September

September has been quite uneventful from an house perspective. After the school start, also all the activities for the whole family starts and the every day puzzle can be already quite exciting without adding major house chores.
So, everything has been quite standing still.
I haven't even managed to pick up properly the apples during this month, so a lot have gone wasted (and it is not like October is looking so much better).

One of the big things that happened during September, have been though the "Kullavägen party" where most of our neighbours reunited themselves at our place, as per tradition (the tradition dictates that every 2 year someone living on the street should host the event).

The party!

The weather was not the best, but we managed to pull this together with the cooperation of few other neighbours. So this was definitely not single handed, although it was handled in our garden.

The weather since then has kept being worse and worse and right now it is almost as winter cold. 

There are still some sunny days, but I am not daring (neither managing time wise) to paint more, while I have been doing some minor gardening.

A beautiful Dahlia just blooming

I managed to put more stones on the slope behind the pool, although there is still more to put and I have to find a way to remove the ground elder from the area.

My experiment both from a agricultural perspective and culinary are always involving Mattias who gets additional tasks.

This year I have decided to experiment with some rowan-berry, which is now in the freezer.

I had an ocean of tomatoes, that never got ripe, which are being used in different ways. 

Yesterday I did 1.5 kg of them as a jam.

We got delicious hazelnuts this year and as always, we can pick up some occasional mushrooms which I can tolerate despite my aversion to them.

The harvest of September - without the apples

Let's see how it will go with the apples this year, but it doesn't look very good right now.

Nice summer weekend

It is fantastic that despite being in Sweden one can still get some summer days in August - this can be a quite rare event some year.
Anyway, thanks to this we have managed to (of course slowly) made some progresses in some of the billion of projects we have.

First. Mattias fixed properly the downpipe that collapsed.
However, the vine is still hoping for a better care.

The downpipe is back on its position

The vine needs desperately some support

Flowers are blooming in my most effort taking but satisfactory flower bed. The one behind the pool, which is enriched with ground elder and all sort of weeds one can think of. 

Though, every now and then, some of the flowers I try to plant to kick the bad stuff out, is emerging and shining.

Gladiolus

Dahlia of two colors.

And finally, a four year long project, a two year old birthday presence, is out to be installed. 

The famous outdoor clotheshorse (I wonder if this is the right translation for torkvinda) is almost in place. 

There is where the clotheshorse should be!

Finally, I have also managed to paint a bit of the poolhouse. This is quite an eternal project, as rather than the painting itself, going around with ladder and scaffolding to reach the different parts to paint is quite time consuming.

One layer more...

Not a good week

Progresses are currently made by Mattias who is trying to fix a lot of stuff that breaks now or that has been broken forever. 

In all of this, since I am working, I try to come home and hope that the weather is merciful enough for me to pain the pool house or work with the stones behind it.
Of course, I could also paint indoor some parts, but there are also other things I want to do...

We have been having the carpenter showing up, trying to adjust our garage doors, which unfortunately, as they are heavy, have a tendency to tilt slightly.

In a previous attempt, the carpenter had put some washer to tilt back the doors and it did help at the time.

We had asked the blacksmith to fix some metal bars to apply on the back of the doors, to stabilize. The carpenter's hope was that that would also tilt them back, but that of course didn't happen.

The metal bars are mounted on the doors

Mattias managed also to put the handle buckler but we had some issues with the one for the key, as the holes are too big and the buckler wouldn't be attached to anything.

The mismatch with the key buckler

The garage doors. When looking at them one can see the uneven gaps due to the tilting

In an imperceptible manner, I have now geared up a bit towards the pool house painting. The main problem is that when I have the time, the weather is unstable. If I can't paint, it is sunny and shiny.

It is also imperceptible because first I have been oiling everything and now I am putting the first base layer, which though is almost on the transparent look.

This is under the roof. Do you see any form of painting?

Maybe seen from the other direction?

When preparing for the base painting an accident happen. I misplaced a paint jar on the edge of the table, thinking it was longer than it was in reality and the opened jar fell straight upside down.

I used kitchen tool toys for picking up as much paint as I could.

I have almost picked up all the paint here

That was not the only accident of the week. 

I had noticed that one of the downpipes around the veranda was hanging a bit too much, due to the vine that is pulling it out.

Well, the other night it was probably a bit more windy than normal and (together with Isabella's sunflower which had been grown beautifully) the downpipe fell on the ground (and the vine too).

The downpipe is waiting to be put back

With the output, of course, of having an additional task to have to fix.

