» Copenhagen capers

New Apartment Befores

emma — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 21:01:55 +0000

Previous owners had put up two walls that were removed.. you can see one was here (other was in the bedroom)

jumping forward in time, this room is stripped at this point! A new wall will go up here to make Noras bedroom and a dinning room for the time being.

and starting to be worked at this point! Sorry for confusing order.. the only pics taken were by Niels on his phone.

A little tlc from Jacob removing paint from some finer details above.

The master bedroom- or at least a corner of it. There is a glass door to the left that goes out into the garden. You can just see on the far right edge where there had been a wall once also dividing this room, sadly can’t see the other half of the room in the picture.

Niels artsy shot into kitchen from living room through lit hallway.

The kitchen before!

and removing it is Niels dad…

photos taken around the kitchen clockwise..

Door to back stairs.

Bye bye kitchen!

Now you want to see the New kitchen and finished thing don’t you! ..

Coming soon!

How we became true Copenhageners

emma — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 18:30:07 +0000

Hello all,

So I don’t know how many of you heard that we started the process of putting our apartment up for sale about a month ago. The apartment had not even been listed at which point the estate agents had brought people to it thrice to be viewed when those individuals had shown interest in similar apartments close by in our neighborhood. We had a bid for less than our asking price, which I thought was crazy because we put the price of our place so very reasonable to avoid haggling.. but of course there are always chancers- I know because I am one of them!.. so Niels is the worrier in our home and he worried himself and thought we should just accept to save ourselves time and cleaning (for viewings!!?!) hahaa But I said NO WAY.. and that I wouldn’t be surprised if they still took the place at full price.. we actually decided that we could give them a discount of what we would have paid the photographer the next week for getting pics done of the place and that way we wouldn’t have lost anything but to our surprise we didn’t even have to go that far and the girl did take the place at its asking price after all So that was nice and easy. The new occupant would move in 1st Sep giving us just a couple of months to find a place to live.. just a slight pressure there.

You may also be aware of the high living costs here. Being in the city we pay by the meter. Yep.. this made me gasp in shock when I arrived here that people would brag about having a 100m2 .. (yuh seriously!) At first we had plans to move outside the city so that we could have a little house and a garden, more space to swing a cat.. hopefully even two, but on our house hunting ventures in the burbs, even though we decided we would move within a 30 min journey by train or metro from the city It felt like we had gone too far and the burbs weren’t agreeing with us, also we found a difficulty with getting to church from these areas without a car and that was going to be beyond our budget with this move (cars are insanely expensive here too!) so with that we changed the search to accept a slightly larger apartment in the city with at least one more room for No-no and we hoped to get a bigger kitchen or living room for a dining space too.. and a ground/1st floor so less stairs to climb to reach home. We figured we would buy a bucket bike to get around too

true copenhagener style

This was not at all what we had been planning to begin with but somehow we felt immediately better with this decision.

We set about apartment hunting our only real requisites were that we could have a washing machine IN our apartment and that there weren’t too many stairs and that we had at least one more bedroom.. we learned pretty fast that we couldn’t be too fussy. Oh and MrA wanted no less than 100m2! We looked at a couple of places that we liked one turned out to be in a bit of a ghetto area and the other we went to see, it was very nice even if it had a weird bathroom set up the views from the windows to the street across were picturesque and we loved it, the area was quiet and lush with a big green park near by, just over the way that Nonies cousins live too! It feels like you had stepped outside the city for just a minute, it was hard to believe that a few streets across the hustle and bustle of raw city life continued but I kept telling Niels that there was just something that wasn’t right. Not able to put my finger on it we hadn’t reason to discontinue this pursuit, the only apartment we’d found like it in this rare kind of location. We returned to see it again shortly taking a couple of Niels brothers (one a plumber) with us to see what they said of it. They thought it was a solid decent buy.

As we were leaving the building one of the brothers caught a glimpse of a notice up with all the apartments in the building for sale most of which never get advertised or sold through agents so we took a look and found that there were a couple of apartments bigger than the one we had just seen for about the same price (actually.. less!) And on the ground floor, with a garden..! We went to investigate and looking at one side of the corner apartment were very pleased with the size of the garden.. then we almost died when we learned there was the same size of garden around the corner too belonging to this flat. Niels and Jacob disappeared and I went to find that they had charmed their way into the apartment while the owners were having their dinner. Amazed at the size of the kitchen, we found that all the other rooms were equally impressive in size. High high ceilings and even while needing serious renovation we are still impressed. The occupants are moving in together and want to sell the place fast, they say that there have been eight people showing interest and one woman has visited three times with workmen and said she would get back to them on Monday if she would take it, the gentleman tells us straight forwardly that its first come first served. As we walk outside the apartment we know that we have to say now or we will lose this chance forever- Niels runs back and tells them that we want it, that we are serious and have sold our place already. The owner insists that he reduce the price of the apartment again and that he pay the two months rent for while we renovate before we move in! I wept- all our thoughts for making do with maybe not the best kitchen or finishes went out the window with his kind (crazy?) offer. Today we met and signed the documents. One month from when we started the ball rolling to sell our place. If we had waited any longer before putting our place up for sale or tried to get more for our own apartment we would have no doubt taken longer to sell and never have had this opportunity, nor if we had returned with Niels brothers to see that apartment again. We can barely believe what has happened still. We are moving from a 55m2 apartment in a ‘bad’ area to a 120m2 in a great area.. on ground floor with a very decent garden (very rare in the city!!) That we really shouldn’t be able to afford…

