Having a vision (or more than one)

Sometimes, when things break, one can't wait forever to get them repair. 

If we think about my attempt to destroy the (probable) original floor with vinager (which I mentioned here), I did apply oil on the tiles and it looks definitely better. I think some more treatments (and probably, a general one to the whole floor) will make it proper.

That was an easy fix, which didn't require an external intervention.

When we think instead about the kitchen stairs, the topic is more complicated. That is possibly something we can't fix by ourselves. Well, we could, but it would sum up on the list of tons of things we keep fighting with every day and I am not sure when we will actually get them done. At least, a temporary patch that would allow us to walk over it, that is.

 

The stairs have been patched

The company that will fix us new stairs during the autumn came also for handling the patch. 

When looking at it, it was nothing that absurd that we couldn't have been thinking about it ourselves, but yes. That was a couple of hours of their expertise vs our attempts.

The main structure of the fix

I am looking forward to have this fixed properly (and this is what I am thinking here when using the word "vision") but I am glad to be able to walk on the stairs without doing some acrobatics.

Talking of vision, I have a quite long term plan to crash myself over the area behind the pool. I have tried to fight ground elder for years and I keep doing that.

This year I have so far expanded the area that I have tidied up a little bit more. Of course, the ambition is to try to cover as much as possible of it, but between other emergency actions and the fact that I should really focus on windows and door restauration, I will probably not meet my target neither this year.

The area cleaned up of weeds (see the difference with the ground elder ocean on the left)

I am trying some new plants this time

I must say that the work around this is very satisfactory. Although it is always a bit irritating to see leaves of ground elder pop up there and then even if I have tried to be thorough in the removal. 

There is always something new broken

For everything we fix, there is always at least one new item/part/element/whatever that gets broken. 

I do realize that we are supposed to keep ourselves very busy, but sometimes I would like a bit of mercy to be able also to have some progresses, especially right now where everything is languishing due to the pandemic.

That the stairs would give up soon, it was just matter of time. We saw it coming and it took forever to find a company that could handle the job. Then, thanks to corona, they didn't have time for us anymore this spring so we booked the fixing of the stairs up for this autumn.

Stairs have collapsed

They have come for a short inspection and they will patch the stairs so that we can use them to the moment that they will redo them for us.

Smaller, but still significative damage, was done by me while trying to handle the regular thousands of liters of cat pee that I find sprayed there and then in the house. 

I usually use vinegar for handling the pee and I took the bottle from the basement. Sadly, it wasn't properly closed, so while walking on the platform from the stairs to the kitchen, I manage to spill some of it on the concrete, probably original floor. 

Good job, Arianna!

I didn't think about it there and then as I was rushing through the cat pee cleaning operation for then starting the day and when I thought of going and check how it went, I realized I had destroyed the floor.

I am not trying to threat it with some special oil, but the result so far is no good.

Just oiled, that looks good. Sadly, not the same result when it get dried..

Mostly, the sundial

I have spent the last hour digging into our pictures for finding one of the photo of Villa Bellevue's sundial. I couldn't find a single one, not of when we moved in and found it behind the bushes, almost thrown away, on the back of the garage, neither of when we moved it from that hidden place, to the back of the house (although we knew that that was the wrong place to have it, if we think of its original placement) nor the one that I had sent to Maria, our painter, when I asked her if she could restore it.

So, let's make a long story long.

The first traces of the sundial can be found in the pictures of the Persson family (who lived in Bellevue 1944 - 1952). I can then guess that the sundial is at least from their epoch. 

We have a quite decent picture coming from the Edlers (1958-1974).

Pictures from the Edlers'. 

The position is the same as the previous owners had it, just in front of the house.

Replacing it there would mean that we can't go with the cars conveniently as we do today. I suppose that at that time anyone had possibly just a car and their size was considerably smaller than ours.

From that picture one can also see that the circle with the hours is golden and the rest look quite pale in the color (although which color exactly is unclear).

This is the sundial before I gave it to Maria. This is how we found it.

What we got instead was a rusty piece painted in black, with handpainted cyphers on the time circle. The black paint was just flaking and it was definitely not in a good state.

Details

Rusty and flakes

With the only decent picture we had, Maria had the mission to restore it to something closer to that picture, hopefully that it is the original one. We chose also to pick up a bit the shades of the metal sheets on the roof and hence one of the colors is a variant of a light green with some blue in it.

Before starting to paint, she made some tests and simulations to see if I thought it would work out fine.

Originally she thought we would have wanted it painted black again, so she had prepared the ground work for having that kind of color (e.g. by using some paint with graphite in it), but when I showed her the picture she understood that she had to adjust and the job got harder as we didn't really have a real palette to copy from.

