• History & Design
  • 8Jan

    8 Comments

    Do you think you can buy a house for the price of dinner?

    No, you’re wrong – you can!  (Assuming you said no)

    You might remember some articles I’ve posted about my brother Peter in Sweden. He is becoming quite the name back home as his passion to rescue beautiful old buildings and villages is getting a big following.  (You can check out a previous post here on what crimes modern society commits.)

    Well, he might be up to the biggest task yet…When the old station house in Molkom  (20 minutes from my house back home) was going to be torn down, he stepped in, and this time in a very personal way.

    He bought it.

    This beautiful old bud building that once was a working elegant train station has seen years of wear and tear and neglect. It’s been everything from a pizzeria, to school rooms, to office building, but the decision finally came to tear it down. It was said it had bad water damage, and all kinds of problems and was no longer worth keeping.

    Much to the dismay of people in town.

    Many of the old homes just don’t fit in to modern way of life.

    This is how it looks today. Yes, in need of a serious makeover!

    So my brother stepped in and convinced the city not to tear it down instead to sell it to him, and yes they thought it was trash, so he got this whole house for the the price of a really good dinner.

    Yes, it’s true.

    When we were home for Christmas he was on the cover of all the local papers.

    People love when someone rescues old houses and turn them back to their old beauty.

    Thank You Peter for inspiring us all!

    The plan was that a local TV station back home was making a series of the revival of this house for television, and that local artisans would get involved. But as luck had it the TV station folded.  So now we’re looking for Plan B. The plan is to turn the house back in to it’s original state and make the inside an “office hotel”.

    Office space for entrepreneurs.

    We all went out on a cold (of course) but sunny day, to visit.

    Inside the ugly exterior the old wood work still exists.

    Can’t wait to follow this renovation! It has to get to warmer temperatures before any of this can begin.

    This is where people stood to wait for the train over a hundred years ago. Looking a lot fancier than us!

    The train still passes here four times a day.

    The inside has left overs from the various lives of the house. This room was an educational facility.

    Unfortunately all the old interior details from train station life have been removed.

    Left overs from a pizzeria.

    These are the old windows with moss in between the glass. This is something they did to make the windows less drafty in cold temperatures.

    We went across the street to a little cafeteria and saw this in the window….

    A GINGERBREAD COPY OF THE OLD STATION HOUSE!!

    I’m so happy my brother took the risk to take this on. Clearly it’s a beloved building in this little town.

    How can we just tear down our history?

    What are we leaving our future generations?

    I’m so excited to do what I can to help Peter complete this.

    Who knows…perhaps this is the perfect project for “This Old House”?

    Do you have any great ideas? A contracting company? A TV station?  Feel like being adventurous?

    Seriously CALL ME.

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  • 26Jul

    5 Comments

    The selection of this house for the fearless home series was my brother’s excellent idea. In the late 1800′s in Sweden when most interiors had dark wood furniture and a very serious vibe. Famous artist Carl Larsson and his wife Karin designed their home with strong wild colors, and all kinds of crazy painter happiness. You might have seen some of his famous paintings of this beautiful home.

    This couple was seriously ahead of their time!  Their home still serves as insane inspiration hundred years later.

    At a time when people had dark dining sets, theirs was bright red.

    He painted lots and lots of paintings of his family in their home.

    Happy entrance.

    Red floor in the 1800′s? How cool.

    Image via lotten blog.

    How clever…a sleeping cabinet? Bold blue DIY chairs 100 years before it was popular.

    His son’s colorful desk.

    The main area. Check out the green lines defining the walls. Move over Lonny magazine…!!

    Another happy sleeping alcove.

    This was Carls’ bedroom.

    Karin’s home made room divider.

    Don’t you want to just go home and paint your walls after seeing this?

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  • 28Feb

    9 Comments

    In honor of last nights Academy Awards I thought I would post something that I’ve always drawn a lot of inspiration from. Movie legends in their homes from Hollywood’s golden era. I’m not necessarily interested in it because they were stars, but they each represent the best in design and fashion of the era they lived in.  And they made it all look so good!! Looking at their homes it’s not hard to see where many interior designers, furniture designers and fashion designers draw inspiration from even today.  Maybe we like it so much because it evokes an era when we could fantasize about their lives, that were so perfectly constructed by a PR agency and happily void of any depressing reality?

    Marilyn Monroe with Arthur Miller. Simple lawn chairs in Connecticut never looked so glamorous!

    Photographed in a peach shirt with an intriguing geometric background.