We stand here with the poolhouse

Progresses do happen slowly, sadly, but there are.
Thing is that although there is vacation there is also a garden to attend, food to prepare, kids to raise, laundry to make, and all the other projects that take bits and pieces of time and sometimes the energy is not there for the sprint that would be necessary to make a difference in this project.
But some things did happen...
1) We got electricity!

One of the switches 

But we miss the outdoor lamp...
2) We got the most of the metal sheet work up and running (and painted).

Freshly mounted gutter and downpipe

However we miss the window and door ironwork as well as the flinger...

3) We got the composting toilet mounted, with the pipe through the roof

The composting toilet is "ready" to be used

but as we don't have doors and windows we can't plug it in as the rain would create problems with the electricity

4) It can be used...

It's "ready" :P

but it lacks doors, windows and a lot of painting on top of all the rest and that is taking its time.

The shelves are waited to be mounted and we need to find also some other small accessory. 

ETA 2030? :)

90% done on the roof

We are finally almost landing, after the metal sheet reparation, with the painting of the roof project.
Of course, not everything can always go smooth, but at this point in time we seldom expect that of any house project we start.

Hopefully in August the final touches will be handled to complete the operation. This means some base color for the balcony windows metal, some extra layer on a gutter which had been painted of the wrong color and some finishing where scratches and marks have been left.
Sadly, not everything will be patched (like a scratch on one of the windows that I have renovated few years ago) as of course we enter a dispute with the contractor and we know how these discussions go.
Pity that I had just asked to be on the lift to fix it myself, rather than go through the uncomfortable tunnel in the roof on Oscar's room.

We are back in washing the roof for preparing the painting

Also as a surprise, our contractor came in company of other coworkers, which we had told him clearly it was not our wish. We have had a deal with him and we wanted him to pursue our job.

Of course he wanted to get it done, so he didn't care about that and I must admit, of the three, he was definitely the best one in painting. 

So now the result is uneven to expert eyes as mine have grown to be.

Spectacular with the high pressure water

This contractor has turned to be quite tricky with the terms of the contract and we have had already quite juicy and long mail discussions about charging the trip to Stockholm to pick up a special high pressure water machine, which was nowhere to be mentioned in the contract.

For not mentioning that some parts (like gutters) are above the roof foot and instead he had been not included them (despite us pinpointing them in the color schema we had done).

One of the windows shade has the right color

One day they didn't come because it was too warm to paint. The last day they painted it was the warmest of them all and, despite the temperature, they were there painting.

I guess all the rules are changed depending on the convenience.

Of course it is hard to check carefully the quality of the painting from the ground. But in some cases I managed to have a quick inspection and I will demand a final inspection before we let him go. 

First layer. Not exactly a masterpiece. Too thick and too sloppy in certain points.

After some remark, I saw him doing some adjustments but well, again, it is simply not easy to check everything without being there close by. 

The most impressive change of them all is the tower. We really believe this is the most appropriate shade for it according to the pictures and the findings. 

The tower is being painted.

There, now it looks more genuine with this dark shade of green

I am eager to close this chapter as this has turned out slightly more sour than I would have wished.

Just been painting

The last couple of weeks I have been painting a lot.
Possibly to compensate what I haven't painted (and should) in the past months.
Anyway, the focus has been the gutters & co, using of course linseed paint. I must confess that this was quite fast when done in the basement and satisfactory considering the decent result.

It looks like an armor

 A good amount of parts to try to make sense of

What to paint, gutters, some of the roof metal work and downpipes

As usual we complicated a bit our lives, but in this sense we needed to have the same colors as the house also on the pool house (well, need. I am not sure anyone will check, but I think it makes sense to have some coherence).

We chose "Aluzink" as metal this time, to try it out, because generally cheap and because it should be also rust resistant on its own.
So, for our case it actually fixed some of the problems we had.

Painting is ongoing

I really like the finish look

Just get done one after another..

This roof foot became a little bit too thick, but as it is under the tiles it is not as important.

And as often, the white is not actually easy at all. I am going to need many layers!

It took me a while to get this "done", as once mounted of course there were some scratches and I hadn't painted with a layer everything, because I thought it was not going to be used, plus, everything occurred much faster than I have planned for...(again the contractors timeplan didn't match mine and that was not really communicated so that I could speed up the drying of my painting...)

Now, there, everything is mounted. I just need to paint a lot!

Again painting in white has been quite time consuming, as it didn't really cover properly (in reality I need to retouch some green part because I have been a bit sloppy.