Simulation #1

Simulation #2

Test #1 for the right nuance of green 

Test #2 still finding the right mix

There was not even anything online (a similar sundial?) to get inspiration from. It seems that we got something that is a bit different from the standard (I am not really surprised as for this house nothing looks standard...).

What I like of the job she did is that she just didn't paint it with a pre-packed color and that was it.

She meticoulosly prepared the right ground for then painting with the right color and she asked many times how I wanted to have the cyphers painted (and my standard answer was "as close as what we had before").

The gold is shining through

The arrow looks a bit more red than it is in reality in this picture

I waited patiently to get this back - I was hoping to have it home during the autumn, but Maria came with it during a very nice sunny day, so after placing it in front of its pedestal, we could talk a bit about byggnadsvård while sipping a tea in the sun.

The sundial is home. Now we have to wait to move the pedestal a bit more central (it is central in relation to the house, but just behind a bush and hence well hidden) and then to mount it back on it.

The final result! 

You can easily see what time it was when I took this picture, can't you?

Parallel to this process, we have had also the mission to get some plexiglass sheets to match some part of the walls we restored last year. The surface is very delicate and everytime someone just look at it it gets ruined. And with kids (but even adults!) that are not always very considerate, I usually get some temporary heart attack.

We have spent the whole autumn basically discussing with a company that work with plastic and we have made measurements for months, where my grey hair became even whiter.

To get a correct measurement seemed impossible and we just had to do the best of the approximations and add some margins. 

Corona didn't help as the company had some staffing issue, but then, finally, after confirming the measurements one more time, the sheets were ready.

Please, pray with me and hope that we haven't messed up the measures... please?

Anyway, we went and pick them up on a windy day (not the best to deal with light stuff) and we were lucky as we could put the biggest sheet just precisely on the trailer floor.

Looks! It fits just fine

    

We have done wrong so many times so Mattias wanted to secure things for once...

Doing some acrobatics

Now the sheets are waiting to be mounted. I would like at least to check if the size is correc,t but I think it will be cumbersome so the best is probably to just mount them to the walls. 

I guess that will take some decades too... 

Flying pool roof during Easter time

 We have just had our Easter vacation which got concluded with a real crazy April weather. In Italy, that would be a crazy March weather. 

Snow, hail, sun, snow, hail, wind. All at once, almost. 

Snow for the day after Easter

We managed during the few days off from work, where the weather was decent, do to some minor work with our projects to recover from the pool roof flying last year. 

Mattias is keeping a decent tempo in repairing the different parts, so that the section that he was working is back on the pool. 

One section is back on the pool

Testing if it rolls fine

Putting it back was not exactly trivial, but it was good to see that it was rolling fine on the tracks that got repaired. 

While he kept working on another section, I was busy recovering the boule track from all the weeds that had grown, as in a green house, under the pool roof. 

Weeds all over the track

All of this doesn't move completely smooth all the time. On saturday, while he was working on another section, he asked Isabella's help to hold it, while I was inside the house a while and it was very windy. Isabella got the the heavy section on her head while the wind took it down and she couldn't it hold it anymore. The roof kept falling few times, also breaking a chair that Mattias used optimistically for holding it. 

But progresses, at least and at last.

A day of spring

Both yesterday and today have been "warm" days. It is the end of march and we have been steady below 10 degrees except for these two days. Today for many in this country, it was possibly almost summer time.

I tried to enjoy the sun and the warmth by being outside a little. In this way I have helped Mattias moving a section of the pool roof that had been lying just in front of our secondary entrance forever and that, due to that, had created a good collection of weeds under it.

The first thing I did was enjoying removing them.

The weeds (dandelions) where the pool roof piece had been

Mattias is enjoying trying to renovate the pool roof after it flew last spring. The section that we moved today is under "polishing". He is cleaning it and I guess doing small adjustments.

Washing the pool roof section

He made a reparation "table" so he can try to fix the pieces that broke

The work with the pool roof has gone very slow. We were hoping the insurance company would pay for it, after talking with the people that sold and mounted the pool roof on the first place, but that was denied and we have been trying to seek also the possibility to get spare parts. I don't know how that operation is going. 

Nevertheless, the pool looks like *h*t right now, as during winter time there was no cover at all. 

Isn't it inviting? 

While Mattias was being the usual pool boy, I did some more clean up on a flower bed, removing leaves, moss and trying to make it look cleaner. It is not easy as there are a lot of small flowers coming up and I don't want to step on them or pulling them up when I rake it gently.

Among the flowers I saw today it is worth mentioning is a blue anemone.

Blue anemone

When it got a bit chilly, I went indoor. As always, it is not like there is a shortage of things to do and I took the occasion to look at my samsas where the two small cats have decided to have a party since they came and live with us.

I will have to glue a band that they manage to tore apart, but I had some serious issue with a button, that has always been not perfectly in place.

