Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Kitchen dreams



A dream kitchen! This is the first kitchen designed with modular units, by the Dutch designer Piet Zwart. It's been produced from 1937 till 1960. One of the biggest kitchen-fabricants of the Netherlands still has it in it's collection. It reminds me so much of the kitchen of my grandma, with the little glass boxes underneath the cabinets! Most of the elderly people hate it, because it used to be everywhere, it was the basic project-kitchen of the country.
Really basic, but oh so charming! Would fit perfectly in our 1950's house. Love the tiles in the pics too...



 

Around the house





  

Trying to save some of my fig-tree (love the shape of those leaves!) and the pretty double-flowered oakleaf hydrangea from our current garden.




Hydrangea quercifloria 'Cloud nine'

Thursday, July 12, 2012

Project in-between



For the new house we've bought a 50's Dutch design table and separate 4 50's Dutch chairs. The furniture has elegant lines, the table can be made bigger by pulling the sides and inserting an extra piece (hiding underneath) in the middle.
I knew that in the 50's Dutch furniture fabrics used mainly teak and palisander wood. Both are hardwood. Palisander has a dark reddish brown color and teak has a grey-brown color with a hint of red tones. Teak has a high oil content and is very durable. The chairs are also very comfortable.
I loved the shapes but didn't like the dark reddish brown fifties color. So I decided to sand away the dark varnish...




I used a rubber sanding block and it wasn't easy to get the deeper layers of varnish off! I'm halfway with the first chair and quite pleased with the results.
Once everything is ready I have to get some light colored, good quality upholstery fabric instead of the original green artificial leather to cover the seats. I'm looking forward to the sewing part of the job! The wood will be treated with oil or perhaps a thin layer of clear matte varnish.
To be continued!


 

 

  

UPDATE:
The color of the wood doesn't seemed even, and it took forever to get rid of the varnished layer, so I decided to stop with sanding the chairs and painted the chair back in the original color... One thing I'm going to do is to change the original artificial leather cushions into a lighter colored upholstery fabric.