The promised floor...

You know my living room, you know my situation thus you know my Linoleum floor.

Let's get to work.

Preparations

Ikea's parquet has many advantages, it is smooth, well crafted, elegant once installed and the upper layer is REAL wood ( one millimeter but it is the thought that counts ^_^ ), besides the price is really interesting.

Doing it alone is possible, although quiet difficult so I did ask Fred to lend me a hand because let's face it, Two working penguins are more fun to watch.

So the planned Saturday I woke up early and with some unrepeatable cussing I moved all the content of the living room ( remember it? it was the pile under the plastic sheet while I was painting) into the bedroom.

Results may be seen in this lovely caption.

My bed is somewhere there....

happiest chap of the house was my Ficus who follows me patiently in my self induced Belgian nomadism since about the first moment and that has been moved around the flat two days straight.

I'm convinced of plants having feelings, I do suspect they have some form of reasoning, I'm thus very happy they do not have the gift of words.

One foul mouthed inhabitant is more than enough.

Praise the Lord and pass the hammer

First part of this work is to put a plastic layer over the floor as insulation, in fact that done you can directly put the planks on it without dismantling the previous floor. Quiet the advantage I have to say.



One of the problems I was painfully conscious off, from the other side, is that this room has an oblique wall.

Putting the plastic wasn't that bad, one cutter cut later it was placed.



Sadly Wood is a bit more pigheaded and a cutter will not do much about it, so i knew what was coming...

Anyway I was quiet proud of myself and at 10 in the morning everything was moved, plastic was laid and we were ready to rumble.

Piece of cake...

Three hours LATER...

Do you still remember my Kitchen?

I thought it was the only inflatable room of my house but apparently I was wrong.

Putting a wood floor means put the first strip against the wall as a guide and then build the rest following that.

No matter how many time we tried, arrived to the third strip the floor was a mess and it seemed that no strip could fit with the other ones.



After the sixth time we unmounted and restarted I was on the verge of crying as I calculated how much IKEA would have asked me to do it for me.

Believe it or not it was then that my screwdriver fell on my hand, rolled on the floor and rested against said wall.

I crouched to retrieve it and noticed that the shadow on the wall was strange.

It took me a second to realize it, then I came back with a spirit level and confirmed my intuition.

Bloody walls are curved.

Some heavy cussing ensued as we unmounted once more the planks and started again using the spirit level as a guide this time.

After 45 minutes the first three rows were set and the floor was stable enough to be started thus we could allow ourselves a little lunch pause.



Intermission.

Fred is my MC, he loves to eat, he loves to have good time, he loves to drink. You want to party? Just follow my bro.

That said on work he is theutonically inflexible, no rich food or he will get sleepy, pass the sandwiches.

I was ready to cook and was demoted to sandwich fixer, nonetheless I took my revenge fitting two heavy homemade bread slices ( recipe to follow) with Ham, cheese, horseradish sauce and red krauts.

CROOOOOOM!!

To drink we had the REAL construction workers beer: Cara-pils.

Cara-pils is such a bad beer that in comparison Budweiser actually tastes good.

So what does that thing do in my fridge I hear you ask? Well, it is quiet an acceptable ingredient for Venus' beer ( another recipe for later ^_^).

Couple of belches later we were ready to start again.

Second halftime.

From there on there were really little problems.

A broken hammer

The door had to be reduced to adapt it to the new height of the floor.

And , naturally, the issue of the diagonal wall, which was brilliantly solved by Fred using a piece of cardboard.

All you see took two days of work, but actually only three hours on sunday ( which means that in fact without the wall issue we could have finished the first day)



Linoleum is no more and nobody wastes tears on it, now we can pass to phase 2: Furniture.

TO IKEA!! Go Go Go!

I love those quiet snack moments before the storm....

Dear friend of mine writes me a mail asking more informations on Hummus and, eventually, the recipe.

For info and story of the dish, Wikipedia is your friend, for complete recipe, just keep reading :)

Hummus:

Ingredients for two:

- A can of chickpeas.
- A spoon of Tahini sesame cream.
- Two tea spoons of lemon juice.
- One or two garlic cloves ( depends if cuddling or a job interview follows)
- Nice pinch of salt.
- Olive oil.

Garlic is not there because it is camera shy ( true story)

Execution.

- Open the can and drip the liquid in a galss ( you might need it later)



- Mash the chickpeas using a mixer and add ( if needed) the liquid so to have a smooth cream.




- Salt, do not be shy. It has not to be salted, but the peas are sweet enough to require a bit of it.


- Pour a spoon of Tahini cream ( not too full, this stuff has a strong taste).



- Add the two tea spoons of lemon juice.



- Add a little olive oil



- Crush the garlic and add it to the cream.




- Cover the hummus and let it rest in the fridge for at least two hours.



- Drop a bit of olive oil just for the taste and then you can eat it.



You need bread that you simply dip in it, this is libanese bread, but you can use any sort of soft bread ( do not use hard crusted bread, taste not that good ).