The button is in a quite bad state and it is not fixed properly to the back of the couch 

I have asked some suggestions on how to fix this, but I would have to dismount the couch and I guess it will stay like this. I would just hope I could find a nicer looking button, because despite my attempt, this looks crappy still.

 

Make a cast on old pipes

It is true what they say. Having a house is a constant source of work. An old house probably generates additional issues, especially if owners after owners have been playing around with trends, personal taste and whatever. A big house with a complex structure will also generate quite some tasks.

I think we got jackpot of complexity and infinite amount of tasks to deal with. 

In this case the fault is somewhat ours. 

When we moved in 2012, we relied on a quite cheap/old house incompetent building company, that helped us with the major renovation we did. 

One day, one pipe in the basement started to drip water. We looked up and thought that the pipe for some reason just broke.

Some of the workers we had, took and broke the insulation around to pipe, to check its state. 

It turned out that the issue was due to the fact that the radiator had been removed at the end of the pipe, and with a change of water pressure, the water of course started to go out of the open pipe.

As the insulation was broken, they took some modern one and just wrapped it around the old pipe.

The pipe with its modern insulation

Nothing strange with it, except that the "cut" around the old insulation has looked like crap and well, I hadn't had major plans to do anything about it (well, after 9 years, what do you expect... that this is prio 1?) for a while.

Close up around the fracture in the old insulation

I have recently had a visit of a building engineer who, when checking other issues with the house, looked at this and told me: "Arianna, you need to fix this asap".

It turns out that such old insulation is usually full with asbestos, and that is ok until one breaks and touchs the parts. 

Now, I have been there fixing the laundry for 9 years, so I suspect that, if any asbestos, I have had some exposure to it (although I have never touched for any reason that part of the pipe).

Nevertheless, she recommended to buy some plaster rolls, that I suspect are usually used for molding plaster items or even broken limbs.

Starting to roll the wet plaster rolls

Without knowing what I was exactly doing, I dripped the plaster roll, one by one, in cold water. 

I took them up and started to roll them around the pipe.

I wasn't very prepared and the floor got a bit messy

I wans't really prepared, so plaster started to drip from the pipe a bit everywhere. Eventually I put some form of floor cover and that made life easier. Luckily it is reasonable easy to clean plaster up.

At the beginning my technique was very much suboptimal. It turned a bit better by the end, although when comparing with the old insulation (which probably had plaster rolled around it too), one sees an abyss of different. The old ones are smooth and even and perfect. What hands for doing such a job!

The critical point that was supposed to be sealed

By using the plaster rolls, I am basically sealing the asbestos risky point and, as a bonus, I am also making the modern insulation looks a bit more like the old one.

The final result

It wasn't easy to make it even there

Another point got sealed as well, since I was at it

Considering this was the first time I used anything like that, I am quite happy of the result. The old insulation has leaked a bit color on the plaster, as of course, it got wet. But it should be enough to paint it a bit. In theory I should use lime paint on it, but since those are two micro spots that needs some adjustment, one of us should be able to just paint with whatever we have around. 

So, that's the next step. Problem is that now when I look at the pipes, I just see spots where I would like to preeventively patch all of this...

Tiny Steps Forward

This is probably not just a tiny step, but quite a progress!

Now, both lamps are up and running at the gate and what is left is to fix the marks from the previous lamps.

These lamps really melt into the environment!

Now, it will be interesting to see if their IP classification will make a difference for the lightbulbs consumptions. The previous lamps, apart from the low aesthetics, had also the feature of forcing me to replace lightbulbs fairly often. I think they were simply not made for being outdoor.

Changing topic completely, there has been also a micro step forward towards making the "curtains in the living room project" complete. 

I am still waiting for some holders for the side curtains as I thought I could find something online that would fit, but it didn't really work out as I thought and realized that it'd be better to have something handmade by the blacksmith that would fit with the rest of the other details.

So, as he is a bit evanescent, I am waiting patiently that he will produce those side curtain holders, but as I had managed to get him to make at least the central, double one, I made sure we would get it mounted. Also, we have finally put back the curtains, pushed by another reportage on a newspaper, as the small cats are probably less wild (I hope for the best here) and the risk to have climbing spider-cats on them should be minor. This is also needed as spring is creeping in (or rather exploding) and soon the light and the sun will make playing the piano an extreme activity.

It is nice to see the "complete" picture getting more and more complete.

The curtains behind the piano. The central ones now are held together when needed.

Details of the holders

The holders have the same style as the curtain rod holder (as one can half see in the pictures).

A nice touch, I think

So be light

 I believe the last "previous owner" liked to mix modern fancyness, modern cheap solutions and jugend all together. 

Our gates, which have a strong art deco feeling, have substituted the original in wood (there was just one) and they mostly dominate with the white pillars that define the entrance to the garden/our premises.

One set of pillars have been equipped with some lamps that, well, could have had a better style. 

