The multi talanted couple Charlotte Öström and Rikard Gartmyr spend almost all of their time together: The live together with their children Alice, 5 yrs, and Karl, 6 yrs, in a house in Bromma, Sweden. They also run the company CharlieCharlie together. A company that is all about stop motion animation, character design and illustration. With big clients like MSN and Greenpeace and the Swedish Postoffice they do really good for themselves. And all is produced in the basement of the house.

After they have taken their kids to school and daycare, in the morning, they return home, make themselves a cup of coffee and go downstairs to the studio basement and start working. And of course the dog Arne tags along to the cool basement where he has his own little nest. The basement, however, will not be covered by this slideshow, I will post it in a separate slide.

The house is built in 1937, designed by Edvin Engström. This family moved in 2004 to find the house in very good shape. The person living there before them was actually the daughter of the original builder of the house. Underneath the linoleum carpet they found beautiful wooden flooring in perfect condition. All the walls got a fresh coat of white and the kitchen was left untouched. The bathroom, however, got redone and the garden needed  a loving hand.

Like myself this couple like to buy a lot of toys for themselves, not only for the kids. They seem to love Tim Burton, who´s characters are found all over the house.
But best of all is this family´s passion to create and build things and that is seen all over this house.

Like the customized i phone docking station that Rikard made out of an old transistor radio. Or the wooden R2D2 or the amazing tree house in the garden. I was so inspired by this creative couple and I think you will be to.
Enjoy!

Click the image below for the whole slideshow or the small thumbnails for single photos.
Related posts: CharlieCharlie´s dollhouse click here! Rikard´s brother and family´s visit AprillAprill click here! And Studio-basement sooon here!

I know. I know. I know I promised a visit before the end of this week. But it has been delayed. I have been really sick this week and I just can not manage myself to finish it tonight. All the photos are done , I just have to write the text. And that I will do tomorrow morning.

So tune in again tomorrow for more on this home…

Good Night

Hello everybody.

I am working on a new visit for you. The home of the family behind the company Charlie Charlie.  They live and work in a really nice house outside of Stockholm. Going through the photos I found the family´s dollhouse and decided it deserved a post of it´s own. So here it is.

I shot this home for the Swedish mag. Mama last summer.
The family has since then split up. They do not live here anymore, but they still wanted me to share my photos with you readers.
Anna is still running the webshop Bon Vintage but at another location.
This is her own words:

In my mother in laws vacation home up in the north of Sweden
(yes, Dalarna where I have been blogging from these past weeks) nothing and I mean nothing has
been done since the 70′.
This could be a great thing or it could be plain ugly.
In this case I must go for the latter.

Now our goal is to redo part of the house and make it warmer for the cold winters
but we havn’t decided on when this is going to happen.

We havn’t made up our minds for the past years.

This year I simply couldn’t stand the brown, dirty- feeling of a kitchen
so I put in 2 days of work and about 800 kronor (100 dollares) worth of material.

The result you can see below.

I painted the cabinets in one of my favourite colors. Alcro Ad Isglass.
It has this 50′ feel about it. Not blue, not green, not grey but like beautiful eyes -all of them together.

The other walls got my favourite shade of pink. A dirty kind of pink.
Matchable with every color I like. A true beauty!
NCS: S2010-r10b

On top of the old vinyl flooring which was used as protection from the water (stänkskydd), I simply
attached dotted oil cloth (oh chocking - oil cloth an dots!  Very inventive Isabelle).
I just used some white small nails to attach it which blended with the dots.

Then I ran around the house for some odd paintings and a beautiful mirror.
I still have to find a good carpet to cover up the ugly vinyl flooring.

One of the paintings my kids cousin made.
A stencil from this photo. He is 13 and was testing stuff out. I love it.
Beppes T-shirt comes from Jennys store - you can buy it here. (click, click).

Ciao, ciao from the Swedish woods!

Remember - just a little bit of color and effort can change a lot!