...And we are back!

Hello!!!!

I bet you figured I was never coming back? well don't fret, normal blogging should resume from now on.

So what have I been up too you ask? Well we have been painting, cleaning, painting, filling holes and doing more painting and throwing away loads of junk..... plus some painting.

We took a week off to freshen the place up and do those things we had been planning to do for a looooong time. We had a good plan of action and got started fist thing Saturday morning.

This has been our lives for the past 10 days.

The first stage was to get the whole place cleaned up and cleared so we could actually paint, that took a half day in itself but it needed to be done and gave us lots of room to do the job.

It was kind of odd to see the place this empty, has not looked this way since we moved in.

It was also a good excuse to clean pictures, dust around and vacuum in all those dust hard to reach places that never see light.

One thing we had planned was to get our window seat put in, Christine's 'Far' kindly offered to make it for us and he brought it round last Thursday. We only gave him some simple drawings plus measurements and he did the rest, the result looked great!

This was the window area we wanted seating for, it gets lots of sun light and until now it was just wasted space.

Here's the man himself, hard at work. The fit was a little tight so we had to borrow a saw, lucky for us

Carl had just the tool for the job so Fee jumped into the car and picked it up....Tak Carl!

We were VERY impressed when he first turned up with it, we had no idea how it was going to turn out but he had done an ace job.

"She's in!"

It took some time but we got there in the end.

How cool is that!

It needs some sanding in places to get the draws opening smoothly and a few coats of paint but we love it already. Fee's been like a Cat and sitting in the sun beams when she can.

Once we had painted and the seat was in, it was time to clean and put stuff back. That really wiped us out, having to go though everything, throw stuff away, take stuff to the dump and the basement then clean was hard. However we soldiered on and we are really pleased with what we have done.

We added a nice spot of colour to this wall to help it feel a little more cosy and help the picture 'pop' a little more.

This was the only other wall to get some colour, its lighter than the other wall and works really well with the new door colour.

We got rid of a lot of stuff in the study area, it feels so much brighter and less cluttered now.

Finally the libery feel like an aera we want to use. It was never very useable before but now it feel very inviting. FYI we cut the legs on that table to get it to the right hight, it was just a normal table before that.

Now i even have a music corner...pretty cool!

After a long week of non-stop work we opened a nice bottle to celebrate and pat ourselves on the back for a job well done.

Well done Fee & Nik!

I'm not dead!

Hey gang!

Guess you were wondering where I have been the past few days?

Long story short, Fee and me have been painting... A LOT! We are attempting to paint our whole apartment in a week, its a tall order but we are making great progress. So expect some mega image updates soon of our cool pad. :)

This is the kind of look we're going for.

98% done..

Well the floors pretty much all done now, just some lose ends to clean up but its looking really nice....I think i'll drop stuff on the floor just for the hell of it.

Starting to look like a real kitchen again.

Mads will be back Monday to clean up this edge and add a little step, then we will be 100% finished.

Slate-tastic...

Yesterday we finally got started with the new floor in the kitchen. Stage one was to get the dishwasher out and disconected so Mads tile under the washer.

Out you come.

He looks kind of sad sitting there all disconected.

(iPhone pic)

Next he add to laydown this waterproof sheeting to help stop water getting into the wood.

(iPhone pic)

Mmmmm slate.

At this point I had to go to work (have to pay for all these renovations some how!) but our friend Lissy came over with baby Amilie to house sit for us. We even make them some nice bread as they would not be able to get into the kitchen all day.

Homemade bread, some plain and some with raisens...yum!

(iPhone)

So once I got home I got to see the progress so far, it was about 80% done but we still could not walk on it. The 'paste' underneath was still not dry so we all decided to hang out and get a take away instead of cooking.

Almost there...

Sven, Lissy, Amilie, Fee and me ordered some pizza and pasta, hung out and had a few beers. It was fun if not a little messy....

See what I mean.

Amilie had never had the TV on during dinner time before...lets just say a lot of the food missed its target.

As for the floor, Mads is here now filling in all the gaps and cleaning the floor up a bit. We may have to order a special sized 'step' for the edge that leads out of the kitchen but lets see. Tonight we are going to watch the England vs USA game at a friends place, I'm not a huge football fan but it is the world cup after all.

COME ON ENG-ER-LAND!!!! :)

Bit of a waste....

Today did not go completely according to plan.....

Today was meant to be the day that Mads (the floor guy) was meant to come over and start laying the new Slate kitchen floor..... that did not happen.

Long story short, he got stuck on another job where the basement he had tiled the day before had flooded.... which is not good. But that still involved me sitting at home when I should have been at work waiting for him to call. He finally did call later in the day and I gave him the 'grumpy' treatment. I basically told him 'you come now or not at all' and to his credit he did. He came over at 6pm (very rare for a Danish workman) to deliver the materials and get the floor ready for tiling on Friday morning....

Fingers crossed this will be covered in nice dark slate tomorrow.

