Did I say that...

I love Alphonse Mucha?
Maybe I should emphasize it (and apologize for the horrendous pictures quality, my bad).

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From the past

Still browsing through Emmi Bergkvist book "Gamla Åkarp och hur var det förr", it is possible to find some other nice old postcards of Åkarp where Villa Bellevue is present.

My goal 2013 is to be able to find all the possible postcards and frame them.

A postcard, I believe, from around 1930

This must have been 1910 or close by

Bathroom extreme makeover: Day 2, 3, 4 & 5

Tearing down a wall to reveal the stem pipes and to build a niche for the bathtube.

Interesting "corridor" behind the wall.

Finally! Starting to put new pipes in plastic.

No more cast-iron pipes that might leak.

Connecting the warm and cold water to the stem pipes. The warm water stem pipe was a copper pipe from the 70s that we could keep. The cold water stem pipe was a steel pipe that we will change when we rebuild the kitchen in a couple of years.

The connection box, which will be hidden behind a really sexy hatch in grey metall. So jugend (not).

It's getting more concrete now (!). The concrete was mixed with styrofoam to decrease the weight.

Bathroom extreme makeover: Day 1.

Bathroom accessories and tiles removed

Removing concrete, revealing pipes

Sewing of the past

Ideal, for a person like me, that has the craft of an hippo!
Found at the online flea market for a ridiculous price, this is a beautiful model of Husqvarna sewing machine from possibly the early 1900 century.

The sewing machine, placed in our "library/studio" 

Detail of the decorations. Maybe some jugend line?

The sewing machine, in all its beauty!

B&B Villa Bellevue

At the moment, we can't offer the full service that we wish we could, but let's say that we are opening our bed&breakfast slowly ;-) So, if you wanna be our guest, these days, you will most likely end up sleeping in our guestroom.

The guestroom, with a jugend lamp from Mattias' mother's family

A queen-size bed, a wardrobe whose inner walls are painted in a lovely yellow color (...), heat and the draft from a broken balcony door. And a dangerous antique wardrobe, that if opened might fall over you.

The "evil" wardrobe (sorry for the quality of the pic)

But one can still admire some old detail of the house, which we should try to fix properly: this ventilation opening lacks a chain and should be polished from paint.

The ventilation opening, with clearly written "Patent Örnen"

Said so, this room is of course very welcoming and we are looking forward to have you as guests ;-)

A window, a mirror and an iris

One of the characteristics of our house is surely the window in the stairwell. No doubt about that, because it is fascinating to watch from outside, and at sunrise it is an amazing view, indoor.

The window

The style is possibly very jugend: vegetation and a specific technique is almost a trademark of the style. However, I always got the sensation that the drawing was having a modern touch.
The most amazing thing happened (or at least a quite amazing thing ;D) when in my "quest for furniture" I saw this mirror on Bukowski Market.

The mirror

 Of course, the iris is what caught our eye. It is sooo close to the one of the window!

The iris

And now, the two flowers are "staring" at each other from the opposite sides of the stairwell. This was an happy story :)

This is not an isolated pipe

Taking care of an old house means you have to learn fast. One of the most important things we learnt is this: Always assume that the former owner is a complete moron. 

Our bathroom has a small space between it and the outer wall of the house. This space contains piping for warm/cold water and sewage. Nothing strange so far. However, a knowledgeable observator quickly sees what's wrong with the image below: THE SPACE IS NOT ISOLATED! So, in worst case the temperature inside the space could reach minus degrees with frozen pipes as result.

This is not an isolated pipe

Even as laymen we realize that this is not according to any standards, least of all the Säker vatten guidelines. In short: it's the work of a complete moron.

We need to do something in case we will get another harsh winter. Following the suggestion of Skånsk rörentreprenad we will put isolation around the pipes. A quick visit to Bauhaus revealed that they have everything we need. After careful measurements we will buy the sufficient amount of isolation and mount it before the winter storms starts blowing.

Bauhaus: not only a great school of design

Story of a pool

Once upon time, there was a pool. The water was supposed to be fresh and transparent and the maintainance annoying, as every pool.
But that was not our pool. Oh, no!
The first visit of the technician unvelead already a surprise: the UV component (a device that is used for purifying water) was broken. It froze during winter!

In May, we finally decided to remove the "balloon"

With unexperience (and following the suggestions of some technician) we started  it up 

We filled up water hoping we could clean up the green stuff

We asked expert fishermans to fish leaves while vacuum cleaning with constantly breaking tools

All our attempts to clean the bottom were cursed: first a piece broken, then another. Alright, then.
We decided to try other parts of the pool, namely the "jetstream" pump.
Whops. That was funny. Water started to come out of the pump and we thought that that was not a good idea.
After that, the "apocalypse". The water started to sink to a specific level and a first inspection of the technician spotted out the lack of the draining screw of the pump.
However, that didn't fix the problem for too long...
And with no possibility to make the water circulate, neither to clean the bottom, the color started to become interesting

The water level and its "brownish" phase

Black is good and it is obvious that we have a leak

It's time to act!
Let's change technician and let's clean the pool! The water is basically radioactive, new species of insects have been developed in such pond and we don't dare to know the chemical power of this unhealthy mix.

We started to remove water and unvealed almost black corals formations

How are we going to clean this?

Worrysome details

We had to do soemething! But how to clean a pool when you have a baby that would dive any second in the evil mix?
Yes, the answer is: after she falls asleep. Hence, we started to scrub and scrub even more during nights, just before our holidays.

Doing this we broke one of the lamps (they need to have water on them...)

