The green room

Here's a picture of the shelves i put up yesterday.
We found them at a flea market this weekend, and although i paid more than i should have (everyone does at that market) i still think they were good finds.
Now we just have a few books out front, and most of them are just there because they're decorative.
I'm so glad we moved the IKEA bookcase into the drawing room/library, it never did belong in our lovely front room anyway!

Cozy corner

Mr. Owl

A lamp we also found at the flea market

Some day i'll get someone else to take some real shop pictures for you.
But we have to wait until the kitchen is done... soooo, around the time of not-in-a-million-years, would be my guess?
Yeah, the optimism is long gone!

The fox and the ratter

Today we got word that construction is gonna start on the kitchen in about 8 days.
I however, am not gonna get excited because, as regular readers may have already noticed, not a damn thing happened the last time someone told us "within a week".
Whatever, it has to happen some time, right?

Anyway, tattoos!

Here's what Eckel did on Zule today.
Oh, and Lucifer is back home after an extended weekend in the country with his human grandparents, and he was so excited to be back that he snuck into the forbidden zone, and managed to get in the picture too.

A fox and a Prague Ratter (who appears to be very interested in whatever Eckel is telling him)

Here's a majestic piece of embroidery that Allan bought for my office while i was sick

And, uhm, i actually bought this guy for the apartment (don't judge me) but i haven't figured out a safe way to bring him home on my bike yet

My parents brought us apples and pears

And Allans client Morten brought cake!

Allan posted the tattoos he did in London, so go check those out!
And also, go check out some pictures a friend took at the shop not too long ago.
Her blog is awesome, by the way, so stay and check out her work while you're there.

Open!

I was actually gonna post this on my personal blog, because it's a craft project, and i've been posting progress pictures over there, but since it's very much shop related, i decided that it belongs here.
So what am i talking about here?
The shop open/closed sign, that's what!
I finally finished the sign that i have been working on for months.
We still don't have an actual shop sign, and we really don't plan on getting one, but now people will at least be able to see when we're open.

In progress

Nick got the idea for the bird cages, clever right?

Almost done

Open:

And closed:

It took me a while, but i finally found two antique frames in the exact same size, that fit the signs too (thank god we're smack in the middle of an antique neighborhood)

Bird detail

Deer detail

Voila!

In the beginning i used a pattern, but the closed sign i pretty much made it up as i went along.
And considering that this is only my second cross-stitch project (the first finished one is this), i think it turned out pretty well.
Hope y'all like it!

Non-news

So, here we are.
It's July and we still haven't set a date for the opening party we were supposed to have back in May.
I don't know exactly when it's gonna be, but i can say that it's not gonna be this month either.

We've long accepted that the shop is never gonna be completely finished, so we shouldn't wait for that to happen, but there are a few more things we'd like to see done before we invite everyone to come see our new home.
There are still lamps that needs to be fixed and hung, and stuff that needs to be painted.
And then there's of course the big, gaping hole in our kitchen ceiling that's about to get a whole lot bigger.
I almost can't handle the thought of more construction dust, but water leaks need to be fixed, even if they aren't technically our problem.

I wanna say that the party will be in late August-early September, but since shit seems to happen a lot, i'm not making any promises!

So instead of an exciting news post, or even one with tattoos in it, you get a plants-and-random-crap-around-the-shop post!

Office window

Last week i planted sunflowers and poppies, and today i planted carrots, radishes and peas (not pictured)... all the unnamed plants in the back were there before, i just moved them a bit

More herbs and veggies, if i don't manage to kill them, outside the kitchen window

My birthday flower is still alive!

While digging in the garden i found several buried treasures, this one even made it inside

This one wasn't found in the soil, but it in an antique shop for 10 kr.

It never friggin ends, does it...

Ok, more garden related posts coming soon*, and some tattoo stuff too i guess.

*Yes, i'm aware that i'm the only one who cares about project carrot, but it's my blog, so the vegetable posts are happening whether you like it or not!

Ha!

I did it, i conquered the storage rooms!

These were the last two rooms of the shop that still had "construction" written all over them, but now they're finally ready to be used for something other than storing tools, paint and yellow dust.
Maybe in the future this will be a screen printing room?
For now there's still a bunch of stuff in there that we have nowhere else to put, but it looks a hell of a lot better than before.*

It's taken me days, a lot longer than expected, but i finally sorted through everything, threw out a bunch of stuff, and organized and cleaned the rest

The Star Wars toys got their own corner

And the decks finally have a home too

The chandelier on the floor is going in the front room, by the way.
Pretty, right?

*There are no pictures of the second storage room, because *someone* hasn't put up any lights in there yet.
But i swear i cleaned that room too!

Solutions

Thursday was a weird day at the shop.
A good day, but very long and weird.
We had a bunch of clients and a bunch of people who dropped by, it was almost like a real tattoo shop, and i guess that the sudden rush of people was a bit overwhelming because we've been alone down here for so long.
But we did get stuff done; Allan did three tattoos on three friends, and i put up a bunch of shelves for our toy collection in the (current) storage room.
Now, you may think that it's a strange place to put all of our pretty toys, and in a way it is.
But somehow we accidentally built a grown up shop (it wasn't on purpose, i swear) and the toys just didn't fit in anywhere.
So i figured, the storage room won't be a storage room forever, so they got their own wall in there, and by some amazing coincidence, they all fit (but just barely!)
And i think putting them all in one place looks kinda cool too!

Our rather impressive collection of delicious junk

The rest of the room still looks like hell, but once all the painting work is finished, i'll clean this up in no time

Ps. We couldn't get good pictures of the tattoos, so you'll just have to trust me when i say they where nice!

