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Old school in the countryside
A blog with delicious recipes for people with gluten and histamine intolerance. This was the start of the success story of Laura Muthesius and Nora Eisermann, who today publish beautiful interior and food shots for over 1.2 million followers on their Instagram channels _designtales_ and _foodstories_.
As a trained photographer and fashion designer, the two Berlin natives are perfectly qualified for this job. They have been running their blog and social profiles professionally for many years, producing high-quality content for companies and magazines and creating collaborations with brands from the food and design sectors.
"The plastic windows simply have to go"
It was also a cooperation that brought _designtales_ and Sorpetaler together. In 2020, Laura and Nora began renovating an old schoolhouse in the middle of Brandenburg. One thing was immediately clear to them: the old plastic windows had to be replaced by timber windows. Two old original timber windows at the front of the house, which were white with very slender sash bars and underscored the classic character of the brick building from the early 20th century, served as an aesthetic model for the new windows. Laura and Nora also drew a lot of inspiration from the original architecture of the area, which they came across on their dog walks.
While searching for a window manufacturer - of course, on the Web, on Instagram and Pinterest - Laura and Nora came across Sorpetaler. Today their renovated school house is a success, with its modern larch muntin windows whose sill profiles, mouldings and small capitals revive the quaint old building charm.
When we discovered Sorpetaler via Instagram, we were immediately attracted by the design and the material wood. The muntin windows offer a convincing combination of aesthetics, quality and security. Adapted to our needs with individual embellishments, they just fit our house perfectly.
Laura Muthesius and Nora Eisermann
Light creates warmth
What particularly surprised the two was the completely different effect the new windows had. "Your windows look much bigger. It's funny: if you see before/after pictures, you'd think we took bigger windows. When in fact the openings are exactly the same," says Laura. This is mainly due to the material wood: It makes the appearance of a window slenderer and enables the use of more delicate sash bars. In turn, the amount of light coming in is increased. This not only makes for a warm ambience, but is an indispensable element for atmospheric photographs.
Overall, for photographer Laura and fashion designer Nora wood as a material played a very important role when replacing the windows, in particular in terms of aesthetics. "We also have plastic windows in our flat in an old building in Berlin, and we just find that impossible," Laura said. "It absolutely takes away the charm of the flat," adds Nora. In Scandinavia, for example, where the two travel a lot privately and whose style has been quite influential to them, plastic windows are virtually non-existent, they say.
Wood windows that last for generations
But it was not only the design and aesthetics of wood windows that convinced the founders of _foodstories_ und _designtales_, but also sustainability. The flat they lived in before moving into the renovated schoolhouse had timber windows that were over a hundred years old and still fully functional. "If they've been in there for a hundred years now," Nora ponders, "you shouldn't necessarily switch to a new material if they’ve kept so well."
More insights into the schoolhouse
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