Monday, April 17, 2006

Good Friday DIY

Good Friday and Easter Monday are holidays in many European countries and we really enjoyed (and needed) the four days off. The weather was a mix of sunny and cloudy periods, followed by showers, so very typical for April here, and that, every day. Perfect to do things you never get the time to do anyway.

A couple of weeks ago, we went to Interio, a furniture and household decoration store and bought an extension for OrangeX’s wall closet. Note: Built-in closets are almost non existant in Europe, except maybe for smaller broom closets. Since he partially works from home and his office is also his dressing room, we were running out of space for binders and stuff. Our three closets are modular systems so that you can extend them when needed. Anyway, the extra units were delivered on Thursday morning. Orange is just like a kid at Christmas then, so late that afternoon, he started to clear out his wall closet and filing cabinets and began mounting the extensions. What a mess! There were clothes, binders and books all over the place!

At 8 pm, I voted to continue the next day. We did and the whole project was completed by Friday afternoon. YAY for the DIY’ers! I didn’t have the time to take a picture of it before, because OrangeX had already taken a lot apart by the time I got home from work, but it now looks like this:


Our plans for next weekend? We’ll be driving by the local dump to get rid of the old cupboards and all the packaging that came with the new stuff that is now piled up in our basement.

8 comments:

Ginnie Hart said...

You're right, CS, about the 4-day Easter holiday. In fact, when we get to the Hannover apt. this afternoon (we're still at the Paris airport), we won't be able to do grocery shopping becauce of the holiday. Oh well. A small price to pay.

I love seeing how you've taken care of closet space. If we were here all the time, we'd need to figure out something similar. I love Orange-X's curved desk :)

CanadianSwiss said...

Ginnie - A small price to pay indeed. I'm sure that you know plenty of cozy little restaurant to have dinner at until tomorrow :-)

Mr. Fab - I think we do, but see?? We're stupid enough to work anyway!

Unknown said...

It looks like something we desperately need. But I just can't break down and get a DIY because the quality here is about a -10! I'm positive they make the materials different switzerland, but I wish I knew why!

I think you accomplished a lot for the holidays... :)

CanadianSwiss said...

I guess it depends where you go. I'm not that familiar with Canadian DIY stores. But this is not to be compared with Ikea. Ikea is fine if you mount it once, but if you move and have to de- and re-assemble it twice, the screws and hinges will let you down, that's for sure.

Mark said...

Ginnie - I had that desk for many years and yes, I love it too. It has 3 levels: left part (lowest part) can be pulled out to the side to extend the working space, the middle part is curved and fixed and the right part is elevated and attached with a pivot point, so you can adjust the angle in any direction. It's really convenient.

Mr. Fab. - I'll let you in on a secret. I bought a closet for dummies. Sooo easy to mount that even I can do it :-) SO you se, no special genes needed.

Expat - I always enjoy doing something completely from every day work. I love renovating and building things but as long as we have a rental house I'll leave the walls where they are and leave the constellation untouched. One day we'll have our "own" house again and then....TOOL TIME! Howr, howr, howr...

Unknown said...

I'm glad you think Ikea is a great fix. I love the Interio store. Maybe we will find something in the states like that.

And Orange - I'm right up there with you on hoping one day we'll have a house to do all those rennovations ourselves. (But prices here keep climbing - up about 200K since I've lived in West Coast Canada.)

Ms Mac said...

I popped into an Interio for the first time a couple of weeks ago. I loved it!

CanadianSwiss said...

Ms. Mac - I never leave that store empty handed, even if it's just a flower pot!