Rue des Chartreux

Saturday was a reasonably sunny day! So I went for a stroll down Rue des Chartreux in central Brussels.
Back in 1998, my dad moved to this area while it was still firmly in the "up and coming" class of Brussels districts. It was not yet the style-conscious area it is now twelve years later, but we could see the potential. If we'd had the money to invest back then it would certainly have been THE place to buy a flat, prices have since more than tripled and the area is now firmly on the radar of the international design savvy types (design sponge for one!).
My dad has since moved on to Greece (ohwhatashame), but I still feel like Rue des Chartreux holds a little piece of home for me.

A.M. Sweet - Belgians are big tea lovers and always faintly surprised to hear that Brits don't really drink teas flavoured with violets, caramel or spiced apple. This is a tea-room and tea-shop, cosy and cute. Great chocolates too!

Le Greenwich - a Brussels institution. Art Nouveau decor, smoky, surly staff, and chess. Chesschesschess. Apparently frequented by Magritte back in the day, and pronounced Green Witch.

Franco Freres - used to be an ironmongers/pot maker/locksmith. Now a place to buy Art. If you can ever find out when it's supposed to open

The house my dad used to live in! It was not this bright back then...

Gabriele Vintage - amazing vintage fashion shop. I found a vintage Burberry coat for Matt in here, and some amazing accessories. Oh, and UK TV star Ruth Wilson (Jane Eyre, Small Island) was in there this Saturday (at least I think it was her!)

Espace Bizarre - sells designer furniture and accessories from Marimekko, Normann Copenhagen etc

Belgian humour - "Zinneke" sculpture by Franzen. Zinneke is a part of the Senne river that flows through (under) Brussels, and has come to mean "stray dog"...for some reason.

Some Schaerbeek

Just some pics of our local park, in the frost of an early morning.

and a small pic of Nina

EATS

We have ways and means....
Despite being fairly financially precarious this first half of 2010, due mainly to paying rent AND mortgage, we have a way (shh...it's a secret) to getting ourselves to some rather fine eateries in the next few months.
We decided we would take the opportunity to try the types of restaurants that would normally be out of our reach, and our first try was last week for our 3rd wedding anniversary.
Bonsoir Clara is a restaurant in the trendy Dansaert area of the city. It was opened in 2005 and has a bit of a mixed reputation. We were a little nervous as the reviews we read stated the food was overrated and the service pretty lousy, but we were pleasantly surprised. The waiting staff were pleasant, the food was excellent, and the setting was a hit too.

I would say the only slight minus is that it's not great value. I think you can get equally excellent food in Brussels for less.

We'll select another restaurant in a couple of weeks...

Bothersome

Just a quick update, so it doesn't seem I've fallen off the face of the planet in the last month...
renovation going slow, neighbours being obstructive...will update shortly with some Brusselsy stuff to cheer myself up :)

Kitchen cabinets

While Matt ets on with rewiring our aplce, we have a question of kitchen planning.
We've almost decided on Ikea for our kitchen - sources confirm that value for money they are the best option. If we had more money we might be able to get a better kitchen somewhere like Kvik http://www.kvik.com/fr-BE/kitchen/products/ - lovely deisgned kitchens but out of our budget

Ikea ideas:

modern!

wood?

I am quite tempted by two-tone kitchens. I picked up these pictures as inspiration

What should we do in our kitchen? It will be the middle room of the three-deep flat, and as such will have the least natural light. We have decided tht something traditional but not rustic in style would fit best, and we like Ikea Lindigo:

Essentially the idea would be similar to the one in the picture above, except our room is far taller and thinner, seen here from the back of the house, our future bedroom, then from the other side in mid destruction phase:

The wall on the side where the door is would run the main part of the kitchen, and we would put cupboards on the wall. With a wall height of over 3 metres, we could run 2 rows of wall cupboards like in the two-tone white/wood pic above. Which row should have the glass cabinets? Both, below or above?

More Art Nouveau Interiors

Here are some more pics of the Art Nouveau Biennale tours of this year. The first few are from a former school, designed and built by Henri Jacobs (one of the major contributors to Brussels architecture at the time) in 1907.

These are pictures of the frise decorating the main hall. All about educating the impressionable youth about the beauties of the world:

Here is some detailing:

These are interior shots from the Maison Cauchie. It is absolutely worth a visit, and open at other times than the Biennale http://www.cauchie.be/cauchie-house

Note the Mackintosh chair in the corner of the pic above

Finally, here are some pictures of the interior of a private house built in 1903 by Boelens. The ground floor interior is very reminiscent of the ground floor apartment in our future home.

I love the decor, but how do you get a working fireplace below a window?

you run the chimney breast off to the side!

Planning

Here is the situation - we have started renovations to our apartment, but we are blocked on many fronts as all owners (us and the other 3) need to make decisions about renovations to the shared spaces.
There is a certain dispute with the chimney-destroying-balcony-building neighbours above us, who are trying their hardest to win at all costs, even if that means sabotaging themselves in the process.
The nextdoor neighbour is called Michel, he is an architect and has drawn up some plans to help us work out where we can run the services - new gas and electric and new waste water pipes. While we still wait for agreement of all 4 owners for this plan, we cannot do the two main things we need to make our place liveable: HEATING and HOT WATER.
I am even prepared to put up with either/or, but it's winter and I think I am going to insist we keep the luxury of our current place until we have a light at the end of the tunnel....
So what can we do?

So far we have done DESTRUCTION. Remember this?

GONE

Remember our bathroom?

BARE (except we kept the loo for emergencies). We even took down the partition wall between the stairs and the loo.

The plan for this week is I will continue stripping wallpaper in the front and middle room, then remove the strange styrofoam ceiling tiles in the bathroom, and Matt and our good friend Adrien will take up the bathroom floor as it is sloping:

Next step will be to make some sort of wedge implement and lay a new chipboard floor surface over the joists.

That will be the bathroom READY for the bits we still have to all agree on...oh well.

Last week we went to pick up our electrics kit from Selfmatic http://bxlstyle.blogspot.com/2009/08/devastation-and-inspiration.html, and our handbook of instructions. Matt is studying it furiously and improving his technical french language skills in the process. We can do all our interior wiring and then await the new shared electrical wiring to be done.

We also intend to renovate the floors in the main rooms. They are pine floorboards and currently varnished clear. I'd quite like a darker tint like this:

pic from Fernando Floors

This is a floor stain to make pine look a bit more like oak.

So - cleaning, sanding, cleaning again, filling in the gaps with wood paste and tinting. No idea how long this will take, but hopefully all of this will be done by mid-January.

We can do a preliminary coat of paint on the walls after replastering where needed.

Will we be brave enough to move in by then? Or will we continue paying mortgage and rent for months? Or will we admit defeat and move back with my mum until we have heat and hot water? Or will our upstairs neighbour have destroyed the place so thoroughly that we will find her one day, standing amidst a pile of rubble that was our house, clutching one brick in her hand saying "I WIN! YOU LOOOOSE!"?!

Or was that just my bad dream from last night...?

Stay tuned!