Compact Living - My Small House In Spain, Part 2

Hi,

I hope you enjoyed the first part of our compact living and how we made room for the family (5 people and 3 cats) in our small house in Gran Canaria. Now it´s time for the second part, showing you before- and after photos of our bedroom, bathroom and outside space. Also, I want to highlight that when things don´t go as planned, you still have so much to be grateful for.

This is the bedroom before renovating. There´s nothing wrong with it but we had to renovate because of the need of new electricity, to get rid of the built-in wardrobe and to make room for the family´s beds. 

The bedroom after. 

This wardrobe is only 40 cm deep and with sliding doors. All the family´s clothes fit in it (I admit, half of the wardrobe is mine). ;-) We definitely wanted to be able to walk around the bed and this way we could.

We choose to have solid beds for the family, although the sofa also is a sofabed. 2 kids can sleep in the lowest bunkbed. The laptop table is actually a tray table from Ikea but without the tray. The kids were happy with this solution so I got them one more. They are foldable which is perfect in such a small space. 

Can you see Robo on the photo above? Robo is our robot vacuum cleaner. We turn Robo on before we go outside and when we come home we have a clean home. Perfect, especially since it gets really dirty inside. When there is a calima (sand from Africa in the air) it gets especially dusty and dirty.

Here´s the bathroom before.

After

Behind the bathroom door, before.

Behind the bathroom door, after. Even though the weather is always nice in Gran Canaria, we choose to have a dryer. It's good for towels, bedding, underwear etc when you don´t have much space to hang clothes. 

When things don´t go as planned

Unfortunately, we woke up on the 1 of January 2016 with a big water leak! Our newly renovated home was destroyed!!! Well, we lived there but couldn´t enjoy our nice home. A period of time the floor in the bathroom had to be removed and we were unable to use the sink in the bathroom. If we did so the water came up through the bedroom floor. Almost all the walls were really wet and we had holes in the walls (when trying to locate the leak).

We had to live in this wet home for over 3 months. Then we moved back to Sweden. All the walls, floors etc were renovated again in the Spring of this year.

We went back to Gran Canaria in August for one month and the home now looks the same as after the first renovation but now with dry walls and floors. :-) We are looking forward to living there without any problems with water this period.

To bee grateful

As you can imagine the nice weather in Gran Canaria makes it easier to live compact. We also have a terrace and a nice little garden. The house belongs to a community that is gated with our own tennis court, 4 pools, restaurant and supermarket. That means the kids can play in the whole community area and we are mostly outside. Also, it´s just a 2 minutes walk to a shopping centre with loads of restaurants and 5 minutes walk to the beach. 

The kids like to have their friends over to play and for sleepovers. Sometimes we are 7 people in our home and then the sofabed is perfect.

The cats are indoors cats and therefore I arranged a cage for them on our terrace. Of course, they also wanted to get some sun and sea view. ;-) It´s actually a wardrobe from Ikea! Perfect as a cat cage. I put in some elementbeds and I can tell you, the cats loved it. 

They could go in and out as they wanted through the little window.

I admit that renovating this little home twice in less than a year took a lot of energy (and money) and it´s almost strange how we could fall in love with the Island in this condition. But we certainly did. All the friends we made, the nice and helpful people along the way, the great school and the nice weather are just some of the things we are grateful for.

I had this "painting" made of the family, on the local market in San Agustin last Winter. It´s important to remember that as long as you have your health and your family, you actually do not have any problems! The painting now hangs on the living room wall to remind us. :-)

Maybe you have already noticed? I love pink and there´s a lot of pink decoration in the house. 

That was all for now. But surely I will show you new ideas and changes I have for our little home sometime in the future.

Take care and remember the ones who are close to you. Love is all that matters!

All The Best!

Monica Bergkvist

Digital Marketer