We gots fridge!

Oh, hello!
If you were hoping to see some tattoo pictures here... today is not your lucky day.
However, if you were wondering if we finally got a regular sized fridge to match our new kitchen, this is the post for you.

On Sunday we borrowed a car and started moving some of my stuff, as well as a sofa, from our apartment to the shop.
We also took a ride to the 'burbs and picked up a fridge at our friend Ulla's parents house.
They gave it to us a long time ago, and have been very patient with us and our lack of transportation.
The fridge is used, but works just great, and it was free.
We like free.

Fully fridge-magnet-ized, but pretty much empty inside!

We've changed a lot in the front room too, but i'm gonna wait with pictures from that room until we've gotten a little more work done.

Glorious revolution

So, it looks like we're finally getting to the fun part of opening a new shop (decorating, finishing touches) and now, of course, we have to leave it.
Typical.

Not that we don't wanna go to Japan, we always do, it's just that the timing is a little off this time.
Fun stuff aside, we have unfinished business with our previous landlords, autoclave repairs, bills bills bills...
Actually, you know what, maybe the timing is just right!
The shop will still be here in May and decorating will be just as fun in a month as it is now.

We are finally using the real entrance!

Last night we took apart the couch and assembled it again in it's new, permanent spot

Our fancy new GLORIOUS wallpaper... and a birdcage

Oh, it's gonna be so magical and we can't wait to show y'all, but wait we must.
Sigh.

Almost there...

Sunday shoppings

Ah, sunday, a day to relax and do absolutely nothing.
Or, a day to go to a flea market and then work on your new shop perhaps?
Obviously, we did the latter today.

The flea market was right around the corner from the shop, and most of the antique shops there had stuff on sale.
And you know we likes our antiques (and our sales)!
We stayed there for hours and left with some pretty good stuff, we even got a sweet deal on some lamps we scoped out weeks ago.

It was a nice day in our new hood... or so we though.
See, after we left this shit happened.
Right wing football hooligans and fun neighborhood markets just don't mix, and i'm glad we got out in time.

The painters and electrician where at the shop for a while, and we got to do a little shopping with our girl Anne as well, but for the rest of the night it was just me, Allan and Lucifer at the shop.
We did a lot of framing and decorating, and listened to a lot of J-POP.
Good times.

The office is still very dusty and cold, but i'm slowly starting to decorate in there too.

Turn out that the Seth Woof print we got at last years London Convention looks amazing with the blue walls!

I painted this old coat rack, so it matches the woodwork in this area.
The walls in there are the worst, but at least it looks great!

We got a few of these old tables for cheap, they match the wallpaper that's going in the front room*

This chair even had a twin in red, but i bet they were both really expensive

I should have bought this one, shouldn't i?

*Yes, some day we will have that front room!

The great conspiracy

We have moved!
We are far from done, but we're here and so is all our stuff.
We have been spending so much time at the new location lately that i've been dreaming about painting panels, and i know for a fact that our professional painters feel the same way.
But once this place is done, it'll be amazing.
And no, there's still no floor in the front room, but there were people in the pit yesterday working on that, so someday soon we will have a front room too!

We spent all of saturday and sunday moving, and a bunch of our sweet friends and family came by the shop to help us.
Martin, Christel, Mille, Nikolaj, Helle, Topper, Anne, Laurits, Suzy, Corey; thanks, we couldn't have done it without you guys!
And a special thanks to Uglen and Jesper (our painters), to Wookie (our electrician) and to Morten and Jonathan (our carpenters and lifesavers) for all of their hard work, help and patience.

Now, under normal circumstances i'd be all over an event as monumental as this with my camera, documenting the crap out of the occasion, but this time there was no time.
Seriously, we were all way too busy to stop and take pictures of every little thing, but here are a few random shots i took when time allowed it.
I wish there were more people in these pictures!

The sketchy people who rented the shop before us left behind a sketchy dream-catcher, Allan is here seen finally evicting it's ass for good

Eckel painting one of the toilets (that's right, we have two now!)

Sunday morning we went to a flea-market, here's Eckel and Corey getting cozy with our new belongings

And me and Lucifer getting cozy in the front seat

Lucifer, finally allowed in the forbidden room of the old shop

Even though the shop was nowhere near done (still isn't) Allan had his first client monday at 12

Our new kitchen chairs (still missing a table though) in our new kitchen

It's even more red in person!

Allans work space monday night, it's all coming together

More pictures... i wanna say "coming soon" but it's probably more like "some day when we're done drilling and painting".

Ps. The official shop opening will be in May, we'll find a date real soon.

Pps. We have no phone until friday, so email us if you need to talk to us about urgent matters.
If it's not urgent, please wait a week or two to write, as i have no time to answer mails these days.

Oh hi there!

So, it's been a while, huh?
Sorry about that, some of us are a bit sick, and we're all a bit preoccupied these days.

Today me and Allan went by the new shop to see how everything is progressing.
It's... going... it's happening... stuff is being done, that's for sure.
But i still can't believe we have to move in a few weeks!

The floor that looked like this the last time i was there, is now... gone

Maybe we should keep it like this, or turn it into a moat or something?

Toilet is gone too, but at least they bought us a new one

Debris

Samples

I approve of this!

This is apparently a giraffe?

These creepy little things were lying around the shop... matches the dream-catcher left by the previous tenants, i guess

The painters started painting today (no, that's not as obvious as it sounds, there was lots of work for them to do before they could even start painting!) so hopefully things are gonna start looking good soon.
More updates next week!