Lamps - an old subject

Some typical subject for this blog has been lamps. 

We have though lived in the house for about 12 years and still, there are plenty of lamps to fix. One of the rooms that have deserved a bit of love "lightwise" is the kitchen, as when the sun goes down, it is basically impossible to cook (and still it is, on the southwest side of it) as it is dark, no matter which lights one has turned on.

I have had hard time thinking what kind of lamp would suit in the kitchen. The current kitchen is not what should be the "final" kitchen and the idea I have in mind for that one is closer to a modern interpretation of a turn of the century kitchen (we are talking of the beginning of the 1900-century). 

The kitchen spot that needed a lamp/light

I should have therefore been thinking of some wall lamp in Jugend style, but I never managed to find any that would convince me. Also, we had at the same time to provide some form of lamp in the pentry. 

When we came to view the house when it was on sale, there was a nice globe there. When we moved in in the  house there was just a lightbulb. I was hoping to find something that would fit that without having to make drastic changes, but that was not really possible.

The lightbulb support that was in the pentry

I had a thought in mind on how we should fix both places, but at the end I bought something on some Facebook private advertisement which was at least cheap and retro. It would work great in a beautiful kitchen (or bathroom) from the 40s-50s, in pastel colors, but well, it works for now at least. 

One of the two lamps (looks like Mumin) before being mounted

The one in the pentry became even less optimal. The cable positionin was not allowing the lamp to be mounted where there was the lightbulb and now I have a memory of the fact that the globe vanished before we could move in. I actually wonder if it had been on that wall for a while...

So, be light!

A less perfect implementation of my idea

Fixing "cremekoppar" in a Jugend cabinet

 As usual, lately, time is not enough for documenting everything that is happening in the house, even though the step forwards in our eternal project (fixing up this house) have been also limited. 

It feels as the last four years, time and energy have been even more scarce than before.

Several months back I bid on a fine Jugend cabinet, not too big, to have in the last free corner of the living room, where the piano is. I was more hoping to get a furniture for Mattias' vinyl collection, but I didn't find anything suitable while this cabinet seemed in my head perfect for the spot. 

The cabinet in the corner of the room, behind the couch

It is just today, many months later, that I finally cleaned it up at best as I could (the velvet has stains and dust that I didn't manage to get off). I probably need to give it a hand of "Fulgentin". It took me some time even to just remove the tag from the action house...

A cute detail from the cabinet

Mattias few months ago asked me what we should put in there. To be honest, I had no idea, except some very faint thought of placing a bit more visible some "cremekoppar" (creme cups?) that I had bought possibly few years back and that have been in their beautiful boxes since.

I love porcelain, especially the old Swedish one. I bought once a big set and since then I bought three more (not as big) and indulged in looking at many more on the internet, but restrained myself from buying anything more as space, even in a house like ours, is limited. 

But this. I saw them passing by on an auction and fell in love with the simple and elegant design. I had no idea what a cremekopp was and I still think that the usage of them will be very limited (some form of broth, some chocolate creme or what). They are more cute than useful. 

A good display of my 11 (+1) cups

This specific set should include (I think) about 13 unique cups as each of them has the king emblem on them. His motto and some historical detail about Rörstrande is written on the back of the little plate. 

One of the cremekopp, the "first" one. 

Eventually, today I moved them from their "hiding" place and managed to find a good way to display all of them (minus one, as it is a doublet). 

Useful modernities

 As we have this incredible controversial relationship with the wind, last year I tried to pragmatically buy a "Weather station" that could support, at least mentally, our handling of extreme weather situations.

I will never be tired to repeat that, as every project for us, things take its time and now, one month and one week later, we are finally able to have the "weather station" up and running, to enjoy being obsessed about temperature and m/s when the wind blows.

