House Tour

Name: Katja and Minna
Location: Oulu, Finland
Square Footage: 667 square feet
Years Lived in: 7 months
Rent or own: rent
Describe your style:
Right now our style is very much in transition, I think. This is our first home together so we're still working on combining both of our styles and furniture into our home as well as figuring out a new style together. We're mixing old with new, trying to keep things simple and comfortable and hopefully not too boring.

What's your favorite free/found item?
Well a lot of our furniture has been free for us, given to us by relatives, it's hard to say which is our favorite piece since they all have different stories.

What's your favorite purchased item?
Our dining table. It was an inexpensive thrift store find and it seats 6 people so it's nice for when we have friends over.

What has been your biggest obstacle in decorating/design?
Our very strict budget. Also, this is our first home together so just trying to combine two people's belongings and make everything fit in the apartment has been somewhat a challenge. We didn't want to get rid of anything in a hurry or replace our old stuff with all new things but to make our things work in this space as well as possible.

Is your design style organic or planned?
Organic I guess. We're trying to work with the space we have and what we own.

What is your favorite spot in the house?
My (Katja's) favorite is the dining area, Minna's is her office space tucked in the hallway.

How has your style changed in the past 5 years?
Moving in together and combining our belongings has to be the biggest change for both of us.

What is your favorite resource or store?
For furniture: Thrift stores, Ikea and I have to say our relatives - we've had a lot of our furniture handed down to us by family. Marimekko and Ikea for fabrics.



What is your biggest decorating/design pet peeve?
If you don't put any of your own personality into your home decoration.

What has been your favorite design trend?
Well, we love Etsy and the whole affordable art thing, if you can call it a trend.

What is the biggest influence on your design/decorating style?
Blogs and flickr, I love seeing into real people's homes.

What in your home dictates how you design/decorate?
We're hoping to be able to buy a home of our own in the next few years and I guess it's in the back of our minds when decorating our apartment. When we moved in here we decided that even though this is meant to be a temporary home we would try to make it as nice as possible so that it doesn't feel like we are just waiting for our life in our "real" home to begin. But there are things that we've talked about doing here and then decided "oh well, we'll do it there in our future home when we have more space" and furniture we've decided to wait to purchase later on so that we'll be sure if it works in our future home. So I guess there's this feeling of temporary space, a little bit, here and it affects our decorating.



What is the simplest thing you have done that has made the biggest impact?
Painting. All the walls in the apartment were a cream color, it almost looked like they used to be white and then got old and dirty. We painted the bedroom blue and one wall in the living room green and all the rest of the walls in the apartment clean white. It made such a difference and it was a fun project to do together before moving in. And the company that's leasing the apartment to us paid for the paint so it was free too!

Don't forget to check out Katja's Blog: Nestled In.