Progresses for the pool

Eventually the pool area is coming together. And when doing that, we have also added some additional tasks to the list of minor/any kind of projects.

Despite my total reluctance to civilization (=fiber), we have at the end bent our knees and dig for that. But only because we are preparing (mentally as well) for having electric cars. If I am much 1906, at least for the cars I think moving towards something environmental friendly is necessary and I want to support that.

Digging done under a mystical light

It doesn't look pretty, but I hope it will work out

Hopefully it will look better later on, after we get an electrician to fix it

On the pool area, we have got the foundation for the house we are planning to built (when, hopefully before next spring).

The foundation

At the same time, we have tiled everything around the pool again, lifting the level up (so no more kids would squeeze themselves under a lock roof) and putting some form of flexible concrete between the tiles, to avoid a forest of weeds.

A lot of tiles and tiles to be cut have been placed again, much more beautifully, around the pool

Behind the pool, towards our neighbour, we have been gifted of an abandoned area. When I say abandoned, I really mean it. A lot of junk had been thrown there, old rotten logs, pieces of metal, rubbish...The area has also grown wildly with plants. 

We thought (although we have no plans for it yet) to give it a clean out. After all, we can't have a fancy pool area (or at least a neat one) and a jungle of whatever just on its edge.

The edge between the pool and the "forgotten" part of the garden

Cleaning out the area from a lot of everything that has grown wildly. The density of birches were the highest in the whole Åkarp ;-)

Work is still ongoing, but I hope at least this part of the job can be concluded soon. Then we will have to face the house building. How, I am not really sure yet...

Bellevue, a construction site once again

The garage doors

Repeating that there is always something to fix is going to be boring. But I will like to add to that that every project we start takes forever to be fulfilled and there is always some spin off.
One of this summer projects have been the garage doors renovation.

Our garage, probably built for Nils Lorenz Larsson around 1920, when he got his first car.

First task for this was to be able to OPEN the doors, because more and more soil and dirt have been accumulated in front of them, making the simple act of trying to go inside the building basically mission impossible.

When digging out we found out that under all the layers, there were some stones (ölandstenar) and we have started at least to make them visible a bit, although we have - of course! - not completed the task and we have done an approximate job.

Finding the stones under the grass.

So, the doors have been in a quite dreadful abandoned state. They could barely be opened, closed, locked, anything (?), pieces of wood were flying around when Mattias passed nearby (he has a magic touch), the planks were getting apart, ....

They therefore got to have a beauty treatment at a carpenter.

The doors are at the carpenter. Getting repaired where needed

A bit of the bottom will be filed off since it is in a bad state and so that they don't touch the ground too much. The hinge was having masonite under it and got completely rusty

The planks are also getting glued together

When doing the reparation the carpenter removed two hinges, which had been applied with a thick layer of masonite under. The result was that (since they were on the lower part of the door), they have probably got quite some water and they got completely rusty and couldn't be saved.

The bad state of the hinges

How the rust have been eating them up

That required to open a new task. Go to blacksmith and get new hinges, carriage bolts and screwnuts

That resulted into a new collection of items:

New and old hinges

New and old carriage bolts (photo courtesy of Martin Hansson)

New and old hinges, detail

Getting some anti-rust paint

Getting some anti-rust paint

The carpenter had then to try to remove the previous lock mechanism. That was completely rusty and useless.
For doing that he had to remove the handle, which sadly he cut off in two (he stated it was necessary because they were rusty inside and became a big block)

My decapitated handle

That of course generated yet a new more task (for the blacksmith again). Of course, I can buy a new used one that looks the same. But it won't be the same one that every owner of my house (minus two) have been using years after years!

What was left of the lock mechanism

Also the fact that the lock mechanism has seen better years generated yet a new task, but this time sort of "easy" to handle. Just find a proper new mechanism that would fit somewhat our door.

Where the locks where. Now got filled in with a new lock and new wood.

Once the doors got finally home, the hard work of painting them started. First, after scraping the door from loose paint, base paint and then two layers. Hard work but I am pretty satisfied of the result.

Scraping the doors. Removed almost all the paint with the help of some infrared heat. Most of it was coming off itself though 

It looks as the first layer is brown, then white, and then there are two layers of green. 

Base paint

Base paint

Applying the first layer

Second layer

Second layer

What is left now to do is the door frame. I have started to paint it a bit yesterday (I had already retouched it a bit and paint where needed some base paint) and finally, the new hinges need to be mounted (and with the help of God, for once, there won't be any side issues or extra things to fix) and the doors need to be turned for getting paint on the other side.

First layer of brown for the inner part of the door frame

The door frame. Rotten at the bottom. Some extra care will need to be granted.

Now, let's see when I will get done and the doors will be mounted back...(will they work fine, then? I bet there will be surprises...)

Doorbell

It is interesting that we have been living now in this house for five years and still, we don't have a doorbell working.
We have had some "modern" things on the gate and at the secondary entrance (via the kitchen), which worked so so, until one of them gave up fully.
There are traces of a traditional doorbell at the kitchen door, so that is something that will need furthermore investigation.
Now, when we moved (and even during the showing of the house) no working doorbell has ever been seen at the main door.

The doorbell leftovers on the main door

The previous owner left what he might have bought for fixing the problem for some possible buyer (with a better eye than us?), but apart that I can't find the button anymore, it looks a bit plain and boring.

Must have been something similar to this, that we have in pieces somewhere in the basement. Doorbell from Byggfabriken

Inspired by Villa Florens in Malmö, I went and search for some second hand doorbell, with the difficulty that the space on our door frame is very tiny, and hence, limiting the research basically to nothing.

A wonderful example of a jugend doorbell. So beautiful but also huge. From Bukowskis Market

I ended up buying a product from the german Ebay that looks pretty ok and fits the measurement, but it is newly produced (so there are chance it is going to work without too much fuzz, maybe?) and maybe doesn't seem hyper genuine, but whatever.
I can't break my head on everything right?
I have now to "just" try it out and see if the whole ringing thingy is working still....(probably not?)

Longing to test it...!