Filling the Flat

At the end of all this we had a bit of a housewarming party. Some of you were there. I found a photo…It was after New Year’s in 1995, and almost marked a year since I was brought to Latvia as a new wife. This was the first adult place I could call home, and while most of the necessities were there (we still didn’t have a washing machine), I was looking forward to filling it with life in every material, physical and spiritual sense of the word.

The party was certainly a start to that, but there was something bigger looming. A few weeks later, I had to leave for an extended stay in Helsinki. I remember crying that day as I got into the car and looked back at the windows of the flat through the curtains I had just made. I had just spent months creating this safe place to soothe our new and sort of feral life; Now I had to leave this home for at least 4 weeks which promised to be an unforgettable, unpredictable, and uncertain period of time. And I knew quite clearly that regardless of how this time played out, when I returned, none of it--my home, my marriage, my whole life--would ever be the same.

Locally Grown

Clearly, things were taking shape in the big empty flat. There was nothing opulent—hell, it was barely furnished at this point, but I was always amazed when even at this stage people (Americans, Latvians, Europeans) would walk into our place and inevitably give out some signal of approval. There was always a sigh, a nod, a little smile, or even an exclamation as they entered and got their bearings. It was hard, though, to actually make guests comfortable in our place for very long because despite the warm and creamy walls and inoffensive divans, eating on our laps and resting beer bottles on the floor was not comfortable.

Our first trip to Ikea in Stockholm is a story in and of its own, but we came back with a catalogue that had become my biggest source of entertainment that cold, dark winter. The solution for getting furniture seemed easy enough—Ikea does ship after all, but getting materials in and out of Latvia in 1994 was still a big, expensive pain in the ass. My husband, then, had the idea to chat up our new friends at the VEF Radio shop—remember the kitchen cabinets? They seemed to like the idea of making some knock-off Ikea furniture!

Once I knew they were game, I had a lot of fun tweaking some Ikea designs to fit our needs and then coming up with a few of my own. From birch and pine we ended up with two little end tables, a coffee table, a dining table with two benches, a hanging bookcase, and a pair of night tables to match the new bed. In the end it turned out beautifully!

Commissioning furniture sounds like another luxury expense, but having these pieces custom made for us, with unmistakable quality, and the lumber grown and processed in our very own town, was actually less expensive than purchasing it from Ikea. Our backwater radio-cabinet craftsmen were very proud of their results, too. Except for the coffee table, every single piece is still used and enjoyed 15 years later and across the ocean!

Mebelu Nams

Another thing we did while waiting for the carpet to arrive was look for furniture. Literally, we had a little gate-legged table, two stools and a mirror. Sleeping on the floor in sleeping bags was getting very old especially since I was pregnant. Things just were hard to come by at that point in Latvia especially in backwards Aluksne, and we were told to go to the only furniture store there was—Mebelu Nams (or “furniture house”). Like most necessities, Mebelu Nams was in Riga and by far the biggest store in Latvia at the time. I think it was even bigger than the Universal Veikals (the everything store—think Soviet Wal Mart).

Our buddy Ainars came through again and let us borrow his truck one day so we could take this excursion. Not really knowing what to expect from this Mebelu Nams, we were surprised. It was huge with many confusing floors full of furniture suites. The thing that really surprised us was that it wasn’t really possible to purchase a chest or a chair—you had to buy the previously blogged about kompleksa of furniture. We went in with intentions of finding a bed and sofa at a minimum, and again we didn’t know exactly what to expect, but the thing was that we couldn’t simply buy a couch—we had to buy two couches, two chairs, two end tables and a coffee table. Sounds convenient, right? Living room in a box, right? Ick. In theory this might have been a nice idea for several generations of folk who had been taught to never have an individual or creative thought because Mother Russia would see to all their needs, including, apparently, furnishing their homes. That was aggravating on many levels, but this was only half the problem. Not only was the notion of having to buy a packaged set of furniture unappealing to me, the FURNITURE was unappealing! There were two styles throughout this entire Ikea-sized store—horribly ugly and hideously ugly. The choices were cheaply-made, overly-ornamented, heavily lacquered crap imported from Italy, or Russian imports with a style which was a tasteless hybrid of the Italian design and the old lady designs which looked suspiciously like the wallpaper I’ve referred to before. It was all gigantic with price tags to match.

After wandering through this mouse maze of a store looking at one ugly kompleksa after another, we were discouraged and I could feel my taste level being compromised out of desperation and the prospect of spending the rest of the winter sleeping on the floor. My head hurt, I was nauseous, and even my unborn baby had had enough. My husband and I were starting to squabble because we were both frustrated and tired, and I finally said, “I’m not leaving without a bed.” And at that moment the Universe heard my cry.

