Search Results for “Amsterdam House Tour”

Amsterdam House Tour: The Kitchen

June 10, 2017June 10, 2017Sarah Bringhurst Familia

Sad, but true: this is the final post in the Amsterdam House Tour. I’ve run out of house to show you. The final room is perhaps the most important, seeing as how it revolves around food. So here you go: my kitchen!

Is that a fun, bright room, or what? I am a little in love with it. As you can see, turquoise is the name of the game. I still feel a bit assaulted by the brightness of it, but I’m pretty sure I like it.

For reference, here’s what it looked like when we moved in. So you can see that for better or for worse, we’ve definitely brought it into technicolor.… Read more

Amsterdam House Tour: The Bathroom

May 25, 2017Sarah Bringhurst Familia

Welcome back to the biggest tiny house in Amsterdam. Half baths, 3/4 baths, 1 1/2 baths, I never really got all the bathroom fractions straight, even through all our years of renting various houses with various configurations of bathroom facilities. However, I’m fairly sure that the bits of tile, porcelain, and chrome in our little house add up to somewhere in the vicinity of one whole bathroom.

You already met our tiny little powder room toilet in the Hallway. We are, in fact, lucky there’s a diminutive sink in there; many similar toilets in Amsterdam houses don’t have them.

And that’s it for toilets in our house.… Read more

Amsterdam House Tour: The Dungeon

May 13, 2017May 13, 2017Sarah Bringhurst Familia

Many of the houses we looked at in Amsterdam had some kind of storage room available. Sometimes it was a detached room on a completely different floor in the building. Once it was an attic room, weirdly accessible through an illegally built ladder right next to the fireplace in the living room.

The house we ended up picking was much more normal (not). A nine square metre (100 square feet) storage room lay just under the living room, accessible (as you’ll remember) literally through a hole in the middle of the floor.

Thanks to my brilliantly designed wall and a matching bannister, it no longer looks like somewhere you’d hide a body and then put a rug on top of the trap door.… Read more

Amsterdam House Tour: Kid Room

April 23, 2017April 23, 2017Sarah Bringhurst Familia

One of our major hurdles in buying a house in Amsterdam was finding a second bedroom with enough space to accommodate both children (a three bedroom was out given our price range, unless we wanted to live well outside the city). And by that I don’t mean loads of floor space for playing. I just mean fitting in two beds. A lot of the second bedrooms in Amsterdam apartments have enough space for a single bed and maybe a small wardrobe or chest of drawers. We thought about bunk beds, but really felt strongly that since our kids are older and it’s already pushing for them to share a room, they each needed a well-defined space of their own. … Read more

Amsterdam House Tour – Master Bedroom

April 18, 2017April 29, 2017Sarah Bringhurst Familia

Actually, I think this is my favorite room in the house. Is there anything more important when it comes to home decor than an inviting bedroom that is a refuge from the entire world outside? For an introvert with insomniac tendencies, I submit that there is not. So here is mine. Red velvet curtains, crisp linen bedclothes, fuzzy throw blanket, and all. I have been in love with this bedroom since the first night I slept in it, or in fact since I first saw it in my mind’s eye before it even existed.
All the little details are what I love.… Read more

Amsterdam House Tour – The Library (Living Room)

April 14, 2017Sarah Bringhurst Familia

This may be my favourite room in a house full of rooms I love. Having moved over twenty times since we were married in 2003 (I wish I were exaggerating), Tony and I have come to realise that although we have many things in common, our decorating tastes, although overlapping, are not identical. So when we moved into our new house, we decided that we would each get a room to decorate exactly how we pleased. The other party could serve in an advisory capacity, but the person to whom the room belonged had total autonomy when it came to layout and decor.… Read more

Amsterdam House Tour – The Hallway (Landing Strip)

April 9, 2017April 14, 2017Sarah Bringhurst Familia

We have now lived in our darling Amsterdam flat for a whole year, so I guess it’s high time to invite you in for a tour.

In order to fully appreciate our house, it’s good to know some stats about it. For instance, it’s a grand total of 72 square metres (775 square feet). I think of it as both a small flat and a really big tiny house. When it comes to functionality, I’d say it definitely feels more like the latter. Over the years, we have spent a lot of time in IKEA showrooms and cleverly designed little European apartments, marvelling over inventive storage solutions and multi-purpose furniture.… Read more

Amsterdam Birthday

June 17, 2017June 17, 2017Sarah Bringhurst Familia

Having a party in the city carries with it some challenges. Most of them have to do with transportation. Neither we nor many of our friends have cars, which can make transporting eight rambunctious boys a bit of an adventure. That’s why as far as I’m concerned, the perfect summer party is what Raj chose last year: pizza in the park a few blocks from our house, with the Minecraft ghast piñata his mother cleverly made out of toilet paper.

But the kid is growing up, and wanted something a bit more exciting this year. To wit: laser tag! The closest place that offers laser tag is under a bridge in the centre of the city.… Read more

Amsterdam SAIL

September 6, 2015September 6, 2015Sarah Bringhurst Familia

Considering its geography and topography, it’s no surprise that the Netherlands is a country of mariners. During the 17th century, it had the largest navy in the world, as well as an economy built around the commerce of its major port cities. And although a series of Anglo-French alliances eventually put an end to Dutch military dominance of the sea, Rotterdam is still the biggest port in Europe. Today Amsterdam has a beautiful (and very much used) network of historic canals. There’s one that runs right near our house, in fact, and it’s a lovely place for picnics. And I never go out there without this charming quote from The Wind in the Willows running through my head:

“There is nothing — absolutely nothing — half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.”

The 2010s in Review

January 5, 2020Sarah Bringhurst Familia

I am still trying to wrap my head around this being the beginning of a new decade, as well as a new year. My approach towards New Year’s resolutions is basically nonexistent, since I am apt to reinvent myself on the spot whenever I feel the need, which tends to be multiple times in a year. However, I do love telling stories. In fact, the only possible way for me to ever make sense of my life is by telling it back to myself. Not once, but a thousand times. Memory is a funny thing. Our brains are constantly arranging and rearranging the past to make meaning out of it; reinforcing the parts that fit our own internal narrative and discarding the other unhelpful bits.… Read more

Casteluzzo

Search Results for: Amsterdam House Tour