We are calling it the karma apartment, because we have stored up a few good deeds and we feel like they have been re-payed tenfold. Its the sort of thing that when you see it happen to someone else you think ‘lucky git’ and that it doesn’t really happen to ‘you’ but well.. this just goes to show doesn’t it,.. it does!

A Saturday stroll

emma — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 05:03:11 +0000

On Saturday we decided that we wanted to go visit the Botanical gardens but they had closed early and as it seemed that spring was in the air we just kept on walking..

and we went here:

and then we went here:

We stopped for a break..

And then we continued again..

Stopping to admire everything on our way!

We love the teeny tiny house..

yup I said everything!

Until we got to here! We had walked quite a bit and we were hungry so we thought we’d give this place a go.. our new favorite local Indian.. they even do a pashwari nan! And they really made it easy for you dining with a little one, so helpful and nice!

Great day!

A total Saturday success!

Colour Love

emma — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 10:01:19 +0000

I don’t know what comes over me when I suddenly get an idea in my head and then spend the next two evenings sewing like mad to get it finished before I have an other idea or lose interest!

Color is super important to me, as a baby some of my first vivid memories involve bright wonderful magical color and I want Nora to have that same joy! Where better to paint with color than inside her pram!

Before……

yep the outside is bright enough already!

After!……

looks very Danish!

Unintentionally matches the rain cover perfectly too.. want a closer look what its like to be in there… just climb on in beside Nora, she’s very sleepy but there’s room..

And we match the colors in Nora’s favorite street art.. she thinks this is amazing..

Happy Day

emma — Sat, 01 May 2010 17:57:34 +0000

One thing I love about living here is how there is a guarantee of regularly seeing new creativity as I pass along the cycle path that cuts through our street to the main road.

I was delighted to see..

lots lots and lots of birdies in a tree!

Store Bededag

emma — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 19:34:43 +0000

I got a little excited when I saw that in my calendar. Great thought I- I recognize ‘Store’ immediately as meaning ‘big’ and I thought- imagined the rest meant ‘bed-day’ I thought this was a holiday made for me. On my way home from work MrA. ask’s that I nip into a bakers and get some ‘hveder’- special roll’s made only on this night in preparation for ‘great prayer day’- yep, that’s what ‘store bededag‘ means. The roll’s traditionally were bought in a double batch from bakers to last through the praying holiday period as bakers did not have to work on that day.. and today the tradition still stands.. here’s MrA with his roll which he claims must be simply eaten warm and buttered.

I sneaked some roast beef into mine..

Happiness

emma — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 20:49:58 +0000

Will come for those who love
For those who love

Deep in the heart
I know it is love
It is love that’s the answer
Cause love won me over

Modern meets Retro for Lunch

emma — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 18:13:13 +0000

Its warm and lively not to mention it has a chalkboard wall, the kitchen is

almost finished!

We have been looking for a table that works in our little kitchen then last week I was on my way to work when I cycled past thus shop with a little table for sale outside it. I’m a little concerned that our kitchen gets too modern looking, its must have some cool retro! Anyway back to the table.. we have looked at many and then I see this one which is amazing, I didn’t have time to stop and hoped it would still be there the next day- when I went past then I was in a hurry but I was lucky that it was still I jumped off my bike to find it was in fair condition second hand and for only 50 DKK! thats about 5GBP.. uh huh mega bargain for the perfect finishing touch! I can’t show you now tho because its not up yet but believe you me its PERFECT in every way! Still cant believe how spacious our little kitchen feels/is now!

here’s a sneak peak of the smallest cutest kitchen in the world..

(well almost)

You’ll just have to check back to see the complete finished kitchen!

Oprah loves Copenhagen

emma — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 03:15:44 +0000

Oprah was here for the IOC meeting and of course she couldn’t resist making a show on Copenhagen. Charmed by the simple living, fair benefits and family orientedness in Danish lifestyle. A show was aired today, introducing the world to the ‘happiest women on earth’. You can read and get a tour of a danish family home here. Now everyones like – ‘I want to live in Copenhagen!’ but the truth is half of them wouldn’t be able to hack it!

cycling to my work..

emma — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 19:51:02 +0000

I catch these guys on route.. not a foot out of beat.