The main interface of the weather station: you can read indoor and outdoor temperature, how much it has been raining, what time is it, and how strong the wind is. It also predicts the coming weather

It is of course something that does stick out a bit in the structure of the house. But I doubt i would have ever managed to find something "jugend" inspired ;-)

We need to get happy we could sacrifice the "pumps" house, that has an half painted door, odd tiles and well, it is at least placed in the most wind sensitive part of the garden (that is why we have mounted the wind sensor there).

The wind sensor

We also sacrificed the look of the balcony. Well, that balcony has nothing to do with the original balcony, really. Plus, since it has been probably built in some cheap/fast/unorthodox way, it does look like it would need a hand of paint, or two, or some love and care.

Anyway, I must confess that the rain sensor is just horrible... 

Rain sensor on our beautiful balcony

Now, will all of this help us out to defeat the worst storms that will ever attempt to lift pool roofs and slam trees on the ground?

Let's see if this is just a toy or something useful...

The saga of a Platanus

 In our garden there is a quite big tree, a Platanus, that has been possibly be brutally cut down before we moved in.

Still, despite the cut, branches have been growing up from the top and, although not as impressive as it was probably before, it has been still a fascinating tree. Covered by a lot of ivy, which we have bothered relatively little to remove, it has been one of the few trees that are welcoming to climb (thanks to the ivy, I guess).

This tree is probably one of the oldest ones that we have in our garden and all the Swedes I talk to are always mesmerized we have such a tree in our property.

The crack 

  

Today, our arborist came by for the annual apple trees treatment and I asked him if he could check the other trees around. He then noticed a big crack on the plane. I am pretty sure that that has been there for quite some time, it can't have been appearing from nowwhere, but on the other hand, the tree has been covered by ivy and I have attempted recently to clean it a bit.

A big chunk got off

The risk that it would fall and harm something is small, at worse it would damage the hedge, but better to take precautions as we usually don't have much luck with trees that are old and fall. So, we agreed on removing the dangerous parts.

One can see how big the trunk is (or better, was)

From the other side, the part that got removed

I believe we have a mixture of branches and ivy

It is an old tree and it is not in its best shape. I believe this was the main reason why its crown was cut before our arrival. But it is still beautiful to see, with those enormous leaves that when it is autumn and winter (and partially spring), fly around. 

Good to have firewood out of the cutting of the tree

What is left of the tree got secured and stabilized. Let's see what will happen to it.

Another cumulative post

 In reality I wanted to have this post focusing on an area in the garden where both me and Mattias have worked together to improve it.

But, as I currently do not have all the pictures and when scrolling in the list there were some other interesting ones, this post will mix a bit of different topics.

1) This year has definitely been a plum year. I started the harvest with a lot of plums full of monilia and warms, but ended up with at least 10 kilos of plums that we converted into jam.

2) In April, I bought on Tradera a very particular painting, definitely Jugend. It is not a normal canvas but some form of textile where a woman is painted and part of the decorations are embroidered. I brought eventually the painting, which was shipped with a plastic frame and some original paper, to a framer and I got it upgraded (sadly, I forgot to ask him to not throw the original "paper").

3) I have finally made some small progress on the windows. Imperceptible, but still something in the ocean of unprogresses.

I have did put some putty on the glass on at least two windows, so since I didn't manage to paint right away, they are ready for painting now, after several weeks. 

One of the windows required Mattias' intervention for removing the corner irons (hörnjärn) which though are terribly rusty. I have submersed them in vinager and scraped them a bit and I was satisfied to see that some of the rust had gone off with this treatment. However, I thought they need more of it, so I have dumped them in their bucket a couple of weeks ago. I am definitely too slow for focusing on windows restauration...

4) Finally, the garden area I mentioned above. Here there has been always some logs of firewood. Sadly not very well placed and with tons of ivy and blackberries bushes growing wild.

How it looked when we started cleaning it up

We threw most of the logs, sadly, but we kept what we could. I have pulled away - I hope - most of the ivy and tried to cut down the blackberries (I should go and cut down the big one). Mattias has then stapled the wood he cut (from the pictures below, he was actually forced to move the logs towards the garage wall as the construction was too unstable to hold them piled up) and now it has a cover on it.

