Photography courtesy of House of Bullet.
It was a Sunday and as usual Arianne Bonthuis was perusing the Dutch real estate sites. Arianne and her husband, Derk, and their four young kids had long ago outgrown their Amsterdam apartment when a banner ad on Fonda.NL caught her eye.
A monumental beech tree, shown here in autumn, screens the house from the street.
The garden room, with new French doors, opens to a large backyard. The Calderesque Brass Leaves Mobile is by Lappalainen: read about the workshop in our post Living Above the Studio.
The rooms retained their tall ceilings, moldings, and fireplaces; the tall windows and baseboards are new. (Read our Remodeling 101: The Difference Between Herrington and Chevron Patterns).
A newly widened entry opens the living room to the library, the family’s homework and crafts room. Note the restored marble mantel: see its earlier state below.
There’s a reading chair and classic French Jieldé lights in the adjacent dining room.
The formerly closed-off ground floor rooms now flow into each other.
The family’s new kitchen, bigger and brighter than what was there, is an Ikea hack.
Ikea Metod cabinet bases are finished with Classic Style doors, drawers, and brass hardware from Noremax.
The pink subway tiles in a diagonal stack are Azulejos Detroit Rose from Dutch online source the Tegel Store.
Arianne and Derk found and painted the vintage countertop cabinet.
A Normann Copenhagen Phantom Lamp hangs in the upstairs hall, which formerly had blue linoleum flooring and stair treads.
In the upstairs home office: a wallpaper mural from Swedish source Photowall over an Ikea Ivar cabinet hack painted Willow II from the Paint & Paper Library.
Arianne and Derk’s room has an en suite bath and floral wallpaper from Boråstapeter, Sweden’s Oldest Wallpaper Company.
The wall behind the tub is painted Pink Peach from Vestingh.
The reconfigured attic is now divided into three kids’ bedrooms, each with painted antique furniture and accent walls papered with Boråstapeter botanical designs.
The attic beams were not only stripped of paint but repositioned.
The garden room had a porthole window that felt out of place.
Before
Doors closed off the living room and there were next to no baseboards.
The library’s marble mantel was damaged and the missing pieces were nowhere to be found.
Blue linoleum covered the second floor.