The original lamp

Apart the form, shape, color, style (which I believe are questionable and do not fit with the rest of the house), we had a painful problem. Probably the lamp is not made for being outdoor, so I had to often switch lightbulbs, until I had enough of it.

Since I wanted to be sure that we got something that would work, I went and search for some newly produced outdoor lamp that would at least fit semi decently despite not being from 1910...!

Once the purchase was made, of course it took few months before we even opened the box with the new lamps. 

Substituting the old lamps

Without rush (we really don't have that style), one lamp got removed and switched to the new one. 

It is soon time to see also the second appearing on the second pillar.

The new lamp is shining in the dark

The new set of lamps is at least having some resemblance of old style and it matches in color with the house roof and the gates. 

It looks quite ok - and at least, definitely better than before! 

I was welcomed by the light

Naturally, as in every of our projects, a small change requires an longer chain of patches and fixing than one thinks. We need, indeed, to seal up the holes from the old lamps and paint the pillars as well...

Next century?

Patching and breaking

 Things don't always go as one hopes. Well, actually barely ever.

First.

It seems that Oscar got stuck in the toilet, locking himself in. Mattias put some oil through the keyhole in the lock and, well. Noone casually knows how the door was open. 

The fact is though that after this episode, it was not possible anymore to lock oneself in (which, being a toilet, it could be useful).

The lock on the door

I decided to look into it and get assistance from online experts to fix it. So, I first dismount it. Interesting, it was put on the door with a random piece of wood. When I got into fixing it, I also took out another lock that was left around by the previous owner in the basement. The peculiar detail is that the second lock has some paint that would fit more the color that I see under the layer of white paint on the toilet door.

So, I wonder if that was the right lock for this door, but broke and someone put a lock that was somehwere else (and I think it must have been in the kitchen, since it is light blue under the paint layers).

A door without the lock

Let's take a good picture of how it look before I disassemble

 

Yaha, now it is opened

Ok. I opened it. I have played with it. Without the lid it locks. With the lid it doesn't. It seems there is some friction with some parts, but I still wonder how that became the problem just with some oil in the keyhole. 

I have spent already few hours on it, without figuring it out. I am sure that someone knows exactly how to fix it in few seconds. I just don't get it, so it has to wait a bit longer until I get any positive energy to not lose the patience on it.

Second. 

In some parts of the floor in the TV/Piano room there has always been some evil draft coming up, there where the sliding doors are. 

We have the only part of the basement that is not isolated under that room and I guess that around the sliding doors, as there is no threshold and probably the floor construction changes, there is this gap that let cold air come up. 

Mattias had the great idea to close the gaps between the wooden planks, or at least to put some insulation. He went and buy some flax caulk and even a tool for doing that (we could just use whatever we had around) and he started doing it. A bit. 

But the gaps are not deep everywhere, so it is not easy to let it stay, with people and cats running around and a vacuum cleaner that regularly sucks up the insulation.

The floor with the gaps poorly insulated

As lately I did find a lot of pieces of flax caulk everywhere, I tried to understand how to fix the problem.

I think generally one would use sawdust with glue for this job, but we had the flax caulk and I was going to use that. 

I thought then to use glue to secure it in the gaps. 

Mimmi decided to help picking up pieces of flax

I am using a properly very expensive tool for doing the caulking

Piece by piece, I took the flax, squeezed it between the gaps and pushed it down after putting some indoor glue. 

In certain cases, I put also the glue on top of it, to avoid that it'd stick out too much.

The end result

I am actually quite happy of the result. We did run also a vacuum cleaner test and it seems steady enough to stay where I put it. 

When passing the hand over that part of the floor, one doesn't feel any longer the evil cold air coming up, so hopefully this is a good patch for the issue at this stage.

Third.

I bought some fancy curtains. Well, it is about time to put some curtains up. Afterall we have been living here just 8 years and half. Some people would have put them up before even putting the beds in place.

So, I got the curtains. But then we need to find a way to put them up and after a lot of research on a long enough curtain rod, I picked up some semi random item that would work ok here, although not very super duper expensive or handmade or authentic.

Now, buying things is relative easy. Doing something with them is another story.

Mattias is busy drilling holes

Mattias is the handyman when it comes to this and he started to happily drill in the wall. First the drill was swobbling everywhere, so it took few weeks/month to go and buy the right point to use for drilling. 

Done that he succeded in the first hole. 

The second didn't really work as smooth. He managed to hit a perfect cross between the bricks, making it impossible to drill the hole. Or better. He made a hole, just an enormous one. The plaster just started to fall apart by looking at it.

The hole.

The end result

Conclusion? Now he has to move the previous attachment as it is no more aligned with the second one. We risk another black hole. He also has a third one to put up. 

This is going to take probably half a year more at least. 

Excluding the time it will take me to patch the holes....