I still have some work to do around it, but I have also remove weeds from the surroundings and not just this specific corner.

We have some ideas on how to move forward with the area, but we need now to "just" find the time to finish it off.

Summer action

I have been trying to find the occasion to write what we have done, small and big, but time always fly away. 

At least today, I manage to make concrete the attempt to document some of our minor efforts during the summer.

Some of the small things we have manage to do have been in the pipeline forever. It feels as the whole past year has been sucked up into work and kids and our own logistic/activities without leaving much space for anything else. Also the energy has been limited. 

There is much more that has happened in the last months, so I hope I will manage to catch up in the future to summarize things that I would like to have documented, from both small and bigger house projects of all kind.

1) 

I sadly do not remember why but clips that were holding some cables in the basement fell off. I then asked to try to find news ones, but what I got was not exactly the same product, was some metall hook for fences, as far as I understood.

I then tried to fix these new hooks to hold the cables, but that didn't turn out to be perfect as it was very hard to hammer them into the ceiling and I manage to create more work for me to fix. Holes that will need some adjustment. 

The ceiling, the cables and the holes

2) There have been a lot of small issues with a couple of doors/locks/keyholes. I still have one to fix that has been wrong since we bought the house and probably for decades. But I have put some effort in trying to fix (again) the keyhole for the pentry door. The holes have been just made into the void, basically and the screws have been not manage to get a proper grip. I have now tried to fix it with some linseed putty, with the hope that when it gets hard it actually holds everything together and not that it becomes to brittle and fall aparts again.

The keyhole with the putty

After being "repaired"

Similarly, I repaired also the bathroom door. Also there, one of the screws couldn't get a grip and seems that has been just poorly placed. A bit annoying as this was done by some pro and I would hope that when you pay for something (and not cheaply at all), it would actually give you some insurance on the quality.

Anyway, I removed all the parts of the handle and then I applied once again linseed putty hoping that it will also hold things in place.

The injured wood

I put the putty in the previous holes

I put back things and I am hoping for the best :)

3) As summer is summer, there are also a lot of outdoor projects ongoing, mostly a general maintenance of the garden.

Being inspired by some neighbours with some similar system, I have invested in an automatic sun driven watering system to be used when we are away (and even when we are not).

I also got some old barrel that I have then oiled with linseed oil and filled with water.

The barrel

The sundriven watering system

The system set up for test

I have still to set it up actually properly, to be able to water the plants and so on. It will require me to cut the little pipe and puzzle it together in a smart way. But I want to move the barrel closer to the pump so that it is also less in the way with all the piping.

4) Finally, earlier during summer I had the chance to check the roof as part of the two-years inspection after we painting it. When doing so, I noticed that there was literally all sort of things on the gutters.

Especially before autumn, it will be great to have the regular task of cleaning them out. If they are stuffed, the rain will just overflow with the risk of causing damage to the house structure instead.

Mattias jousts on a long ladder for cleaning a gutter

Also this is not a trivial activity as for reaching some parts you really need to be safe and sound on a ladder. But work is in progress at least!
 

Picking up apples

 Of course we have been picking up apples also this year, but this post is not about that. I will spare the story telling on our efforts this year in another moment.

However, I try to keep some themes in the house. We have iris a bit everywhere, in the garden, on vases, on mirrors, on the windows... but then we have plenty of apples, as said.

I did found this textile tapestry on some online auction and, well, I simply just liked it a lot.

I thought that a gracious, jugend like, lady picking up apples would make a great connection with the yearly effort of collecting (and throwing) as many apples as possible from trees where apples are almost up in the sky.

I think its placement is possibly not the best one, but it is at least placed where some softening of the environment is needed. Although, probably a carpet would be a more proper investment.

Mattias hanging the apple picking lady

A Christmas picture of how it looks