A little note, Tahini is not that easy to find unless you live in a town that has an arab quarter.

And now it's me and you Linoleum!!

The new living room

There is a room that I completely forgot about till now and that is the living room.

Right behind the kitchen, with just the low wall to divide it from my cooking battlefield, this room contains a good third of the focal points of my house, meaning the Nintendo Wii, the DVD player, my TV set and the Popcorn media player.




The Living room was yet in the same condition I found it.

Painted in a disgusting creamy tone and with a dirty-white (that made it look dirty even if you cleaned it) linoleum as flooring.



In fact cleaning it only made it shine making the black spots even more visible.

On top of that ( on top?) the plastic was cracked and in certain points you could see the underlying concrete.

Now, enough was enough and you understand that that room had to go.

Battleplan was divided in three phases:

- Wall painting

- Flooring

- Furnitures

Room is quiet large, about 323 squared feet so each of those three phases will need at least a couple of days to complete.

That considered, I realized that three week ends of the year are doomed, adding up more days to the count of the ones I already work in instead of resting myself ^_^''

The colors

Wall colors were clear to me from the first moment.

This room is the fuel chamber of the engine of the house ( the corridor) and almost all the light enters from here and arrives directly to the bedroom.

Dark and cold colors are thus unacceptable and I already planned to use red in my bed room later this year, thus yellow was the only option.

Naturally, if you have to do something, why not complicate it? So I decided for two different yellow, a darker glossy one that was painted on the walls till about 2 feet from the ceiling and a clearer mat one that was given on said ceiling and on the remaining unpainted portion of the walls.

To "melt" the two layers, so that they do not look so neatly cut, I did plan on mixing the two colors together going from dark to lighter tone and giving the color in multiple short overlapping layers.

Work needed 6 days to be completed.

Everyone will object that there are NOT such as week-ends of six days and I have to agree on that, thus I used up a week in which my work was scheduled in the afternoons and worked in the morning at the painting.

This gave my colleagues the one time opportunity to see me arrive to work with hair colored in different tones of yellow and painting in most unspeakable parts of my body.

Logistics

When the floor will be set I will have to move all the present furnitures out of the room ( that or pass "Telekinesis I" with Mrs Grey ) right now I can just mass them in the center of the room and cover them with a plastic sheet



Covering the floor itself proved useless.

First, the color is plastic and thus you can just wait that it dries and get the whole spot away from the floor.

Second, that linoleum had to be covered thus a couple of yellow spots makes no difference.

The instruments

Seen that I was alone and had a short time to work on it and, last but not least, I'm a geek I bought myself a little gadget.



This lovely instrument allows you to suck the paint inside the body as a syringe would, after that using the handle you push it out through the roll.



So till the piston is not at the end of it's course, you do not have to go for more paint.



This and the fact I had not to dab it bought me a lot of time :)


To fade the colors I resorted to an old tecnique of mine when I was a miniature collector, brushings.

Thus I took a sponge and, after binding it with some tape and cutting it roughly I had a crude but effective brush.




To dab the eccess paint I rolled some kitchen paper around my arm.



Let's get started.

First part consisted in delimiting the "playing field with some tape.


Then paint the lower half.



Once dry ( technically I could do it after half an hour, God bless Acrylic vinilic paints) I took the tape off and inversed the border then I started painting the upper half and the ceiling.




I then removed the tape again ( Cursing and cussing as it ripped off some portions of the paint in the process) and did the highlights.



End of first part.

Here is the final result.

I can assure you that the faintest ray of sunlight that enters the room lights it up.



First part accomplished, now dearest linoleum, it is YOUR time!

Happy Holidays

Brussels is cold in winter and usually it rains.

That happens in all seasons, but at least in winter it makes sense, which, for a land in which nothing is logic, is quiet the achievement.



For a Christmas lover like myself the market in Square St Katrien still holds its magic and I try to go there each year.



It is a starting point for your own Christmas, not the one of the food slaughter, of the due presents and of the obligatory toasts.



If you, as me, still have good memories of that particular season of the year it is the moment to close your eyes, to control your breath and search inside yourself

Search for that smell of pine and cinnamon, that cold broken by your warm house walls, the sound of laughters and the light of the candles reflected in the eyes.

It is the moment to search for the one that you love.

Even if you know that you did not give them all you had this year, it does not matter, go to them and let them know that you're happy to have spent a year in their company and happier that you will be able to spend one more.

It is the moment to close the world outside and, in that deafening silence, look inside yourself, and find that, be it as it may be, there is at least one person that wants to stand by you in that cold winter night.

Open your eyes and go.




That person is waiting for you.



Merry Christmas to all of you.

Intermission!

Reading this blog you may be under the impression that I'm some kind of Monk, sleeping eating, decorating when I'm not working.

Nothing falser than that and if I was as such, considering I live in one of the more party going town in the world, that would be an unforgivable sin.

