Two windows renovation

After two months an half, I have finally put back two windows. Finally, considering that few weeks back, a stormy weather was putting pressure on the windows renovation progresses....
But the result makes me happy, considering that one of the contractors' comment when first up on the scaffolding was: "These windows are rotten, they need to be changed!".
Luckily, I am more stubborn than that and with a lot of stolen moments (and a lot of patience from some neighbour that got consulted on the way) the result has been different. We have saved the windows!

The bathroom window before treatment

Away with some color and the putty that spontaneously fell off

Nice details that show how well kept the window was

Who put some plastic material there to keep things together!?

The window frame after the treatment. Unfortunately, I wasn't very skilled with the putty then...

During the renovation, I hade to send the windows to some professional anyway. I can't add pieces of wood and the window sash needed to be glued together again. I surely got help with more than I wanted (considering I wanted to learn few other steps or two), but possibly the windows needed more of this than my butcher touch.

After the beauty treatment

Painting...

Linseed paint shines beautifully

Painting the inner sash

Bathroom view

The first window is back!

This is how it looked when I first saw it

Also this window needed some pro to look at it

We are almost done....

Pity that it is so high up. Few people will see it! Possibly mainly the neighbours :)

It's almost over (for now)...

They have started today to tear down the scaffolding. In a sense, it feels very strange to have this enormous task almost over.

What shall we get angry about?

Will Isabella stop to talk about roofing felt, tiles and chimneys?

I am actually quite sure that we will use our time for doing other things, but also to prepare ourselves for the final leap on the roof, this spring.

We have three things, roof wise, that we want to complete (before we turn 80).

1. Add the "crown" to the chimney (skorstenskrona) as it is in our postcards. We had too many questions right now and we felt that the plater was not having the time for our crazyness. 
2. Ridge tiles masonry with lime mortar (murning av nockpannor med kalkbruk). This is how usually the ridge tiles are fixated, according to tradition. 
3. Painting the metal sheet. Yes. 

Why are we planning to paint the metal sheet? 

Simply because we have chosen a metal sheet (the painted metal sheet, lackerad plåt) which looks too "plastic" on our kind of roof. 

There are a lot of discussions, especially from a cultural architectural perspective, that one should follow the tradition and install on old roofs only, the so called, galvanized sheet metal. 

However, from 2006 this kind of sheet metal has a difference which makes it not so reliable for the painting: the protection layer has been changed to be more environmental friendly. If before it was enough to wait a couple of years before painting, now it seems that this layer is more resistent and the metal sheet is so perfect, anyway, that the paint doesn't seem to get a good grip on it.

Due to these reasons, on the market, a galvanized metal sheet with a prepainted layer has appeared (kulturplåt), but it is not very commonly used and the long term resistance of the material is uncertain.

Although there have been uncertainties, also in the past, on painted metal sheet, we decided to go for that, with the thought that, since we wanted to be at least closed to traditional methodologies, we would have ended up painting it all. 

And that is what we will have to do this spring.

Some minor adjustments are still necessary on the front southern roof.

The new skiljeplåt meeting a new vinkelränna. Under the gutter one can see the newly yellow-painted beams

It will look weird for a while more :-)

The "separator"cut exactly as the old one and spiked instead of screwed. The metal sheet was done using a base of 60x120 cm instead of the more modern bigger sheets commony used today

The northern side with the new dormer windows

Detail over one of the new dormer windows  and the "separator"

Ståndskiva detail (one has to bend the head 45% to the left for being on the right point of view)

The half moon dormer window that was necessary to redo. The window is not yet done, but the window frame has got back its color (or almost).

Painting metal sheet with linseed paint and other stories

One thing we have learnt: never paint on a roof without checking the weather forecast and never trust a guy that comes here with a normal roller when painting with linseed paint.
Why so?
Well, first, if you paint and it is not exactly the right period of the year for doing that (that is, autumn is quite well known for high humidity and probability of rain) you might get a couple of centiliters of pigments on the ground. It is almost like modern art! It is just that you don't want to see it in your house...
Not only, the result on the metal sheet is not very elegant, if by chance you are unlucky with the weather.
The normal roller is instead not the best tool to use for painting with linseed paint since you need to apply it as thin as possible. So, when they do not come with the right tools you know you are going to pay more than you should or maybe, for once, you are just going to be lucky.
I can't really say if the result was terrible due to the lack of experience on the subject or what, but surely, we decided to abort for this season the operation of painting all the metal sheet to give a more "old look" in favor of postponing to the spring.
We were very much wondering how much they were really going to wait before painting the second layer, since that would have delayed everything quite much.

A painted angle chute. The color is "green leaf" from Ottosson. 

Detail of the painted metal sheet after a couple of days of rain. It is now though looking better once dry but still...

New metal sheet has been placed to substitute old one that was too rusty to be reused. The list includes also the ståndskiva on the back of the two facades.

A new ståndskiva

When looking at the new metal sheet, we are happy we are planning to paint it, since it really does look weird in our eyes. Bombastic, maybe?
The northern chimney has also got a new base, which unfortunately, due to some miscommunication between the two contractors involved, has lot the "ladder" decoration on the sides.