    Marilyn Monroe in her fairly simple Hollywood House. Blue walls, mid century design…could be in a home today.

    Then there’s Frank Sinatra who made the Palm Springs 60-70′s look famous.

    Frank and Yul Brynner by his swimming pool. Are low slung mid century buildings and plastic pool chairs cool? Or did they make it just oh-so-cool?

    This is Frank Sinatra’s living room. There are so many elements in here that are still so completely fashionable. The lamp, the sideboard,the screens, the shag…

    The capiz light fixture – an exact copy of that is around today. The geometric chairs.

    Bogie and Bacall on their terrace in Hollywood Hills. Dreamy.

    The king himself– on a straight armed sofa and gold gourd lamps. Right out of a shelter magazine today?

    That chair…haven’t I seen an almost exact replica of it in the Viceroy hotel?

    Ava Gardner in her London apartment with fiery orange walls.

    John Wayne at home. Sofa and lamp…is this Jonathan Adler?

    Sofia Loren in her fancy Rome apartment living like a glamour girl.

    Whether fashion or interiors, they were eternally stylish…

    The great Kate…blazer, white short, men’s pants leaning on a zebra chair.

    Brigitte Bardot running around St Tropez, has inspired Guess campaigns for two decades.

    Classy beauty Catherine Deneuve with Yves St Lauren look dressed for a fashion show today.

    And how modern does Audrey Hepburn look? Her bike, her outfit her haircut…and her dog.

    Perhaps great style never becomes dated?

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  • 10Jul

    3 Comments

    We’re finally back in the US. I need to to apologize for all the typos and errors in the previous post. Trying to quickly write a blog post with a spotty internet connection in a house filled to the brim with family and little children was beyond challenging! I’ve been traveling without a computer for two days, and was not able to correct it. So sorry!

    Our last night staying at Haringe Palace was my favorite part of the trip. It’s a Gothic castle dating back as far as 1289, and is famous for it’s ghosts. If you ever visit Stockholm I highly recommend spending a night there. The second you arrive you feel like time has stood still for hundreds of years. We were disappointed to find out we would not be sleeping in the main area of the castle. But at the end of the night, we were very happy we didn’t.

    After a long winding drive on a tree lined street, we arrived to this.

    The second we entered we felt like guests in someone’s castle. There was no front desk, instead you rang a bell and a very friendly person came to help you. We now had free roam of a place with historical interiors that would make anybody swoon. Feeling shutter happy I quickly ran to the back of the hall…

    …old armors greeted us in every corner. This one guarded a Gothic dining area.

    The wood paneling in here came from a castle in Scotland 400 years ago. This room is supposedly haunted by a Scottish ghost. He’s very friendly – unless you step on his toes….

    I quickly ran upstairs to explore and take some pictures, while there was still beautiful light.

    This is one of the upstairs salons. Several of these images are from the hotel website.

    The bar with the Swedish Tenn fabric on it, had me swooning. The rooms were completely empty as I wandered about. I went in to the next room….

    …and was stopped in my tracks by a creepy stare from the lady in this painting. When I realized this is the female ghost in the red robe that forced the hotel to bring in a medium and redesign the space, I got chills. Yikes! I didn’t enjoy being alone in the room with her.

    There have been many sightings of her watering the plants in the dining hall. The medium suggested adding a wall with mirrors to stop her from pushing dinner guests. Apparently it works.

    I stayed long enough to take a picture of the stunning botanical wallpaper.

    Every single room was a feast for the eyes. I loved this pink and red vignette!

    This stair case lead to…

    …the castle’s underground tunnel.

    Luke refused to go any further when we got to the old prison cell.

    The castle has two main wings with elegant suites.

    This is the Greta Garbo suite. She stayed here a long time ago. She must have liked the peace and quiet here.

    After roaming around we had the most delicious dinner out by the pool. We all gave the dinner a “10″.

    Later we decided to take a walk to the ocean. As if the beauty inside the castle was not enough…the ocean front location blew us away.

    Down at the dock we enjoyed the beautiful view.

    After walking through the castle, none of us were in the mood for a cold ocean dip.

    Instead went bowling in the castle’s bowling alley from 1929. It’s the oldest working bowling alley in Sweden.

    One thing is for sure. I can’t wait to visit again. I’m imagining a snowy, cold winter day arriving here for dinner…

    P.S.

    Before we left in the morning we checked out the scroll on the wall which listed the castle’s owners for the last 1000 years. We were a little surprised to see the names of the last few…

    …Hartvig Sorensen happens to be my two last names.

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