Sverre & Maren Ingeborg’s Norwegian Victorian With A “Touch of Color and Love”

Name: Sverre & Maren Ingeborg
Location: Ottestad, Norway

We live in a PINK victorian house on the country side in Norway (1.5 hours from the capital). The house and outbuildings are 2,000 square feet, and we both live and work together from our amazing 99 year old place. We have many trees just as old as the house and a sweet yard. The outbuildings will soon contain our small film production company. We have just started with the floors, and the old second hand round window will be in place shortly.

We buy most things second hand, and since we are artists and don’t make much money, we have become very good at getting much out of little. If we want to buy something, we have to sell something else first, and we like it like that.

When we aren’t working on our films, we make music. Our interest in music is reflected in the house: we made the living room into a music atelier where we compose, make our demos and make illustrations for our albums and prints. Sverre made the tall table in the atelier, and we use it all the time. We love this room!

We also love the kitchen and eating area, and have just started to call it the cafeteria. When we needed handles for the drawers in the kitchen (a homemade kitchen), we used the broken xylophone! Maren Ingeborg is not totally comfortable with the color of the kitchen (though it’s much better than the white that it used to be), so it will probably change color again soon.

There’s too much furniture inside the house right now, and it’s frustrating. We store an extra couch (the old brown leather one) that is supposed to be a part of the furniture in the outbuildings in the cafeteria, and we store some teak cabinets, a green enameled wood burning stove and a desk in the music atelier, and there is just too much everywhere. We are really looking forward to moving things to our new office, that will make the house a little more breathable.

Recently we painted the bathroom black, with a petrol ceiling with golden stars on it! It was a really cheap transformation, and for the first time we totally love our bathroom. It is big and has lots of light and a really old bathtub, and now the surroundings in there has become really cozy and magical.

We have painted almost every room and every floor the last 2-3 years, and we also painted the house pink on the outside, and it turned out to be adorable. No regrets at all, it has actually been one of the greatest things we have done to the house. In general, we really like that we’ve made decisions in this house that make it perfect for us, and not like it “should be”. For example we don’t need a typical living room with a television and a big couch – we never watch television. We use our time to create together and to be together, and that’s what we needed our home to fit. Another thing we really like is our tiny bed on the middle of the burgundy floor, waking up with the view of our balcony, colored lanterns and treetops. It’s great to just see the fields and the lake in front of us. It’s very airy! Our style could be described as eclectic, whimsical and cozy, but with a great touch of color and love.

Thanks, Sverre & Maren Ingeborg!

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