A working tinsmith 

While the tinsmith is operating on the metal sheet, the carpenters are setting back the tiles. This is quite a puzzle and they have to do a lot of adjustment to the tiles.

The north side of the roof 

The east side of the roof, with tiles ready to be placed back

One of the most complex piece of metal sheet we have, were on the dormer windows. Initially, we had no planned to change the metal sheet, since it looked reasonably new. Unfortunately, rotten wood was found underneath, so we were forced to remove it.
I have then concluded after some reflection, that they looked newer than they were: they were probably from the 70s and their style was not exactly "beautiful". The details were infact quite rough and we can see that now that we have started to get the new ones in place.

The left dormer window is made of new metal sheet

Let's compare with how the old ones were looking: it is hard to see, but the new ones are more accurate!

We have now started to discuss the chimneys crown and we will hopefully see soon a prototype, while today we were a bit scared of the base of the southern chimney, which looked a bit too much as a spaceship.

Mattias nowadays can't resist the temptation to look at every chimney he sees, especially when driving (...).

It is now not that much left to the completion of this job. Unfortunately, the windows are proceeding slow, but there are progresses.

And for sure, we have the best inspectors on our side!

Pico is inspecting the roof

Escape moment

Sometimes, one doesn't need to focus on what's going on on the roof of his own house.
So, what we did today was visiting few of the shops that there are here in Åkarp: Erikshjälpen and the one in Möllegården (Pehr Pehrsson's house from the start).

Our shopping tour results

From the first, we got a postcards album. Jugend style. Very torn, but still pretty.
From the second, "Bygga och Bevara i Burlövs Kommun". Something that maybe should be more popular literature when renovating an house in Åkarp, it seems!

The first sheet metal

What has given us most headache with the roof has finally landed in our garden and partially on the roof: the sheet metal. The tiles are being placed slowly back on the roof and at the same time, pieces of sheet metal shall be placed where we removed the old and rusty one. The new metal, after a long excruciating work, has been decided to be coated. I hope Mattias will one day write how we have come to this conclusion. However, it looks absolutely plastic and completely out of place in our old style roof. And, since we knew it was going to look like this, we will be painting it with linseed paint.

New coated sheet meta in our garden

The truth is though that it seems noone has ever painted this kind of sheet metal with this kind of paint, and I am having quite some doubt about the company that has to do the job, since they do not seem to have an enormous experience with linseed painting...sadly enough!
Of course, this is our mistaked in the choice of who should do the job, but let's say that there were not that many options available at the time and that we documented ourselves on sheet metal a bit too late.

Placing a new ränndal

On top of these uncertainties, we have also the weather factor. This is definitely not the right time of the year to paint with linseed paint, which is known to take forever to dry in normal weather conditions. Think with the humidity that we have here during the autumn!

Plastic look is not fantastic for us!

Another reason why we want to paint the sheet metal is that the green is wrong! It should be darker as we have understood by looking at the postcards, but also at the old sheet metal, there is a dark green emerging from the verdegris color.

A very ancient piece of sheet metal, on the waterboard, covered possibly during the end of the 70s with a nice coated sheet metal. It is possible to see the old color. A new piece of ränndalen is visible ont he right.

In these days, I have also finally learnt how to climb on the top of the scaffolding and hence, got the opportunity to look at the last half moon window, that is on the attic.

The attic half moon window

The sheet metal is of the "70s" kind, which means that under that coated layer there is the original one, probably in a terrible state. The window could have been living a better life. I have now started to work on it and just given it to some carpetner to fix a missing piece of wood.
I have also started to scrape the wooden beams that are under some part of the roof. It is the beams that let us discover that the original facade color was pale yellow.

Wooden beams. On the left the new one, on the right the two old ones.

And yes, after visiting Ottosson's too many times in the past week, we have finally decided that...

Our house colors

the windows will be again painted in red. Red ochre.

A rainbow of colors

After anayzing all possible data, we have come to the conclusion about which colors we should paint the metal in our roof. According to the sources the roof has been always green to emulate copper (Chris Freeberg, living in Bellevue 1952 - 1958) and the tower for sure was always green (Lars Edler, living in Bellevue 1958 - 1974, he painted the tower himself!) although the roof during that time period was in clay.
When looking at the postcards, it is evident that there were at least two different shades of color. One darker and one lighter.

A piece of old metal with the "original" dark green

We only know that the roof was "redone" at the end of the 70s. This doesn't mean that all the metal was changed. Infact, we have come to the conclusion that just the dormer windows and the water boards have got a nice layer of extra new amazing innovative coated metal during that time frame (pity, they left the old metal underneath!).
Possibly, in that occasion they had also repainted the majority of the metal. When looking at it, we can see that the bottom layer is often a dark green color.
Our conclusion is therefore that dark green were many details as the tower (confirmed also by our neighbour).
We can't know when the roof was redone before 1976. But the metal was cut in small pieces as it was normal before 1960, when the metal was available just in the 60x120 size. So, what we had must be at least from 1940-1950.
I believe that most likely that metal was there from the very start and that, maintained properly, it had lasted very long.
Unfortunately, such maintainance has not bee carried on successfully for at least the past 15 years, with the result that rust has attacked the metal making it prone to get holes and it is very few pieces that we could save of it.