I know, I know, its a great wooden floor and yes it's a shame to cover it but its a real PAIN to keep clean in the kitchen area. Every drip, splash or blob of food that hits the floor leaves a stain that is hard to clean off..... so don't hate me.

LET THERE BE LIGHT!

I was at home today getting stuff ready for the arrival of 'Pop' who lands tomorrow morning. One of the things that got done today was the installation of the new lights! We had some really crappy ones just hanging out of the wall for some time now and it feels sooooooo good to have the new one in.

Duplo Pirate ship in the spotlight.

Finally some nice and usable light in the office.

This are now has some form of light for the first time since we moved in.

The electrician came up with a cool way not to damage the floor with his ladder, by using the box's the new lights came in!

Your not getting the best of me germs!!

So I am still suffering with a sore thoat and some swollen glands that are making my ears hurt, but i'm not going to let that get me down. Mrs Groves is off on a work 'team building' weekend and I know if I sit on my butt all weekend doing nothing I will hate myself for it. Soooooooo I have been keeping myself busy.

Put up the new shower curtain.

Added a non-slip matt under the wooden shower matt.

Needed to be trimmed to size.

4 loads of washing!

Filled in the gapes between the celling tiles, we plan to smooth it out and paint it over as it looks a little dated in my opinion.

Doing the same to this little section out side the bathroom and bedroom.

Had to make up a little 'kill room' before sanding.

There! Nice and smooth and ready for some paint...maybe tomorrow as I'm now feeling a little worn out.

At one point today I started hearing this odd beeping noise, it was freaking me out a little as I didn't know where the hell it was coming from. Turns out it was this....

I'll have to pick up some batteries, safety first people!

Best laid plans of mice and men...

So last weekend was meant to be the weekend that we striped the plaster off the chiminey stack and exposed the brick work (very NY loft)...... sadly it didn't really turn out as planned.

This was the chimney we planed to strip down to the brick. We felt it would be a nice contrast to all the white.

Had a couple of friends come over the night before to help me move the wood burner.....very heavy indeed, so I owe the guys a drink.

We spent a little time to cover the area in plastic as plaster dust gets everywhere.

Dexter would have been so proud.

Fee was all ready so make a mess is her snazzy new outfit....I was worried

that this might be the last thing I ever see.

Kill room + wife with a claw hammer = Argggggggggg!

So we were all set and we began by taking away a section that was behind the wood burner. Lucky that we did because it turns out that the brick work under the plaster was covered in a very THICK layer of concrete.....bugger!

We did a another patch just to make sure but we found the same layer of super hard concrete. Sadly we had to concede that we could not expose the brick work unless we had some sort of Jack Hammer. So I patch up the hole we had made (thank god we did cover the place in plastic, just that little part created a lot of mess) and painted the wall to freshen it up. We are now doing to plan 'B'.....i'll keep you posted.

Just so the weekend was not wasted we got to work on some other household bits that needed to be done. We added some extra insulation tape to windows to help keep the heat in the the electricity bill down.

Just look at how Eco friendly those windows, come get now Mr Wind!

There use to be a radiator and a hole in the wall here...not anymore.

There was also a radiator and a hole here...again, not anymore.

Up to speed.

This is the calm before the storm people!

Me and the wife have some major renovation work planned over the upcoming long weekend here in Denmark. So expect some major photo updates to come, but until then I figured I would bring you all up to speed on what I have been up to of late.

Yesterday we had some guests pop by our flat to say Hi and have some Nom. One of then was my very small but very cute German friend.

Beanbags are rather good baby holders it turns out.

"What on Earth are you talking about woman.."

We finally got our Velux blinds though the other day (well over a week ago actually) but being the 'Groves house' things never run smooth. The blinds have two inserts or pull downs, one is for total black out and the other allows some light in without you being seen from the outside. This is where the problems began, I got the one in the guest room all set up...

Screen for black out made.

Screen for not-so-black out mode.

All was going well with the one in the main bedroom until I had to clip in the one for the screens. One clip would just not go into place, I figured I missed something so I went over all my steps. Then I spotted that there was an problem with the Left & Right clips that go on each side. What was the problem you ask? They were BOTH LEFT CLIPS!

You cant really see but there is a big L on each clip...one of the should have a big R.

So we need to pop back to the shop at some point and get it changed which is a real pain in the bum.It took a few weeks for these to arrive so we will probably have to wait for the replacement...oh well.

But as mentioned before we are planning something big for the weekend, so we needed to get lots of DIY supplies. Yay! Man shopping. :)

No, not he Band or the design school....but the DIY store.

We got bags of stuff but i'll show you all that next time.

We will also be need this bad boy for the up coming works....stay tuned!

As well as DIY supplies we also needed to get some shopping for food and other stuff. We have been super busy of late so this was a BIG shop as we were running very low on Nom!

Well, that should keep us going for a few days.

(I couldn't get the rest in shot)

All those years of Tetris paid off.

Skillz...I has thems!