There, we are getting close to the final result.

An updated tower

When the work for painting the metal on the roof started last year, casually, some "older" metal suffered of the powerful washing that was performed. Well, in theory that is just a mere coincidence, but we are rather convinced that the reason why some serious holes appeared was surely not just because it was time...

Nevertheless, since our idea was to have metal sheets in titan (rheinzink), we agreed with the plater that we would have to wait this spring to have the work done, once because of course they were occupied but also because the rheinzink can be worked only when the temperature is over 10 degrees.

The metal was patched by the roof painter for surviving the winter. 

We booked so that they'd come in June and so they did. They remove most of the old metal and while I confirmed that they were going to use rheinzink, they stated that they were going to use, to my total surprise, galvanized metal.
Galvanized metal is not to be recommended to be used anymore, the roof experts say, as the passivation layer make the surface too perfect for being painted.
But this is nothing strange with the contractors. You agree on one thing and it turned out to be what they want.

"Cultural" metal sheets

Before having something we really don't want, I managed to suggest to use "cultural" metal sheets, which is metal sheet that has a prepainted layer at production. 

Luckily, not only they agreed with this and they had the material in their shed, so that is what it should be.

The point of the tower, between the roof and it, where the metal needed to be changed

Eventually, everything was done and the work concluded.
So, now the roof should last with this patch even longer (I wonder why the first roof company didn't fix it).

The metal patched seen from above.

The rods are up

Summer is here and thanks to some weeks of holidays, there are some progresses in some of them many projects that we start (and barely finish).
Let's give an update about what's happening with the curtain rods in the "red room" (also known as piano or tv room).

We are at the point where the rods are up, I have oiled them and we need to:
1) choose the curtain textile
2) buy all the accessories (rings, tie-backs, ...)
3) have the blacksmith coming here and cut the curved rod, since it is too long
4) fix the wall, as it got scratched (typical...) when the rod was put up

Curved rod, left side

Curved rod, right side

Once all is done, we will also add the quite beautiful knobs.

The knobs at the forge

The wall fasteners became pretty good at the end, but there is a little long history behind them.
The idea was to have some "jugend" inspired design. Something was defined during last summer, but that got lost in time and space.
I spent a quite rushed hour with the blacksmith trying to find something feasible and trying to remember how it was supposed to look, but that didn't work out exactly smoothly.
We came up with an idea, but that was not approved as it was too messy to have done in such a small piece.

A first attempt for the wall fasteners

Considering the space limitations, our blacksmith had to use a bit of creativity and make more trials, before, after a ping pong of pictures on Whatsapp, we gave our approval.

How shall we do this??

There, this should work! And in fact, it did!

On the way to some curtains

We have an infinite amount of projects and, even though we have been living in the house for 7 years, in a sense, it feels like we have been just moved in.
We lack curtains, carpets, some things are still in a very temporary state.

One of the things that are crucial though are the curtains, not only for the sound, but of course mostly for the light. When the spring come, the longest days can be unforgiving.

The focus has been now the tv/piano room, as it has been impossible to play the piano when the sun has been hitting the room.

Where one of the curtain rods will be. Some of the supports have been already mounted. 

As the room has a circular form, due to the tower, we can't go for an ordinary solution and when thinking if we should have wood or metal, we went for a metal solution. 

The same kind of style will be applied to the curtain on the other window in the room.

The curtain rod

Our blacksmith, after few reminders, started to work on the curtain rod, which has to have the right shape. Sadly, it is not yet perfectly following the wall, so we will have to do some adjustements next time the blacksmith is home.

Support for the rod and end of it

There were a lot of discussions about the design of certain details. I thought we had been clear on it during the autumn, but everything couldn't be found, so we had to start from scratch and even though I wanted some other more "jugend" shape, that was the best we could agree upon.

Given the design of the curtain rod, we need to look into the curtains per se'.

And here we have some ideas that are not completely fixed yet.

Possibly 2-3 linen quite plain, as central curtains and then some drapery on the side, with the right kind of textile.

We thought of having something on green, to be a good match with the red of the wall. And from the initial idea, I am more convince that it should look as jugendish as possible, so the samples I have got I think will be discarded.

But I am volitile some things might change.

The first samples for the curtains

Apart putting up the curtain rod to get help in the shape, and decide the textile quality and style, I have also to find something to old the drapery together and rings to have the curtains on.

For the first, I might be asking the blacksmith as well...