As if by magic, we came upon a tiny corner of this vast store where there was yet another kompleksa of Polish furniture. It wasn’t bad despite what the sales lady was telling us. “Oh, you don’t want this,” she said, “It’s from Poland. It’s cheap looking and the quality must be bad because the price is less. And there isn’t a whole set to buy, a maximum of three pieces. And look, it’s made out of pine and the other is made out of shiny plastic.” Yes, these were really her arguments, and before she knew it we were asking if we could take it today.

Now, this Polish furniture wasn’t beautiful or terribly high quality, but it wasn’t bad at all. There was a bed frame (and ONLY a bed—no gaudy night tables or humongous wardrobes to match) which consisted of a pine headboard and footboard of good, five-piece construction in a natural finish and it came with two glorious looking European-sized twin mattresses. We also bought a sofa that came with the obligatory pair of matching armchairs. It was all upholstered in a soft, woven fabric with a large, jewel-toned floral print—the least offensive in the joint and even against my newly fiberbglassed and painted walls it was even a bit interesting. The furniture gods smiled down on me and whipped up a miracle that day, and we brought the whole kompleksa home in Ainars’ van.

Clever Scandinavians

Ok—on with the big empty flat story…

While waiting for that carpet to arrive, there were other things to be done. Namely, something had to happen with the cold concrete walls. This was a bit of an issue because quality paint was hard to come by for one thing, and latex wouldn’t stick to this for another. Somehow, though, the ceilings were high (8’-10’) in these block apartments, and they had been treated with some chalky paint-like substance and were white and clean looking. I wouldn’t want to lick them, but they looked ok, so that was one less thing to worry about.

Now most Latvians covered these types of walls with bad wallpaper in antiquated, tight prints (often in varying shades of pink) which was predictably hidden by massive bookcases and wardrobes (the concept of closets were lost here). So without any furniture, much less the en vogue overpowering furniture usually found, or an affinity for the taste of a 120 year old woman, we needed to find another solution.

During this time, we had been invited to our friend Arden’s flat in Riga. Arden was an American; a Lutheran pastor from Minnesota who had been sent to start an English-language ministry in Riga. He set up shop in the old Anglican Church in Riga’s Old Town, and would in a few short months baptize our son there. We lived far away, so we weren’t regular attendees, but we enjoyed Arden whether we saw him behind a pulpit or behind a beer, so there we were at his flat one day. He lived in a similar but smaller block apartment than we did, and it was fixed up very comfortably. It took us a little while to figure out why it felt so comfortable, and then it dawned on us: he had PAINT on the walls! No distracting, headache-inducing wallpaper! How did he do this?!? Then two beautiful words that we’d never heard in such a combination came from his mouth: Fiberglass Wallcovering. Huh?

Fantastically fabricated by clever Scandinavians, fiberglass threads were woven together to produce a very strong and pliable fabric sold on meter-wide rolls designed to cover imperfections on walls, absorb paint, and provide a reduction in reverberation. Better than all that, it came in a variety of textured patterns to boot! We had to get us some of this.

I don’t remember for sure, but I think we may have purchased this in Helsinki. That sounds extravagant, but it really wasn’t because I was travelling to Helsinki on a regular basis anyway for pre-natal appointments. It’s kind of like the trip from Detroit to Chicago with a quick ferry ride added on. The Dan Ryan is as big a pain in the ass as any border crossing, too.

The fiberglass went up with regular wall paper paste, was very forgiving, and even before painting it, the walls looked great. We had chosen a pattern of very tight basket weave which added an interesting texture and dimension. We ended up being able to find decent latex paint imported from Germany and threw up a couple of coats of a buttery color. The light from our west-facing living room windows was no longer cold and harsh but warm and cozy. Form followed function.

I had to take a breather from this renovation story because I’d been out of town attending my 20 year high school reunion of all things. It was the only school reunion I’d ever been to, and probably the only one I’ll ever attend. I don’t keep up with many people from those days; however I have enjoyed reconnecting with a few over the last several months, and really this handful of people is the reason I made the trip. We had a decent turn out for a class of about 350, and I probably don’t need to explain to you how fascinating it is to see how people have grown up.

This combined with the preparations being made for my own son to start high school in a couple of weeks, naturally has me thinking a lot about how the high school environment and experience influences an individual as well as a collective group. I was scared when I started high school--the concept itself was daunting to me, plus this was a prestigious school in the middle of a city I hadn’t been a part of very long. On top of it, as a magnet school, my school was also intended to be racially balanced. There was a lot to adapt to!

