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The Walk in Closet
It’s every girl’s and gay man’s dream, a true and proper walk in closet. It represents style, class and it is just great to be able to see all your clothes without having to go through piles and piles of vintage t-shirts, jeans, sweat pants, fleece jackets and moth ridden woolen jumpers before you get to your favourite pair of Canali flat fronted dress trousers.
Yes, the walk in closet… when I grow up I want one too.
The Dutch beer brand Heineken came up with a great TV ad making use of this phenomenon. Check out this video:
I have to say that I am gay enough to understand the girls screaming, but guy enough to understand the blokes too. I can imagine having a walk-in-fridge for beers. I have always been jealous of Eddy’s champagne fridge in Absolutely Fabulous too….
But, the walk-in-closet. We tried to create a similar thing by turning a room into a dressing room but it is just not the same as it also the guest room so there is a bed there. A real walk in closet is a separate room to be accessed from the master bedroom, an d ideally a step away from the bathroom. In many American homes you’ll find you have to walk through the bathroom to get to the walk-in-closet which I have always found a bit odd.
f you lack the extra room, but have a bedroom big enough you can try creating a partition with your wardrobes and putting the headboard of your bed against the back of the wardrobes.
The room measures 5.30x3.5 meters
I first saw this solution in a friend’s bedroom and was amazed by such simple yet efficient use of space. Make sure to fix and pain the backs of the wardrobes as they are often ugly brown chip board. Try painting them in a very bright or contrasting colour for a dramatic effect.
But obviously the best walk-in-closet was Karen’s in Will & Grace…It prompted Jack to say ”Oh my God, if my closet were like this I never would have come out of it!”
I will try to find a video or picture of it soon, but Immelda Marcos that was one big walk-in-closet!
Share pictures of your walk in closets if you have one!
Posted in General living and fun stuff
Tagged gay, girl's dream, heineken, walk in closet, wardrobe
See how I live, check my own home
Many of you were asking when I was going to put up pictures of my own home. I was planning to do so for a while but just wanted to get a new camera first in order to make good pictures. Camera phones are fun, but Blackberry is not too great with pixels.
But here you go. yesterday a brand new digital pocket camera was delivered to my doorstep. (after I ordered it I should add) Today the weather is a bit grim, but with a few lights on here and there I think the result is pretty good.
Let’s start with telling a bit about the house. It’s two top floors, the 2nd (or 3rd in the US) and 3rd, on top of a city monument in the heart of Amsterdam. This means a bit of a climb but once upstairs it’s worth it. The apartment is light, roomy and has many nice features such as panelled doors, doorknobs inspired by French train doors and a solid hard wood floor. All in all it measures approximately 140m2 which is 1500 square feet give or take.
Hall, toilet, middle bit of the living room
The three frames contain old record sleeves. I found the small tea table on Marktplaats
On the main floor of the apartment, which is the 2nd floor of the building, there are a hall, toilet, living room and kitchen. It has a large and deep, albeit narrow-ish, l-shaped living room from the front to the rear with big windows on both ends. The windows in the back are new, and don’t really fit the house as much as we would like to. This is why we hope to renovate them and put a small balcony there too.
Sitting room and dining room
The red sofa is Ikea. The love seat we bought on sale in a huge department store. We ended up renting a van to move it which made the sale price a little less amazing. The blue and white rug on the love seat is from Tunisia. We bought it when we were visiting my brother who lives there. The two chandeliers above the table are from Ikea as mentioned in an earlier post.
As the view to the back is very nice with big gardens below and a massive tree in the back, we decided to put the dining table in the back and the sitting room in the front. Also, the kitchen is in the back so it makes sense to have the table there too. I sit there as I write this and through the kitchen window it looks as if I am in the woods instead of the city. The tram down the street gives away the true location though. To the front, the view is less appealing. We look onto a very grim and dull 1960’s office building. They are planning to demolish it though. Hopefully they’ll replace it with something more in feel with the area.
Kitchen, dining room, book shelves and art!
The Tabasco pictures are actually three photographs printed on canvas. A friend of ours is a stills and commercial photographer and gave this to us when we moved in. The kitchen was brand new when we bought the house. So was everything really. We didn’t have to do anything but move in. I love the extraction hood with the clutter on it. The kitchen has many stainless steel details which is nice enough but tends to look rather cold. This way it makes it more cosy.
Upstairs are three modest sized bedrooms, one with walk in closet (too small for the wow factor). Furthermore there are a bathroom, a storage for washer/dryer and stairs to the roof-light with access to the roof. We are not allowed to create a roof terrace there unfortunately. The council does not allow any alterations to sloped roof constructions on city monuments.
We fell in love with the bathroom
The bathroom is amazing. We didn’t do it ourselves, everything was done by a contractor hired by the guy who sold the house. He shares the same taste though as we love it. It was done in dark grey slate tiles and crispy white porcelain for the sinks. The tabs are all modern. To break the sterility of it a bit we put up a very baroque mirror. If anyone can give me tips on how to remove calcium stains I would appreciate it!
