As of this past Tuesday, we have been in our apartment in Berlin for 7 weeks. But it kinda feels like we’ve always been here in some ways.

One thing we’ve already started doing is decorating the place. And to tell you the truth — we have barely done that in any of the places we’ve lived together. First because we were poor college kids, then just starting out with our jobs. In our next house,we were renting and just not interested. And when we were in the farm, there were just too many other things to focus on before we could get around to hanging art work or pictures.

But that is one nice thing about apartment life; far fewer projects to cross off the to do list (unless you’ve bought one and are renovating it or something.) Another nice thing about our apartment is the fact that we have ceilings which are about 15 feet high — and a “community” ladder for the building which only goes up to about 12 feet — which means we can’t safely get up to the ceiling. Now that might seem like a bad thing, but in this case, it meant we could call in a pro. We actually did consider going the DIY route since we had a really nice ladder back at the farm that we could have brought with us…but then we realized we’d have absolutely no where to store it.

After 6 years of doing everything ourselves, it was extremely nice to bring in someone for €15/hour to do things like hanging our lamps, mounting the curtain rods and creating the princess effect for Mack’s bed…

Taking care of business

Out of necessesity, we needed a few lamps in our bedroom and in the living room. Yes, that is another one of those weird German things that people take with them, like their kitchens.

This is the light we picked out at IKEA just because it’s funky and fun. What we did not think about is that it’s kind of a pain to put together. But since we have a rather Asian theme in there otherwise, and will probably be adding one or two more things to bring the look together, we’re starting to think this lamp may not have a long life with us. But it works for now.

And we chose this lamp for our bedroom. It’s rather unlike anything we’ve ever put in our bedroom before, but we love the colors and look of it, and we bought some purple satiny curtains to go along with it. The curtains still have to be hung (after we make another appointment with our handyman) and I’m sure our neighbors will be sad that they don’t get to peak at us while getting dressed or sleeping anymore…but it is kinda nice to have the sunlight streaming in.

We also had the guy put up badly needed curtains in Mack’s room and her playroom. The top of the window is nearly 15 feet up so this was really the main priority when he came. Mack wasn’t going to sleep when we moved in until about 9:30 or 10 at night — versus the 7pm bedtime she usually has. We have always closed the shutters on her windows at the farm to keep the light out, so without anything covering her windows, everyone was losing sleep and starting to get rather cranky. We still need to put up little hooks so we can pull the curtains back and let light in during the day. But that will come. 🙂

Before we contacted someone for help, we did actually try to hang up Mack’s “princess curtain.” But the drywall in the ceiling is thin like a piece of paper and we needed one of those butterfly wall anchors that spreads open really big (which we didn’t have at that time.) So when the guy was here, we just had him take care of it since his ladder was so much taller than our own and he was already in that room anyway. 

Just to show that we can actually do things ourselves still (we have the tools and the ability — well, Stefan does, I’m just the helper), here’s our giant fish which he hung up. It’s in the dining room for now, which seems like a great place for it. It may be hard to tell, but this this is at least 3 feet long, and it was one of the first things we hung here because we didn’t want it to get damaged. It’s literally moved around the world with Stefan…and then back. 🙂 We’ve actually been talking about making a matted photo of Stefan catching this bad boy to accompany it since no one seems to believe he caught it himself as a kid.

The whole mounting of 3 curtain rods, a shelf in the entry way, securing 2 shelves to the wall in the hall, and hanging 4 lamps and the princess curtain cost us €45 plus €15 fee for him to drive to us. Totally worth the investment IMO and the guy will definitely get work from us again since he was a solid worker. If anyone needs a handyman in Berlin, let me know and I will look up his info. The curtains were also a bargain at IKEA because they with the rods were about €150, which was the price of one curtain at another place we looked at.