In four years, though, I made very good yet unlikely friends, was exposed to fantastic opportunities, was given opportunities to shine, and was forced to stretch outside my comfort zones in order to enjoy all of that. A good taste of real life for sure, but in the end, my high school experience probably wasn’t all that different from yours. But for me it was unique, and it ended up giving me some guts I didn’t know I had.

After 20 years, one kind of forgets about all of that formative development. The reunion was a nice reminder of what the world looked like back then and how the scope has gotten so much bigger. It was good to take stock at what I had done with the tools I gathered in high school, and of course learning a bit about what my classmates did with theirs. Pretty impressive. I hope my son and his classmates will be as lucky!

The Carpet Story

With the kitchen working, we moved onto other necessities. The rest of the floor in the flat was just a subfloor at that point and we needed to put something down. It was suggested that we just buy a set of ugly matching rugs from the market (you know, a “Kompleksa”) and throw those everywhere. No thanks. Wood was the obvious choice seeing as though my husband helped run a big saw mill outside of town, but I had a baby coming, and I wasn’t convinced that hardwood flooring would be manufactured or installed with any quality standard whatsoever. It seemed like a recipe for trouble, especially with a baby coming. Ideally I wanted carpet. All the Latvians (except for Ainars) thought we were crazy because carpet holds allergens and bugs and dirt so they said. Never mind what could be living in the rugs from the market that likely had fallen off of some truck from Tajikistan as they were suggesting. It was all mostly a fear of the unknown. Most of these folks had never actually SEEN carpet, so like anything it was skepticism of the unknown.

Once every few weeks we would travel 4-5 hours to the capitol, Riga, to see friends, try to get things we needed that weren’t available elsewhere, take care of business, etc. While killing time one day, I found carpeting. It was in a shop that sold pots, pans, and general house wares, and there they had sample boards of commercial-grade nylon carpeting. I asked the guy behind the counter if I could look more closely at the boards (at that point I wasn’t sure if this place actually sold the stuff or was just showing off the sample boards), and the man proudly said that this is carpet from Poland, it’s very expensive and no one has ordered any yet. Why he was so proud about this, I have no idea, but maybe it’s because I was the first person to inquire. I asked how much and how long it would take to order it, and he gave me a price which didn’t choke me, and a time frame which almost did. All he said was “a long time.”

Long story short, we ordered the commercial-grade nylon carpeting from Poland and “a long time” ended up being about 12 weeks. We kept checking in with the shop to see if the delivery had arrived yet, and finally after our 3rd or 4th visit and phone call, it had arrived. Good ol’ Ainars happened to have his truck in Riga that day and was happy to pick up the roll for us and deliver it. Another bucket of glue later, we had installed wall to wall carpeting in the living room and hall of our big empty flat. It was instantly warmer, and if there were any allergens and bugs, the VOC’s got ‘em.

Ainars

So the flooring’s in, the refrigerator is also plugged in, and we’ve got 6 dishes, 4 mugs, a handful of silver wear, and a couple of pans all sitting either in the sink or on the stove or in the new fridge. We needed some cabinets. If I’m remembering those days in 1994 correctly, our friend Ainars helped us out with this.

Ainars was a character from another place and time. Aluksne was very much a backwater town in the northeast corner of Latvia about 30 km from each border (Estonian and Russian). If you’ve ever met anyone a little off and wondered what rock they’d been living under for so long, it was probably under the rock of Aluksne. At this time, I would say life here was very much like a teeny, remote town in Middle America during the depression. People were poor, not educated, isolated, very simple and usually drunk. Many folks had never even ventured the 300 km to the capitol city of Riga, but instead always stayed right there in Aluksne.

That place was quite a study, and although Ainars had lived there for his whole life as far as I knew, Ainars broke the mold of Aluksneians. He certainly didn’t live under the Rock of Aluksne because he was probably too busy chiseling it. A monument builder by trade (yes, mostly tombstones), Ainars knew a little bit about just about everything, and I think could craft almost anything with his thick, meaty hands. He was a sweet and generous man, and really liked practicing his English on us. He was an artist, maybe a bit of an intellectual, and his house and yard looked like Fred Flintstone’s quarry. Think Owen Meany but much bigger and with a normal man’s voice. I don’t really know how old Ainars was, he was neither very old nor very young, but we got to know him through a mutual friend and he ended up taking good care of us in Aluksne.

