Sockets & switches

It is very interesting that one can spend very much time on a small detail like a switch or a socket, when restructuring/renovating a house.

As per today, considering that soon (or relatively soon) the walls will be painted, we are busy trying to think how we want such things to look like. Honestly, when today I was walking in the house, I have noticed that there are too few switches in each room. It will be annoying like hell to turn on a lamp in the bedroom, then have to turn on the nighttable lamp and finally go and switch the lamp, since there is no other switch in the room. However, this gives some flexibility on the furniture placement for now and the future.

Another little issue is that, even though we would have had the wish to save items from the previous owner, we have realized that there is a nice mix of black/white and different shaped items, which makes our nose turned up.
We are therefore planning (at least, it is nice to have a creative and ambitious plan that we might not be able to follow) to "standardize" all of them in the two main floors.
Considering the "history" of the house, we should go for porcelain as material.

Porcelain switch from Byggfabriken

However, such items are incredibly expensive (and possibly fragile?). Another option, would be to use bachelite, which was however used during the 20s and 30s.

Bachelite dimmer from Byggfabriekn

But also here, unfortunately, we come to the same conclusion. They are too expensive, indipendently from where the item comes from. Several shops have them, like for example ByggFabriken.

We think that black will give therefore a sensation of "old fashioned", although most likely, in 1910 they were all white and we will go for plastic...for saving money! Renova has a collection that resembles the shape of the ones above.

Plastic switch from Renova

When thinking about this, there is also another detail to evaluate, which is not only how the component looks on the outside, but also how it is the electrical part configurated. This is still under discussion and I very much hope that we don't have to do major changes considering the stadium at which the painting preparation is right now

Atomic bathroom

Right now we are spending a lot of time imagining how the bathroom should look like.
But it is hard...very hard, especially considering how it looked and how it is looking right now.

This is how the bathroom looked when we bought the house. Or at least, when the house was photographed for being sold. The reason why we have decided to tear it apart is that the well (?) where the water should go was not ok according to the current standards and infact, it was hiding a very fancy rusty pipe underneath.
Considering that the bathroom was "ok" but a bit boring, we decided to change it all.

Bathroom from the 90s

The interesting aspect is that, like with the wallpaper, one could find layers of tiles!!! So, one did have to remove the first layer and also the second layer, clearly from the 60s (we have the toilet on the first floor looking exactly the same). Nice way of "renovating" a toilet. If one is too lazy: just put stuff on top ;-)

The 60s layer

It is also amazing that the old structure from 1910 is intact (it is the wooden surface protected by plaster and tini little pieces of wood) despite this being a bathroom: there could be signs of humidity but we haven't found any so far. I bet that now that I wrote this year we will get plenty...

Innovative way of building

And the question is now: how will it look hopefully before we turn 40? :)

Explosive

Another wall concept for the bathroom

More classical bathroom colors

The tile is called "Narcissus"

Designing the bathroom walls

An early design concept for the wall in the bathroom. Ary drew a sketch that Mattias used as starting point for a Powerpoint illustration. The idea is simplicity with inserts of decorative Art Nouveau tiles. The Swedish flavor of Jugend was more restrained compared to its continental counterparts and we would like our house to reflect this. The tiles are from the German firm Replicata.

Early design concept with Art Nouvaeu tiles

We both like the tile Arc of Blossoms very much. For some strange reason I (Mattias) think of the child books of Elsa Beskow (1874-1953) when I look at this tile. Or maybe it's not so strange considering that Jugend was Elsa Beskow's strongest influence during the early 20th century. 

The decorative tile Arc of Blossoms

The flower girl by Elsa Beskow

The Ingemanssons

According to our sources, the house has been built 1910 by the bank directory Ingemansson, whose son, as I wrote in a previous post, was a "prominent" figure in the Lund political scene. His name was Hans Ingemansson. With these hints, and finding the name "Greta" carved in a door frame in one of the small bedrooms, I made few searches and found some information.

Axel Johan Ingemansson

Axel Ingemansson was very active. Not only he built our house, but he was first tenor in the Lund Studentsångare under Fader Berg and member of the Odd Fellow organization.
Born 1876, he moved out of Kullavägen in 1939, it seems, when he bought a building in Lund, Kastanjen 6.
He married Anna Nilsson and had two kids, as mentioned: Greta, born 1899 (who married a bankman, Åkaeson) and Hans, born 1905.

