Giving new life-DIY Project

When I first moved to Barcelona I noticed that there were plenty of furniture and home accessory thrown away on the streets. Later I researched and apparently here for every neighbourhood there is a day during the week when people can get rid of all their unwanted belongings, leave them on the streets (next to the rubbish bins, of course) and in case someone likes something they can take it, if not, later in the evening of the same day all of the unwanted pieces are collected and thrown away. So I guess this is kind of recycling. I also noticed that there actually were people that collect some of the things, repair them and reuse them or in some cases sell them. I really liked this idea of giving new life to the old unwanted furniture and because I was in a desperate need of a small coffee table in my room, I decided instead of being, I’m going to start “looking” around for something interesting. And there it was after a few days i saw a big pile of wooden shelves and cupboards and also an old, broken chair. I pictured the chair as a table and I took it. Fortunately it wasn’t too heavy. and I had to carry it only a few blocks away.

I cleaned it, repaired it and repainted it. I found it hard to choose a colour, because i wanted something playful and fun. My bedroom is colourful enough though, so I sticked to the favourite, clean and minimalistic white. At one point I was thinking of removing the back of the chair, making it look more like a proper table, but I didn’t have the right tools and honestly I preferred to leave it as a chair. It kind of adds uniqueness.

I struggled to find the right top for my “table”, until one day again hidden in a pile of unwanted ‘junk’ I found this marble round top, which was a perfect fit.

And this is it now my cute little corner. I loved the whole creative and looking for parts process. It is always nice, at least for me, to try to look for solutions and redesign and recycle old things, give them new life. After all we have to be eco friendly. So for me this is the start of a new project. Who would’ve thought that my Barcelona experience would be collecting furniture from the streets. Well it’s a small part of it. For someone it may look weird and not appropriate, but a little DIY now and then doesn’t harm anyone, especially not the environment.

Barcelona Street Art 1 PHOTOBLOG

Barcelona is an amazing city with beautiful and unique architecture. Seriously, there is not a single building that I don’t like or I’m not amazed by. You have Gaudi and Miro‘s work almost everywhere, which makes Barcelona even more interesting and attractive, but for this post I’ll guide your attention to Barcelona’s street art. You’ll need a good eye for the detail and plenty of free time to explore the city, but you’ll definitely find art worth seeing. May be it’s not for everyone, may be someone will say that it’s just stupid drawings or ugly scribbles, but it expresses opinion, ideas, personality and for me it’s truly inspiring. How can street art inspire an interior design student? You’ll see in my future posts.

To be continued…

Long waited…

This post might not be really connected with me being an Erasmus student, but sure forms part of my experience. In the month of November I had two very special for me people visit me in Barcelona. We’ve dreamed about going together on a trip to Barcelona for years. I remember us sitting in one of our last Spanish classes, just before graduation, planning our trip. We were so determined we were going to go, we discussed all the places we were going to visit, all the bars and clubs we were going to try, all the people we were going to meet, even all the clothes we were going to wear and yes, sounds a bit lame, but come on we were regular teenagers with traveling spirits. Unfortunately we had to postpone our plans with a year, because the girls were starting their studies abroad later this year, so they had more important things to think about. It happened the next year again, this time it was my turn to move to a foreign country, and than we postponed it for the next year and than again the next year. So when I moved to Barcelona, this was all we needed for our reunion. The girls booked their flights, packed their luggage and the rest is.. well, not history, but a small, but special dream come true, that I will definitely remember.