Anyway, Aluksne was actually known for a few good and interesting things, and one of them was the old Soviet VEF radio cabinet shop. Others can recite the history better than I, but no one was buying big, wooden VEF radios anymore, so the once famous (?) cabinet shop, full of carpenters and craftsmen was just trying to get by making whatever. Ainars, an unusually creative thinker given his personal history, knew one of these guys and talked him into putting a few cabinets put together for us. I think three pieces in all—it was all our tiny kitchen could hold. They weren’t fancy, but made from clear pine or aspen, and honestly I don’t even remember what the counter top was. Something highly lacquered, I’m sure. If I was cleverer back then, I would have gotten Ainers to fabricate granite counters for us. All I remember for sure, though, was that there wasn’t much choice in the matter. But again, I didn’t really care. It was all a matter of necessity and function, and I was grateful for Ainars.

Marketing

I have to say, this blogging thing will be a lot easier to deal with once kids are back in school. I feel as though I’ve fallen behind and I’ve barely started! Back to the story, though…

I think it was October or November by the time we got the big empty flat. I remember the heat was on. In Latvia, there were no thermostats then. God forbid anyone has control over temperature, or hot water for that matter. There were only a couple of days of hot water in the summer until October 1 when the radiators kicked on and that also meant warm, orange water flowed from the faucets like honey. That’s too poetic…Flowed like Tang. Anyway, it was fall, it was cold, we had a big empty flat, and I was pregnant.

We started in the little kitchen. If the whole thing was 8x10 it was big. We’d gone to the market one Saturday, as we did every Saturday, to eat fresh pirogi and buy produce, meat and cheese and toothpaste and batteries and bootlegged cds, and found two specific things we needed: rolled vinyl flooring and a little refrigerator which ended up being the biggest fridge we could find.

I couldn’t believe the luck in finding this flooring, not that vinyl flooring is such a much, but remember this was freshly post-Soviet Latvia where if you found Heinz ketchup on the shelves it would be enough to throw a party, so this was exciting. Fortunately, the flooring vendor was smart enough to also carry some adhesive (must have been off the sauce that day), so we could get to work and lay it down. That we did! It was super easy and the one tight seam was barely visible and ended up being completely hidden by the little kitchen table we would later put in the room. The hardest part about laying this cobalt blue, brick patterned flooring was waiting 24 hour for the adhesive to dry before walking on it! I specifically remember, though, being so excited once I saw it down—things were beginning to take shape and this was going to become our home!

100 Pounds of Home

While living overseas, I moved a lot. In fact, since I graduated from high school, I've never lived anywhere for more than three years. But anyway, while living in Latvia, we moved six times in so many years to a whole hodgepodge of places. Now that I think of it, though, I'm realizing that in the first year alone there were four moves. It's a good thing there was that 100 lb. rule because we didn't have a car, either.

First there was the scrudgy flat in beautiful Cesis; then we upgraded as house and dog sitters for the summer (who remembers Sir the girl dog?) to a funny little house outside of Riga which was full of African treasures and a very expensive sound system that I think only played opera; after that we slummed again in an overly-furnished, claustrophobia-inducing flat in Aluksne where the landlords would constantly enter without warning and eat all of our food in the refrigerator (even when we were home); to a bare-to-the-concrete-walls Soviet block flat that we got to make our own.

I remember ITCHING to get that place. It was nothing special by a long shot, but it seemed like luxurious space to us--first floor, two bedrooms, and stripped down of everything except the kitchen sink. It was a completely blank canvas.

Not Today

So, blogging is outside my comfort zone. However, it’s been an idea brewing for several weeks, and with some recent pushes to promote my business in creative ways as well as the out-of-the-blue suggestion from a very savvy and patient friend, it almost seemed like I had little choice in the matter. (One of many ways my insides are coming out.) With that, the big questions are, of course: what in the world to write about on a semi-regular basis, and also how do I keep this interesting without exposing every gut I have?

I was able to reconnect with my old camp and college buddy Krista the other night, and as she was telling me about her own blog, she said, “I just write to these guys,” pointing to her friends down the row of our seats at the Tiger’s game. Great advice. I can do that. (That is, write to my friends, not to hers…) Then the very next day, London Lisa said, “Well, Maren, I think you should just start writing about the way you became a designer.” Ok. I can do that, too. But not today.

First Post

Since the first posting is really a personal indugence with a sole subscriber, I find it fitting to start this journey the way I start my mornings--quietly and peacefully with the little quote found on the Yogi tea bag ticket. Today's message read:

The art of happiness is to serve all.

Ironically, I'm starting From the Inside Out for that reason.