Mattias here is using boots. Pity he didn't continue with this good habit...

The result of such hard work! A white shining pool!

After the technician fixed the leaks, which were identified in the connections to/from the jet-stram pump, we started to fill up the water, once again (after cleaning as much as possible the bottom from the seaweed forest).

The pipes under accusation

A cleaned jet-stream interface on the pool, note that the water color is much much better!

A filled pool with a decent transparent water

Now, it was time to play with chemistry. Unfortunately, we were unlucky also in this. The pool is just cursed. No doubts!
Ph too high. Lower it. Still too high. Alcalinity too high. Can't be fixed. Lower the PH. No chlorine value. Aha.
You know what.. maybe it is the water from the well?
Ok. Before we put down the pool for the winter, we empty it once again and fill it normal water, instead.

A big amount of chlorine made the water a bit more "tasty" but very artificial

Last change of water

We are still filling up to the "winter level", we are still draining water out of the different components, we still have a big pack of dead seaweed in the water, we still need to blow the mega balloon and cover it up after adjusting the ph value once again (we guess?!)
The temperature is dropping and we still have a daughter interested in diving in "uapa" all the time (uapa being water in her language).
I guess we know what we will do this weekend, since doing it during evening is not a good thought :) (but if somebody wanna help out...)
But all is fine if it ends fine (does it make sense in English? probably not) and we are living happily ever after, wondering if next year we will manage to use this pool or what...!

We won our first auction!

And that was just the first of a small serie (which I am afraid is just a start...it is a very addictive process and there are too many nice things around!).

Anyway, we are in need of jugend (suprised, huh) lamps. So, it happens to be that our first purchase on an online auction is indeed a jugend lamp, from the 30s with some very nice details. And that casually, with its very nice pink glass matches perfectly the colors that we have chosen for our bedroom.

The lamp!

Just for being picky, the "squares" motive is also recalling the squares decoration that we have outside, under the roof, and in the hall, on the ceiling. Maybe nothing so strange, for being jugend, but it couldn't work better in our house :)

Fru Krook-Friberg and the "Tre Musketörer"

According to the sources (Emmi Bergkvist and her "Gamla Åkarp och hur det var förr" book), we and Tårtrummet have something that linked us together, more than chocolate and nice cakes. The inn "Tre Musketörer".
That inn is today the building where Tårtrummet has its place. Back in the old days, the inn was actually using the two upper floors, while a bakery was in the basement.

The inn, 2010 (source Skånskan.se)

The building is from 1909 and it was built at the same time as the new station, for hosting the Lindblads cafe', at least initially, since from then to the 40s the place got several names. During the 40s, the owner was Fru Krook-Friberg ( or maybe better Kathleen Marslen-Cook-Frieberg) who named it the "Tre Musketörer" (and a nice painting of three musketeers was in the main room). She was initially living in a nearby house, when at a certain point decided to buy Villa Bellevue, our house.
So, that is the link!

Hence, my believe is that after the Ingemansson, Mrs Friberg and her family lived in our house.

The best though that I have found about this woman, or better her daughter (who is still alive) is this interesting article. Essie Frieberg (Friberg?) is now called Essie Wickström and lives in Båstad.
If only she could read this and tell us more about Villa Bellevue and Åkarp in the 40s-50s...

Can somebody explain this to me?

Among the misteries of life (like why the promoter of this blog is not even writing in it ;D), I wonder what did a sink (I guess) and another pipe (I guess again) do in one of the bedrooms...

A picture from June of one of the bedrooms

No other traces of pipes (or similar) have been found in the other bedrooms and I wonder...what was that for!?
Just for making things straight, the holes are nowadays not visible any longer (hope they were closed correctly...)

Sylvain Kinsburger

Who would have said that we would have bought something of this French artist that was active during the Art Nouveau period?
Well, we surely didn't expect that :-)

I was actually aiming at getting a statue of an elf, but luck was against me and instead we managed to claim this autumn goddess in bronze!

The elf

Sylvain Kinsburger Autumn Goddess

It is indeed a peculiar piece and it is supposely to be a lamp, but we wonder if we would manage to fix the electrical contacts again (and the lightbulbs that are needed seem very odd). It however fits very nicely our dining room and match our fireplace. So, we hope she will like in our new home :)

Villa Bellevue

After not so much digging, and also thanks to one of our neighbours, we have discovered the name of our house (and many others in Åkarp).

Postcard from 1910  (?) 

Mattias, in one of his excursions, found this picture in a book and could not resist taking a picture of it.
One can see even more details than the cover photo of this blog, especially the guy that is working around the tower!

Airphotos of Åkarp

In my Google searches for pictures and information about our house, I have found a couple of aerial photos of Åkarp, which I thought were taken during the 60s. 

Searching searching, I managed to find the postcards on Tradera (the local Ebay) and I simply bought them, since I could easily spot out our house.

They arrived in our mailbox today!

The postcards

In reality the postcards are from the middle of the 70s. And some interesting things can be identified:

the three houses in front of our house (number 11, 13 and 15) didn't exist yet, but there was a long building there.

However, there were already new houses built on the road (number 6 and 2 are visible also). 

Most relevant, we could see that the house was having a red roof! But even though in the future there might be thoughts of fixing the roof, we will not remove the beautiful dutch tiles, that are instead green and make the house very particular :)

And even more interesting, I was convinced that the new fireplace required the construction of a new chimney (which I was not very happy about), but I can see two chimneys already in these pictures. I wonder who built it and which is the heat path in the walls. 

Here there is our house

And here again, the roof is definitely red.