Gardening – renewing hedge

Living in a house with a 92 year old garden, there is constantly maintenance work to do. I’m not the biggest fan of gardening but in small dosage it is therapy. Especially when it’s about getting rid of excess, which we have more than we can handle. We remove a big tree/bush, so I ordered some hedge plants. The hedge infront of the house has also been invaded by some fast growing trees. For this I used my Hackzall for 30 min and now they are gone.

New hedge plants are expected to arrive in the beginning of October.

Picture wall – Instaprints

I LOVE snapping pictures with my iPhone 5 and editing them with an app called Snapseed. My old picture wall with about 20 frames was in desperate need of updating and then I saw this idea on Instagram. I ordered about 250 (4×4 inch) pictures from a place called Inkifi. Now I can have all the pictures I want on my wall and it is easy to switch them as they are set up with blue tac.

 

Pallet lounge sofa – DONE

Just in time for summer vacation was our new terrace ready. Our idea was to have some lounge sofas but where, is still a bit unsure. The terrace is 66 m2 so there is many options and we do not want to build some fixed furniture until we know where. My idea was so make some cheap furniture from some old euro pallets I got from work, to find out where and what we want to have. The most important feature was that they needed to be good to sit on. On instagram, I found some inspiration, but ended up making some adjustments as I want the seat depth to be a bit more. See original idea here  Now they are ready and painted and I actually think they will end up being a more permanent temporary solution. I love to paint so naturally I gave these a coat too and painted them first with some primer from Røverkøb and the some toned wood protections from Røverkøb. The color code was RAL7012.

Under the finished images, I have added a few picture to demonstrate how I have built them. Really easy to make and super comfortable to sit on. Now some pillows but that is another project for my to-do-list.

I used four euro pallets for this project. I started with sanding all the rough parts and edges in order not to get splinters.

Next step, I split two of the pallets just a few centimeters after the second row. First, I a circular saw but had to finish the off with a hand saw. It is important to leave a planks with of extra for the back piece, gives it a bit more support when screwed together.

Step 3 – I screwed the front legs to the seat with some screws we had left over from our terrace project, so some pretty solid once. Stainless steel screws last longer and don’t rust.

Step 4 – I screwed the back to the bottom in some 45 degree angles. Here you can see where I have set screws.

Step 5 – My favorite job, painting. See above on what I used on the final painted benches.

Stevns Fort

While visiting Stevns Klint, I saw a brochure advertising other interesting stuff to see in the area. The dark history of Denmark in the cold war was something I had not heard about and now there was a possibility to visit the eagles nest itself, Stevns Fort. It was very impressive and we had a super guide.

Never thought I’d get so close to these kind of things.

Stevns Klint

Denmark is known to be flat as a pan cake, but there are some truly amazing place that should be visited if in the area. We had planned a couples weekend trip to Møns Klint an even bigger cliff but as my boy had missed me so much while I was away, we decided to postpone that and go to the closer cliff Stevns Klint instead. It was a windy day so waves were high and impressive.

Definitely worth a visit

Too hot to run but I did it anyway

Summer vacation in Finland at my parents summer house and it was almost too hot to do any other exercise than taking a dip in the sea. However, I tied my shoe laces and headed out on my regular route, to the end of the gravel road. 7,4 km where the last 2 km were unbearably hot.

Bye Bye rocking chair

Like many others I guess, I had the idea that it would be nice to sit for hours in a good rocking chair and breast feed. I found this Borge Mogensen Rocking chair at a vintage market with my mother and ever since she has wished for one of her own. Mine was left to be pure decoration after a few tries and now we finally fitted it in our trunk on our way to the summer house. It looks quite in place with the new owner.

Wellamo

Every summer, at the summer house, I have either a wood work or painting project. But this summer I decided to not engage myself in such a project. Will focus on doing absolutely nothing… If I can. However, this ship is something I’m very proud of. It made by my grandfather Erkki for my dad about 60 years ago. Long live Wellamo.

My new old VIPP bin

One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Those were my thoughts when I found this old VIPP bin that had been used as the local daycare as an ashtray for the past years.

I had heard that you could fix almost everything with these bins so I took it home and started to clean it. The bins have a beautiful history of the designer building his hairdresser wife a bin she could open without hands and the rest of the success story is history.

This is what it looked like when I found it. Pedal missing, one handle missing, no inner bin, tons or rust and about a years worth of cigarette stubs. Disgusting.

With a lot of sanding, I managed to scrape most of the rust off. Now in these pictures it still looks like a disaster.

I had not quite decided on what color I wanted to paint it. I had shiny white and matt black in mind until I saw the bin after I had applied the primer.

And I ended up painting it the primer shade of grey. After a trip to the VIPP repair shop it looks almost like the new one I saw in the shop. But my bin will serve us years to come and I gave it a new life.