Creative Couple’s Hand Crafted Norway Apartment, 60sqm-646sqft

We wanted to create a home for ourselves that could be adapted to fit different living situations. Throughout my design education I got some workshop experience working with different tools and materials and therefore we wanted to try to build all of the furniture ourselves on site mainly using a plunge saw, a drill and a sander. Since the apartment houses all of our favorite things it is a somewhat eclectic combination of styles and periods. We wanted each zone and room to have its own mood. My name is Elias Oldebak and I'm a designer. And my name is Anna Grögur and I'm a historian. Together we own and have been living in this apartment for the past one and a half years. Hey, looking for a last minute Christmas gift? We've got you covered with a subscription to our NTS quarterly magazine. Four beautifully curated issues sent quarterly, packed with inspiring stories of small space living, sustainable design and urban culture. It's designed for design lovers who like their design without the swank and the wank. More than a mag, this is a collectible keepsake born to live on your coffee table, favorite bookshelf or wherever inspiration belongs. Give the gift of an NTS SubClub subscription. It's the gift that keeps on giving four times a year. And hey, we won't blame you if you grab one for yourself too. The apartment is located in the city center of Oslo right next to the botanical garden. The neighborhood is a quiet residential area with a range of local cafes and bars but it's still close to the busy shopping streets of the inner city. The apartment is 60 square meters and located on the first floor of the building. When we first bought the apartment, it looked quite different. The rooms were painted in dark colors and several square meters were taken up by poorly designed solutions. The apartment consisted of a bathroom, a small hallway, two bedrooms and a combined kitchen and living area. We kept the floor plan but we removed all of the existing interior and designed and built new elements and modules to make better use of the space. We transformed the main bedroom into an office and reading space and built a bookshelf with integrated storage, a smaller closet and a corner desk. We built a main work desk along the wall. When you enter the apartment, you are in a small hallway that takes you through to the main living area. We built a wardrobe unit in pine plywood to add warmth and organic feel to the space. The wardrobe closet has two racks, one for shorter jackets and one for longer coats. The closet door also features a full-size mirror. We also made a small bench that acts as both a storage unit and a place to sit down while taking off your shoes. The original brick wall is exposed in the hallway. We wanted to tie this area together with the brick and the pine, so we used a leveling compound to smooth out the surface and painted it in a warm light green color. The floor is easy to clean and waterproof against muddy boots in the wintertime. From the entrance area, you walk into the open kitchen and living room. Here we kept the original floors and restored them. The kitchen consists of two main elements, a vertical wooden cabinet section and a horizontal metal cooking area. The wooden cabinet houses our fridge and freezer and provides storage. We have a cooktop with integrated ventilation, which means that we could free up some space above the cooking area. We also have a full-size oven and a slim dishwasher. The inner structure is from IKEA, but the kitchen cabinet doors are aluminum on the outside and pine on the inside. The kitchen countertop is stainless steel and Elias's dad bent the steel to create the edge. Since we chose a cooktop with integrated ventilation, we were able to make an open shelf that runs all the way along the kitchen benchtop. Above the kitchen benchtop, we have two dimmable wall lamps. They're a bit weird and it looks as if they're coming out of the wall, but we like them. The dining table is made of pine plywood, which is the same as the cabinets and rests on some old IKEA trestles. Above the table, there is a suspended lamp, which can be adjusted in height. The dining table acts as a transitional element between the kitchen workspace and the more relaxed bench area on the other side of the room. The chairs are a mix of Danish and German designs. Some of them are replicas, but we won't tell you which ones. At the end of the living area, we built a 4.5 meter long bench with integrated storage that acts as a sofa, but can also work as two guest beds. We chose a standard single mattress size for the bench cushions, so that they would be easy to replace in the future. I made the bench seat covers using red wool on one side and light gray furniture canvas on the other. We turn them around when we want to change the mood of the room. It features a small integrated bookshelf in the front and a storage room accessible through the tabletop. There are lamps on both ends of the bench, making the corners more reading friendly. The wall panel in the living area is original from the 1890s. When the temperatures creep down below zero, we like to sit by the wood stove in the evenings, and it keeps the whole apartment nice and warm. From the living room, you access the office and reading space through a generous sliding door with a small cutout peephole. This room was designed so that we can convert it into a sleeping room in the future. We built a bookshelf along the entrance door wall in this room and painted the backdrop in bright yellow. This gives the room a warm hue and reflects the light coming from the window. There are four storage compartments in the lower part of the bookshelf, and in the corner of the room, we built additional shelving with a small desk and a slim closet. The small corner desk is not a place where you spend hours working, but it's a place for small tasks, scribbling down something, or making phone calls. The desk runs along the window wall, so both of us can work from home at the same time. There is a glass bird feeder on the window, so you can have some birds to accompany you when you're working at the desk. The sleeping room is through another old squeaky door in the hallway. We wanted this room to feel as serene and cocoon-like as possible. The closet area can be closed off with a set of off-white linen curtains. We chose curtains instead of wooden doors to make the room softer and to allow light to flow through the apartment. The shelving system is IKEA, and we built a simple pulley system for hanging shirts and blouses. The closet often stores a drying rack and our laundry basket. Here we have a washing machine and most of our clothes. We bought a Monet poster in Paris, and it hangs along the bedroom wall opposite the bed, where it acts as a sort of imaginary window. The bathroom was compact and narrow, but in good condition, so we kept it mostly like it was. What we did do was to move the washing machine, since there was a water outlet in the bedroom. The old washing machine was in the shower area, which was awkward and took up a lot of space. But after we moved the washing machine, the shower is large and spacious. Small spaces often need to be multifunctional, but at the same time, the ideal of multifunctionality can make spaces feel overly pragmatic and optimized. We tried to balance multifunctionalism with comfort and a sense of identity for the different elements in the space. This apartment used to be two units, each probably housing four to five people at the most. And it is worth remembering that what we might consider a small space today would be spacious for the people who lived here 150 years ago. Most people who live in inner city areas have to live in small spaces, not by choice, but by necessity. In our increasingly consumption-oriented society, replacing individual ownership with alternative models for sharing, for instance, in our backyard, we have a common barbecue area and a bike fixing spot, enables people to live small while still having access to all the things they need.