By the time we took lease of the house in Vilnius, it looked nothing at all like it did in the rental advertisement. Rental home decorating is not the
easiest. I mean, it's not your home, so you are typically constrained by
what your landlord allows you to do and also by common sense--again, it's not
your home, so do not spend all your hard-earned cash renovating someone
else's home. When I rented this home in Vinius I went in knowing that
the place needed a little sprucing up...o.k. a lot of sprucing up. The
pictures you've seen on the blog are no where near what I got. The home
needed a lot of paint work, the kitchen cupboards were falling out, chipped and dirty; and
some major industrial cleaning was needed. The landlord agreed to redeuce the rent because he had not done the necessary
pre-rental renovation. Score for me. Also, I really like the house and
it comes with two garages and a sauna. Given this is a snow-cold country, it's great to have a sauna and two garages! So I couldn't pass on it. Not to
mention that it is snuggly in the middle of a national park. Pretty
forest land. And, on the plus side for me, is that many things in
Lithuania cost on average 60 per cent less than what it would in Belgium. I
kid you not. (Belgium is the country of punitive taxation...which makes
everything super expensive). Lithuania only just started to use the Euro
in January 2015 and some (only some things) are still on the more
affordable side. Like paint. If you buy Lithuanian-made paint and light
colours that do not require a lot of pigment added to the base coat then
the paint comes at a really great price. And, my landlord, a really
nice guy, agreed to the painting of the tiles, walls and the removal of the
cupboards.
So
basically, I went into this home knowing that I wanted to make it
suitable to my needs. I am the one cooking in the kitchen, therefore I
decide what the kitchen looks like and how, functionally, it can work
best. So I threw out the cupboards (well I removed them and stored them
in the basement) and painted the dated backsplash wall tiles white. I
painted the kitchen a (somewhat) dark shade of grey and I installed
shelves instead, in place of the cupboards. Cost? Lots and lots of elbow
grease, sweat, and swears of frustration plus the cost of paint, nails,
brackets and wood for the shelves. It's almost finished and I love it
already.
What I needed was more kitchen storage and the shelves wouldn't have held all my tableware and pots and things. But I could not afford to, and did not want to buy my landlord a new kitchen...lol. So I went to the hardware store and found the cheapest treated wood I could find. All the wood cost 44 Euros in total. I had the hardware store cut the pieces to my specification. Cutting only cost 26 cents per cut. I also had to find a solution for my cooking spoons, strainers and crepe pans. I settled on these Ikea kitchen wall hangers. I think they work well with the black commode.That chest under the commode holds all my tupperware and other plastic storage containers.
I didn't want to paint the shelves grey but wanted them to connect with
the grey walls, so I used grey brackets and painted just the ledge of the
shelves grey-- also, allowing the natural wood colour on the shelf to coordinate/colour match with the counter tops. I did not change the lower cabinets. But I gave them a good scouring with some steel wool (like a good Jamaican girl). I keep my grocery in the lower cupboards along with my big family-size cooking pots.
The Chinese figurine are stuff I collected over the years at the Marche Aux Puces in Brussels and the vases and jugs I bought 10 years ago at the Marshalls in Maryland.
The glassware, tea cups, etc. are from my favourite street in Brussels, Rue de Brabante. I love shopping with the Arabs ( Moroccans really) and the Turks. They always have great tableware and tea service things. Always.
These cookbooks are not just for show. They are covered in greasey finger prints because I love to get inspiration from them, so I never keep these on a book shelf. They always have to be near the pot! I love Ina Garten (the Barefoot Contessa) and I also follow a lot of her advice for keeping a functional kitchen. One of her tips is to keep little tea spoons in a glass near the stove. You always need a clean spoon for adding seasoning, for dipping in the mustard jar and for tasting. Also, when you move, a lot of stuff gets re-purposed or used differently. If you saw t
he blog post of my old Brussels master bathroom, you may recognise this painting above the napkin holder. It used to hang above my bathroom commode, right above a towel holder. It's come full circle, hasn't it? (Giggles...)
Ikea drawer dividers and caddies came in very handy! All my serving spoons, chopsticks etc. found a nice little home in the commode. I am rubbish at the picture-taking, I know.
This commode underwent a transformation too. I bought it at a brocante shop in Brussels. I mended its broken parts, added some wood putty over some rough edges and painted it black. And then I roughed it up a bit. Just because... The inside is painted purple. It holds my other cookbooks ( I buy a cookbook in every country I visit...), my favourite family photos (like one of my aunt on our trip to Venice) and my prized Czech antique tea set which I got at...you guessed it...the Marche Aux Puces in Brussels.
When it's all done, I'll get a professional to come and take better pictures. Promise. Happy weekend!