Still looking at the postcards, and trying to scrape off color from the metal details like the cornice, it looks that the green there was of a lighter color. Closer to the color that it is there today (and that today is "pestering" also other details which should be darker, instead).
We have therefore decided that the cornice, the gutters, the chimneys foot and the angle chute should be of this lighter color.
Of course, it is a guess, it is very hard to be sure, but we have good data to believe that we are at least getting closer to the original.

During the work that has been taken place on our roof, some boards have been removed since rotten. This includes some piece of painted beam that is "under" the roof in several points.
Since we had to go and buy paint for the roof, we went and buy also the color for the beams.
But, when taking up the piece of beam that was lying in the trash pile, I have noticed something very interesting.
Under the white coat there was another layer of color. Pale yellow.

A rotten beam showing the color layers

Once at the paint shop we have confirmed that the layer is the original color and once home, I had the opportunity to study pieces of the facade that point out that everything was pale yellow.
And if everything was pale yellow, the roof was still green... then the windows must have been english red. At least for 2 years! Why did they change to light grey/white? That is something I keep not understanding.
But, this also raises the question (again!) of which color we must choose for the windows and to me, it seems obvious that when the facade will be repainted, we will choose that pale yellow above.

Anyway, with all the information at hands, we went to the paint shop for linseed paint. Ottossons offers a great selection of linseed paint which is what we will use to pain metal, windows and also the boards.
The smell at the shop was fantastic (possibly also because they were selling very fancy soaps) and it was very interesting to be able to shop the paint we needed bringing the samples we had.

Our purchases at Ottossons

Now, we have just to start the paint. But still, I personally haven't decided that the windows should be light grey and I am getting closer to paint them. Mattias... please, make up your mind! That is, listen to me ;-)

It's cleaning time

Things have gone a bit weird with our roof.
We, as customer, have shown to have a lot of ideas popping up after the work has started. Possibly, this is not an ideal situation since it makes whatever plan that has been done not very easy to follow.
In reality though, it was also the plan from the start to be flexible and see really how the roof is once the scaffolding would make us reach all the corners of the house.

While waiting for us to make a detailed plan and final decisions on what kind of metal to use and how to have it and what to change, what to paint and what not, our contractors has spent some time removing a thick layer of moss from the north side tiles.

A tiles bath

 Not the most effective work. Possibly not even the funniest one. But brushing away the moss is necessary for the beauty of the tiles and also their longevity.

A beauty salon for tiles

We decided to skip the east side tiles, which according to the contractors were in a bad state as well, to keep the costs down.
I guess we will have to enjoy brushing the tiles in another life time...

We are now waiting for the metal work to start, so that the tiles can be put back on the roof.

What has happened on the roof

Last week, the work on the roof has proceeded without big troubles.
While we are trying to sort out, what kind of metal we want and what color and which one we should change and which not, new roofing felt has been applied to 3/4 of the roof and almost the same amount has a new lath.
When looking at the postcards, we have realied that the metal has two colors. This because most likely the roof at the very beginning was not green, and hence, the metal components closer to the tiles are of the same color of them. The rest was possibly of a lighter shade, green, possibly, to resemble copper.
We have hence decided to have everything in dark green, zinc green (including the tower) as also some color sample is hinting us. While, some other parts as valleys and ledge should be verdigris.

On the north side, the chimney and some pipe necessary for ventilation have been sealed with cold asphalt.

Sealing asphalt

Sealing with asphalt

 There are a lot of discussions ongoing and decisions to make right now, and not just around the metal.
One thing I am trying to understand is how the chimneys should look like. If I look at the old postcards, I can clearly see that there was a "crown" on top of each of them, which today is not existing.
We have planned to add something there, while we are also refreshing their aspect.

The north chimney. Before.

Work ongoing

The plaster is already looking better

 When going around in Åkarp, I have noticed an house from the same epoch (and style) having something on top of the chimneys. But looking now at this picture I was assailed by a thousand doubts.
We had agreed that we shoud not paint the chimneys. It doesn't bring anything to the plaster quality.
That house has them white and the postcards seem having them in the same color as the walls. Were they painted and we are missing that? Or is it just a light matter from an old postcard point of view?
Nevertheless, I wonder if what they have on the chimney is metal or something else.

Villavägen 5 in Åkarp has a structure over the chimney that resembles what Bellevue had back in the days

 Another open discussion is concerning a methodology for securing the ridge tiles, so that they won't fall off with every storm.
We have also got suggested to protect the ridge board with a seal, but we have discarded the option.
However, we have looked around and seen that all our neighbours have the tiles fixated with lime mortar.  I guess we will go for this but possibly not at this point in time. Afterall, we have enough ridge tiles for the coming autumn/winter. We hope!