Colours and Rooms 1

I have moved house several times in my life, and fear, that those moves are not over yet.

One of my great regrets is that I always had to live - that is, from my 19th year - in rented houses and appartments, so that the feeling of being "chez moi" never could sink in really really deep. I wonder how it feels? Must feel nice though...
But I do not complain, as I am very near to house heaven right now in my new abode here in Brussels. It is coming slowly together and I have tremendous fun in choosing colours and curtains - in a small way and even smaller budget, but all the same.

At home, in Bavaria, my parents, and especially my mother was most indulgent in letting me and my brother Gotthard live out our dreams of interior decorations - in a sort, she was "happy that we did it". We were polishing floors, painting rooms and doors, discussing houses and concepts, studiying the Villa Wittgenstein in Vienna, looing through books without end and hearing Caruso while dreaming up THE necessary ideas of making our house and home beautiful. I was feeling as happy as could be in those years. I still live on them now.

 I remember distinctly deciding a day, that the guest loo in the ground floor was in dire need of being done up - so I went to the villages chemists, bought a small sack of pigments for a really small sum f money, made my mother drive me to the next little town to buy some paint and off I went, happily renovating the guest loo. There were some things I could not change, but I changed the mirror for a nicer one which I had found in the house, my mother got inspired too and sew some garmets to cover a hitherto plain wooden  table, which afterwards looked so much more pretty and welcoming than ever before. I painted the space around the little sink with oilproof paint and the door and the window in a gleaming new white: we had a framboise coloured loo, white and lovely doors, a display of white kleenex, some new soap and fresh white guesttowels piled up - and that was it.

I still do admire my mother for her nerve. If one of my children would start to do my house up in their sort of idea of being chic and elegant, I would most probably go ballistic and get most certainly horribly protective about my home. My mother was more the type if joining in, with great fun and following our lead. We had a lovely home, believe me.

I only late had a room for my own - I was 17 I think and I painted it in a first go in a sky blue, later then in a deep and warm peach - more tending to terracotta, if I think about it. I asked one of my other brothers to drive me to Ikea and bought a lovely little sofa. Mami made me simple white cotton curtains and I got the old iron bed down from the attic -  today my youngest son sleeps in it. I loved my room at home.

My rooms as a student in Munich were always nice and simple - and as G. says, looked "always the same" - I suppose, my house now here, 20 years later, looks all the same again.

When I moved to Portugal, we restored a rented appartment and painted the whole flat in a deep yellow, unheard at the time in Lisbon. There it was the habit of painting rooms generally always in white, because of the heat, I suppose.  And, I do admit, it looks very beautiful with the 18th century Azulejos, blue and white tiles on the walls and an ox-blood red tiled floor. But I felt more at home with yellows - remembered me of baroque austrian walls and all.

After that,  my colour choices have been decided by landlords ever since - until now. I have reverted to all the colours of the rainbow - very un-chic in the current times of belgian colourschemes like taupe, brown and off white in the now famous Style Flamand. Which can be very elegant, I admit, I was there at the Sablon with friends only yesterday and am always impressed in the sheer scale of presentation of a full blown decoration scheme - "from the cradle to the grave" -  to be found there. No need to have ideas of your own. It is place for pilgrimage for all coming to Brussels and I pop in, whenever I have time to know what is going on.

But as the weather is already grey and darkish, I somehow want more colour for my own home and have painted "my little hut" in bright yellows and greens. Until now, I think it is wonderful and cosy.

As you now me by now and might well imagine, I have always ideas about interiors. Will write a post soon with some ideas about colour schemes for rooms. Give me just some time....