Décor: Old classroom now a lovely retro apartment

Backto school

What are the chances of living in your old school classroom? Good, it seems, in the case of Lynn Rouwhorst, who has created this gorgeous retro apartment in the place where she once learned her tables.

COCOFEATURES.COM photos ANNE DEN HAAN

Lynn loves entertaining. Her huge crockery cabinet, which she bought second-hand, comes in very useful here as she so many beautiful pieces that she likes to display and use. The dining table is from Ikea and the chairs are either Ikea or second-hand finds.

She paid extra for the breakfast-bar extension in the kitchen and the tiles, an investment she feels was well worth it.

Barista corner: ʻThe coffee machine was an online marketplace find. I think these are normally quite expensive because they are catering equipment, but mine makes fantastic coffee! You can buy the syrups you see in shops. ʼ

Lynn Rouwhorst was staying with her mother temporarily after a break-up when she heard about a new project in her Dutch town of Winterswijk.

Her old school building, which had become vacant nine years earlier, was finally approved for housing and the conversion project, one of a few aimed at keeping young people in the village, was to start soon. Two years later and Lynn and her two kittens, Boef and Beer, could move into her apartment ‒ just a few months before this interview. ʻIn the months prior to the move, I scrolled through the online marketplace daily. I already loved thrift-shopping with my mother anyway, and now we had a goal! By the time I could move into the apartment, my momʼs storage was full of my things, ʼ says Lynn.

ʻI already had quite a bit of furniture as my ex-partner and I had lived together before we broke up, so I knew what the basis of my interior was going to be. I made a 3D design and drew all the furniture in on a floor plan. My parents and I were regularly driving off somewhere to pick up something second-hand that I found online. ʻI had to pay extra for the breakfast-bar extension of the kitchen counter and for the tiles, but I already enjoy it so much. We can make coffee at the bar and just for the overall look of the kitchen, that investment was totally worth it! 'The steel-framed glass door was also an extra investment. I immediately saw how the standard white door closed off the space and this was my solution. Now I can also keep a close eye on the cats when

Marktplaats ('marketplace') is the Netherlands' favourite online site for selling or buying anything you could possibly want. Lynn calls it her 'best friend' . 'An IT specialist had decided on a whim that he wanted to sell ice creams next to his regular job, but he didnʼt really like it and sold the giant ice cream online. He asked me what I was going to do with it and didn't understand why anyone would want it in their house!ʼ

I come in with guests, because they are not allowed to go outside. ʻThe housing project was a lot of fun with 30 young people getting the key to their new home in one week! During the renovation, everyone was constantly dropping by, and we shared a lot of building material. We made a WhatsApp group to borrow tools and so on. We shared a bucket of white paint; it was the basic colour the contractor used on the walls. The WhatsApp group would constantly ask, “Who has the white paint?” That usually meant that someone had accidentally bumped a piece of furniture against the white wall or something and they wanted to touch it up again. ʻI like to organise dinners here for family and friends, in my well-known Lynn style: three courses and nice table décor, almost always completely vegan and everyone always loves it. Thatʼs what that huge crockery cabinet is useful for; I have so many beautiful pieces, I like to display and use them. ʻThe cabinet is actually two three-part cabinets stacked on top of each other. A man was selling it

Lynn stays strictly within her colour palette of yellow, fluorescent pink, mint green and pastels. She loves retro and vintage things and collects various art items, many of which have to do with sweets, and are mainly the work of female Dutch artists. She thinks it is important to support other women.

for next to nothing. I asked him whether the cabinets could stand on top of each other, whether they would be straight… ʻHe didnʼt really understand me. He said it was possible, but the height would be almost four metres. He didnʼt know about my mezzanine of course! ʻThe cabinets were a good two hours away for us and the advertisement stated that we would have to disassemble them ourselves. When we arrived with some screwdrivers, we quickly realised we had underestimated the job. In the end we worked for two hours with a crowbar to get them off the wall. The cabinets only just fit in the trailer ‒ we even had to take the doors off otherwise they just wouldnʼt have fitted. We did receive a discount from the seller because of the disassembly help. So in the end it was a huge adventure, and that entire wall of cabinets was under R2 000, ʼ Lynn says. ʻI stay within my colour palette at home, which is yellow, fluorescent pink, mint green and pastels. This way, structure remains visible in the busy coloured items that I have collected. I am in love with retro and vintage things and I collect everything with the

Lynn sleeps in the loft, overlooking the living room. Next to the bed is an old locker unit, also a marketplace find, that fits in with the old school building history of her apartment.

themes pastry, candy or rabbits. Once I come across something in my style, I find it hard to resist. Nothing beats that dopamine rush! ʻAt the same time, though, I will gladly pay full price for work by Dutch artists who inspire me. Thatʼs what I have my candy art wall for! My stairs are behind that art wall. They lead to my bedroom in the loft. I love sitting in the window, cuddling Boef and Beer, my cats, with a book and that beautiful pink blossom outside in the background. The coolest thing is that I went to school here, this apartment used to be my classroom and now I live in it!ʼ

Like so many people these days, Lynn has a 'work from home' corner upstairs in her bedroom. And true to her style, the design aesthetic is strong.