Finding a way to spend the night is not difficult and, in fact, you only have the problem of choosing, so this is how I treated myself with a good Party

St Nicklaus.

A party for St Nicklaus? why not :)

What? It IS his fest no?

Nath's Radio organized a huge party yesterday night and I thought it was a perfect way to spend the evening.

Nath is one of the more beloved members of my Brussel's family and if she is in need of help " no" is not even considered an option.

So since a couple of years, each time the radio organizes this event I'm behind the bar through the night.

I have fun, I spend a different evening, I dance, I drink (not much in fact, being behind the counter somehow dampens your passion) and watch funny events unfold.

So, around 23, as I promised, I entered the Pathe palace ready to rumble.

HA! Tom Cruise can kiss my butt!

Tactical Briefing

Party opens always at 20 and till 23 you do not pay to enter (allowing thus a huge number of people to enter already the party) thus when I arrive at 23 the party is already in its full swing.




There are two dance floors, the first is the one at the basement were the bar is.

There I spend my night and the music is a mix of classic dance with some disgression to Rock, Punk, Ethno, Garage, Reggae, world and all that jazz.




First floor is a more modern kind of dance hall with a mix of Techno, Trance, Speed, Goth, so, long story short , all the kind of music that gives to a disco a bad reputation.

The floor console is placed right of the bar counter and this allows for two things.

First, we can give our thirsty Dj's something to drink, second one is that you get your ears well and thoroughly drummed.

When I leave the Palace at 6 AM I'm that deaf that I have to take extra care on the streets going home (I swear that if a truck came at me I would not be able to hear it ^_^).

To pay for your drinks you pay using special tickets that are to be bought at the ticket boot, first floor. This fact is quiet important because I assure that I spend a third of my night sending back people that arrive to the bar and want to pay with money.

They protest, huff, puff, swear, curse, then climb the stairs, get the bloody tickets and order like everyone else . Oh the humanity...

We work in a team trying not to trow too much fluids at each other nor step on each other's feet on a floor that, going on with the night, becomes unbelievably sticky ( I once saw a barman fall flat on his nose, she got glued to the floor).

Around 4 the floor is so sticky you fight to walk, from the other side, gum of your soles have an aderence that would make an indy pilot jealous.

Customers are your best clock, from their faces and reaction you can understand what time it is more precisely that using your watch: between one and two in the morning they start to falter, around three they hesitate a second in giving you the tickets ( they are considering which of the three hands is the right one) .

At five they directly put the tickets on the floor ( Bloody counter moved, I swear mate) and after six they are in such state that even beer has a second of repulsion before surrendering and passing their gullet

Girls are even sweeter, when the party is starting they smile while ordering, later the night they offer their... Ah... Huge tracts of land a bit too liberally and in the morning they just put their proud chests on the counter and pretend a barrel of beer in exchange of a single ticket because they are giving you the otpion to look-but-not-touch.

B- cup? C-Cup?.... D-cup!!

Couples are a particular case though, if one of the two gets drunk before the other you have one of the behaviour I just listed.

That said if they arrive to synchronize themselves, in front of the counter you suddenly find yourself in the middle of Inspiration point.

Problem is that they cannot really control their bodies at this point and thus you assist to scenes like the one yesterday night in which I saw some guy making out with his beloved one and losing it, drooling all over her gray pullover.

She has looked at him for a second, repeated to herself that she loved him (took, I think, all of the three minutes she used) and decided to overlook the little incident.

Music

Radio Campus has seasoned veterans that never let you down.

Sadly Pierre was sick yesterday thus we missed him at the gears, that said there is a moment I look always forward to and it is when my friend Tristan, aka Dj Xogn ( You cannot pronounce that? Who cares?! HE IS GOOD!)

Koulgraouuuuul! :)

Tristan is not your average Dj, his music is full of rythm certain, but rarely it is plain dance music.

He puts together a mix of rock, pop, ethnic and God only knows what else in such a skilled way that you do not find strange that you're dancing to a senegalese music followed by the Clash then Screaming Jay Hawkins to end up with soul music ( Soul? BLOODY HELL! I'M DANCING SOUL??).

After he is over it is almost impossible that the floor is relaxed and it was a mortal sin that after that yesterday night he gave us an exceptional workout some random gal opened her Mac book, connected to the console and gave us some trashy techno jam session that would not have been out of place in a belching competition.

Floor got gradually empty as people bought their drinks, and left the room searching for some good music.

Meanwhile the idiot was completely lost in her self creation and did not care whatever happened.

I had the longest hour and half my entire life and have to admit that never, NEVER in my life I went so close to ( pardon my french) shit on a Mac book.

Curtain call.

Thanks to said idiot, evening ended quicker than usual and around five, me, Fred and Nath decided that we had enough of that and left.

I arrived home, hungry, tired, with aching feet, stinking like an ash tray (no smoking allowed in pubblic places? Let me laugh) deaf and in need of a shower more than of air.

It is always good to take part to a good party :)

To next year!