Home Tour 2018 - Our new Montessori inspired apartment

We moved into this new apartment last August, and since then I’ve been wanting to give you a house tour and show you our new environments, because this is probably the most functionally (and minimalistic) furnished apartment we’ve made, and it’s definitely my favourite so far. Now that the last room is almost ready—or rather, it’s starting to look like the image I had in my mind—I think the time has finally come to show you.

Most of our furniture is from IKEA: I love IKEA, you can create the style that you have in mind—whether it’s modern and minimalistic, or more classic or even vintage—spending as little (or as much) as you want, and going to just one shop (which is priceless!).

So today I prepared for you a photo post with behind-the-scenes captions. And yes, our apartment does look like this—tidy and organised—88% of the time, but one day I’ll show you the remaining 12% ;-)

The living room

This is my favorite part of the house (also the one where we spend most of our time) and I’m very proud of it because it’s functional, fun, minimalistic and (in my opinion) beautiful.

The inspiration for the play area comes from the Moomin Cafes we went to in Helsinki. The play area is outlined by a soft carpet (a piece of custom-cut moquette from Leroy Merlin).

The climbing frame is from Decathlon, we just painted the supporting bars white to give it a more minimalistic look, and covered the logo (I’m not a fan of visible logos, unless they have a purpose): it was such a great choice, Oliver uses it all the time and has become a real little monkey!

That gorgeous, very Scandinavian-looking shelf furniture is an IKEA PS 2017: I love the simplicity of it, and it’s perfect if you want to set up Montessori shelves.

And this is the rest of the living room, that we decided to keep as clean and minimalistic as possible.

The sofa has been through a lot, but we decided not to change the covers until the kids are a bit older (we did upgrade the feet, though). The beautiful portrait of us up on the wall is by the very talented Rocio Vigne, a gift from a good friend when Oliver was born.

We decided to keep it plain and simple, clean walls and light colours promote calm and harmony. At the dinner table, the kids use two Stokke highchairs (a few months ago Emily stopped using the Babybjörn highchair, that I loved).

The chill room

I’m so proud of this room because, thanks to its minimalistic furnishing, it’s many rooms in one: it’s a dressing room for the kids, that doubles as their book room, as Emily’s changing room and as our guest room.

Oliver has his clothes in the inbuilt closet, and his hooks on the wall to hang his pyjamas/day clothes and his laundry basket, while for Emily I modified our old Kallax furniture that you’ve seen many time in Oliver’s Montessori room, and converted it into a closet using IKEA Kallax accessories.

I used three IKEA Flisat book shelves on the wall at Oliver’s and Emily’s height, the carpet is an IKEA Stillebäk, and I’m using an IKEA drawer furniture with a changing mat on it as Emily’s changing table (I find it very convenient, instead of having yet another piece of furniture). I haven’t gotten around to hanging Oliver’s drawing on the wall, but it’ll be somewhere at his height.

And our latest addition is the gorgeous Matuu teepee that I’m in love with (I’ll tell you more in a couple of weeks) and it’s perfect to close up and put in a corner when I need to set up our inflatable guest bed.

The bedroom

Ok, actually THIS is the room I’m most proud of, and totally out of coincidence. This three-(tiny)-bedroom apartment was an office before, where they had took down a wall in between two bedrooms to make it a conference room. When we moved in, the owner asked if we wanted the wall back up, but instinctively I said no (for now).

When we are on holiday I love to sleep in the same room as the kids, it feels very primal and natural. Here in the center of Marbella, though, the rooms are always too small for that (they’re tiny!), so when I saw this “double” room, I thought it was the perfect opportunity to try my co-bedroom idea. So I went for it.

I moved Oliver’s IKEA Kura bed to our room, placed Emily’s mattress on the floor and voilat! We then installed thick curtains that we can use to separate the environments for more privacy, but we’re actually never using them because we really only use the bedroom to sleep. (The mattress you see behind the bed is an extra one we had in the previous apartment that we don’t really know where to put, so for now it lives there).

The terrace

As you can see, I’m still using our Imaginarium playmat, that I now placed outside with Oliver’s old set of table and chairs: it’s great for some more messy activities like water coloring, bubbles, play dough…

And this is all the news! The kitchen is very simple, we have Emily’s Woomo Montessori learning tower (which we love!) and a simple IKEA wooden stool for Oliver. And the bathroom is still a work in progress, as Oliver’s station is done (he really just needed a step to reach the big sink), but for Emily I haven’t set anything up the way I like it yet. Update coming soon!