Master bedroom
We found the white little chest of drawers by the trash one night. We changed the original knobs with porcelain ones we got for our wedding.
One of the original features in our bedroom is the pulley with wooden beam many houses in Amsterdam have.
We use one of the other two bedrooms as study/office. I am supposed to run my business from there but prefer working downstairs. The other bedroom is in use as dressing room and guestroom. I now realize I don’t have pictures of that room. On the compilation below, the picture with the antlers above the portrait of our Queen’s great grandfather is taken in the study.
Picture frames in the stairway, vew from sitting room to dining area, liqour cabinet and more picture frames in the kitchen
The brown cabinet with the black lamp on it was bought at Emmaus, a flee market in my hometown Haarzuilens. I bought it as partition when I moved into my first flat which was a studio flat. It let the light shine through both ends of the room, yet provided for a separate sleeping area. Now it’s used as liquor cabinet. Along the stairs we put up many picture frames and artifacts. We both used to travel extensively for work and when flying business with KLM you get a Delft Blue porcelain house. Most of them are not mine to be fair.
There you have it, my home. I am very curious to hear what you guys think. Please let me know. And don’t forget to share pictures of your own homes!
What can one buy across the globe for €100.000
They used to have this feature on a show I used to watch or in a magazine I used to read. Or I still watch the show or read the magazine but they just stopped with this specific feature. I for, but I do remember loving it; comparing house prices across the globe.
I thought I’d make it interesting and start with a figure so low that in some cities likely nothing can be bought with this kind of money; €100.000,-. My search starts in my home town Amsterdam. Online real etate search engines come back with mainly garages and parking spaces. A garage here can be on the market for as much as €85.000,-, depending on the area.
One house in particular caught my eye. It’s a 60m2 (650 square feet) one bedroom flat in a leafy southern suburb of the city on the market for €98.000,-. The flat has hardwood parquet floors throughout and has a two south (!) facing balconies. With its proximity to public transport, one can be in the city center within 20 minutes. Also, local shops and facilities are excellent with a popular shopping center a few minutes walking away. Across the hall from the apartment is a separate storage room that can double as a study or guest room.
nice floors!
The catch; the apartment is fo sale only for those above the age of 55 and is what they call a service flat. This means that a communal charge of €375 one gets security, a 24/7 service desk, access to communal recreational areas, window cleaner, medical assistance etc.
Further to that, very little to be found in our price bracket in Amsterdam…..
Moving on, across the North Sea, to London! Now there’s a city notorious for it’s insane house prices… Because I feel that at least the address should still officially have London in it, I limit myself to areas within the main circular roads.
Oddly enough, online searches in London result in many surprising finds. One of them is a houseboat in Ice Wharf Marina on the border of King’s Cross (bad) and Islington (very nice!) It therefore has easy access to public transport and is a short walk away from fashionable Upper Street. It’s tiny, with a maximum width of 1.83m, yet offers romantic potential.
It's very pretty, but I wonder how high the ceiling is...
All in ll it’s more or less 19m2, which is a little over 200 square feet. Small? Yes. Charming? Yes. And all this for £80.000,- which is £500 under our budget!
That bedroom would not fit MY bed..
The bedroom is hardly that. And I am not sure why there need to be two loos though… Maybe create one small bathroom and create a cupboard bed where he extra loo is now?”
I had to share this one with you by the way. It’s a tiny studio flat in posh and swanky Hampstead for a little over our budget at £99.800,- It measures less than 10m (110 square meters), with the main room measuring 2m40 2m70. It can do with some good decorating tips to make this a dream home. Maybe the tiny homes feature of Apartment Therapy can help the buyer with that?
2.4x2.7m.....
- Moving on to New York City.. the city that never sleeps and according to some that is because too many people can’t afford to sleep there.
I will never forget one of the bachelors in the first series of he Bachelorette inviting Christa to his studio flat in Manhattan. The horror on her face at such tininess was classic.
I am very curious what NYC has to offer for up to €100.000, which is approximately $129.000. The first couple of sites either tell me that unfortunately my search has not shown any results. On another site the first studio apartment I stumble across is on the market for $685.000….. so far not so good.
I decide to try to look on the real estates listings site of the New York times. There are actually a few available options for this money. Even on the island of Manhattan proper. On the most Northern tip, in historic(as the agent calls it) Hamilton Heights (I think that might be realtor’s lingo for gang ridden). It’s a 2 bed, 1 bath apartment comprising 820 square feet (about 72m2). There is a sitting room, separate dining room, kitchen, bathroom and two bedrooms. The main parts all face south to allow lots of sun to enter. It’s on the market for $125.000.
With the same agent a 2 bed, 1 bath is for sale in the same building. The building is a low income co-op with strict income restrictions and does not allow buyers with more than 120% median income.Unfortunately there are no pictures of the properties but this is a street view.
Looks a bit West Side Story-ish don't you think? Isn't that where Tony got shot?
I’ll go more exotic next time. But for now, this will do.
Posted in General living and fun stuff
Tagged Amsterdam, Gang ridden, globally, House Boat, London, New York, properties, Real Estate
Home voyeurs.... a peek into homes 