now also live very close to everything we need; the bus stop, train station, a ton of supermarkets, the city center and the library. I’m so thankful for everything we have!!