Senior Interior Designer & Owning a Business
I was so lucky! I had the chance to live only for 14 years under a communist regime in a poor country in Eastern Europe, Romania.
I had the chance to learn for the past, from the socialist poverty, and to appreciate the opportunities that this new free world has to offer.
Since 1998 I and my husband Claus Constantin we created a start-up revolving around making beautiful interiors. Claus is an artist and a painter, full of ideas and passion for beauty. Together we planned a way to embellish people’s lives by making beautiful interiors.
We didn’t know how to start.
We’ve just finished school and we didn’t know how to start a business. We didn’t have any experience and, because we previously lived in a communist era where there is no private initiative, we didn’t know anybody that had a business before.
So we started from scratch, only with a dream. Making beautiful homes, improving lives from outside in.
It is interesting: to want to pitch interior design and home improvement projects costing 3000 Euro to home owners that just bought an apartment for 5000 Euro. Difficult market to sell in. You cannot invest in improvement so much, it’s more than you can sell it for.
Also, explain the need for a Interior Designer or a Home Decorator 3D project that costs about 500 Euro in a market that never heard of this job and has the medium wages at about 250 Euro.
But we succeed to be known and appreciated by a small niche that grew larger and larger over the years.
Many written articles an public appearances on tv and internet made us more popular.
1000 Design Projects
Over 50 3D interior design
Residential and commercial interiors were redesigned and remodeled by our teams.
300 Blog posts
More than 100 articles or Tv shows and News were about us.
Besides that I have written hundreds of articles with subjects of interior design.
On www.artdecozone.ro there are over 300 pages and blog posts written by me.
Mentoring over 100 Architects
Each year young Architects and Interior Designer join our company as a trainee. Over the years, most of them developed their own successful companies in interior design following our model.
20.000 Fans on Facebook
Maintaining a media presence and a fan base was slow and enduring, just like a marathon. We’ve reached over 20.000 followers on Facebook and around 200 subscribers on YouTube.
Design Projects
Articles
Architects Mentored
Facebook fans
Art Deco Zone - 3D planning for your home
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Knox Design - Home improvement teams for turn key projects
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Artifact Design - Furniture & custom decorations to your perfect home
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Language Learning
At age 4 I went to a flee market with my father. On Sundays there were on the side of the River Dambovita in Bucharest a kilometer’s long flea market. Everyone got out of the house and brought some miscellaneous stuff to sell.
Usually there were old clothes or pieces of machinery but now and then you could find a real treasure, something difficult to pass over the socialist border. Especially book or newspapers from abroad. They were full with possible capitialist influence and represented a threat to our fable minds.
So, that cold day, I’ve come across something that would change my life: 12 cartoon newspapers with Pif and Hercule. Old, ripped and dirty they made me dream about a life in colors, a life with fun and happiness.
The logical thing to do was to learn some French to understand them better. At the beginning looking at the pictures was enough but later on I’ve learned easy words and phrases and dreamd of being a teacher or a translator, to travel and to see new cities and new people.
Now I am still learning new languages, this became a passion for me. I would love to have more time and to travel and to immerse into the new cultures.
My present status is:
Level of French – B2
I can read, speak and translate to and into French. That come in handy when I had to help my daughter with French homework. 🙂
I’ve enjoyed reading all sorts of books in French but my favorite writer is Eugene Ionesco, a writer that invented the absurd theater. Also in college I’ve discovered French old literature, old stories written and sang by minstrels. I still love to listen to Malicorne, a french band that sings old french songs.
Level of English – B2
I’ve started learning English at 18 years old, beginning with song lyrics and computer games. Now I am able to easily translate between English and Romanian.
Level of Turkish – A1
I’ve enrolled my son to a very good computer school in Bucharest where most theachers are from Turkey. Some teachers had the initiative to make friends with the Romanian parents by offering free Turkish lessons. I was happy to learn more about a culture that I didn’t know anything about.
The first lesson was difficult because Turkish is extremely different from Romanian and I didn’t know a word, apart from the other parents that watched Turkish soap operas and were quite skilled.
I was sad and feeling stupid but the teacher came and told me, repeat after me “Merhaba! Nasilsiniz?”. I repeated. “See, he said, you already speak Turkish”. So, I’ve never left the class and for 2 years it was my favorite Saturday morning meeting with friends.
I hope to get the chance to improve my Turkish because I have the feeling that I’ve reached a plateau and that I could do really better.
Dutch level – B1
Moving to Rotterdam is no easy job, especially with 2 children. Maybe I could be more prepared and learn in advance? I’ve heard from a lot of people that you don’t really need to know Dutch in Netherlands because everibody speaks English so well.
But I don’t think so. If you really want to be a part of that culture, you should do all the effort needed to be integrated.
And you know what, despite what they said, Dutch language is not that difficult after all!
I’ve learned a little bit from Internet but I hope to improve soon after I get a job and maybe some friends…
Level of Italian – A1
As Romanians we are lucky and our language is sooo close to Italian. I am used to watch movies in Italian and I am easily able to translate the content. Unfortunately it is not a language that I’ve studied sistematically.
Level of Romanian – Native
It is one to be born in a language and another to be fluent and coherent. I create content in Romanian all the time. It is important to me be able to write quality materials because they attract potential customers for my business.
It is important to speak clearly and to be able to explain and convince because I have to make sales and presentations every single day.
My Hobbies
Here are some of my hobbies and my passions (to be later updated).