Hans Axel was born the 2nd of April 1905 and was mainly a lawyer and during the 60s he was "kommunalråd".

He had three kids, Carl-Axel, Barbro and Eva from Ebba Johnson (who he married 1931), but married again 1958 with Gulli Castler.
I don't know how long he lived in our house, but at a certain point of his life he was living in "the most beautiful house of Lund", which is the old pharmacy building (apotekhuset).

I haven't yet managed to find anything related to what has happened to Greta, instead, or any information of Hans' children. But I don't think I would dig more, since I doubt that any of them has any recollection of the house ;-)
Pity though, since probably the name of the house was visible during the "Ingemansson period". I hope to find something about that, and who bought the house from them, in some archive...

True colors

We have been discussing what colors to choose for weeks now. And now, finally, all the pieces of the puzzle has fallen into place. We were at Bauhaus for buying paint when Arianna by chance found a book about color trends of different styles and eras. We learned that typical for the Jugend/Art Nouveau style (or "Liberty tedesco" as the Italians call it) are rich pastel colors. For me who loves just about everything about the 80's this was a very pleasant surprise.

Jugend colors.

The funny thing is we were already on the right path. About one month ago I got the idea to base the color scheme on the colors of a stained glass window in the atrium of the house.

Stained glass window in the atrium.

Wallpaper

We are about to choose a wallpaper that we would like to have in the connection room between the small bedrooms and the bathroom. Until few days ago, the room had a 70s wallpaper, on green colors. On the floor a fantastic fitted carpet still on green tones. We decided to tear off both wallpaper and fitted carpet since I really don't like carpets like that and the wallpaper, although not too bad, was badly placed. Now, what to choose? We are thinking to try to get back to the original style of the house, as much as possible, although with a bit of modern touch. Today, there are tons of wallpapers to choose from and there are some companies that provide some "old style" suggestions (in different colors).

This is right now our favorite so far (but we haven't really had the time to go through the options):

Vallmo from Boråstapeter

But yesterday, I stumbled upon this one:

Rowan from Villa Nova

Another option is this one (and there are others, but I am not very convinced of those in that specific small room), although maybe I would think it would suit better in another place.

Nerdgården from Duro

Let's hope we soon find the type to actually think this through. Time is ticking and we have to decide very soon!

Graffiti & Newspapers

Last week, the "excavation" work continued. As mentioned in the previous post, the most interesting aspect of this "phase" is to dig into the layers that have been put on the walls. It seems like the house is a big onion ;-)
Somewhere, under the vävtapet, you find some old wallpaper, then, you find another wallpaper, then you find two layers of newspapers from the 50s, then you find another wallpaper and finally, you find the wall with maybe some color on (which is hard to understand).
It is a pity that it is not possible to identify which was the original color/wallpaper/state of the rooms, but I hope that my "historical investigation" will maybe help us there.
Nevertheless here there is some onion room:

Layers

Some object was on that wall there...

Here you can ready some newspaper

Under all the layers

Under one layer, some interesting jugend-style wallpaper. But I know that in the 70s there was something else on top!

The most amazing discovery was made in the guestroom and in one of the children room, which according to a drawing from the 50s were sharing a door. It seems that the kids, 1958, decided to draw on the wall before that got painted.
It is quite tempting to keep them as "historical artefacts" ;-)

Is it Evas hand 1958 - 9 års hand 1958 or something else?

They surely did like horses!

Guess what!

The piece of art

Let's open the dances

Yesterday, finally, the renovation work started.
What we are aiming at, right now, is painting the walls, polishing the floor and fixing a bathroom, plus probably a minor serie of other items.

Here is how it looks today our ground floor.
The wallpaper (or better, vävtapeter and the normal wallpaper) has been removed in the three rooms. Under there there are different layers of material.

Here we can see that underneath the vävtaper there is a "drawing". From old pictures that unfortunately we don't have (from the previous owner) we know that there was some wooden frame including a wallpaper. I think that was the pattern. Under that there might be something else, but it is not clear what.

The pattern is visible in all the room.

There is some minor wallpaper also in the low part of the veranda and that needs to be removed as well.
When removing it, it unvealed some additional wallpaper and behind that some isolation material.

It is interesting to see that most of the times, instead of removing properly all the layers, the new "material" has been just added on top.