A facade painted with acrylic paint?

During December, we had sadly noted a humidity stain appearing in a corner of our "red room". We got of course worried since this could mean tons of things are going wrong.

The evil stain

The stain hasn't increased in size (luckily) over the past months, so we thought it would be connected to the heavy rain that occurred during the autumn storms.
In fact, it was enough to pay attention outside to look at this detail:

On top of the stain

In my opinion, this doesn't look that good and could be the cause of getting water and humidity up in that room. However, we haven't investigated how it looks really in the room just over the "red room" for several reasons. First, there is an heavy wardrobe there and second, just behind that wardrobe there is some "empty" space between two walls, which is not accessible. This is just under the roof and used for isolation and as wardrobes in other rooms.
Or at least, I think there is such a space just behind that wardrobe...

We have also been noticing humidity in the garret floor, but not under the old wet (and probably partially rotten beams) but just nearby the outdoor walls.

A garret window with clear signs of humidity (and flies)

The lime mortar is falling off

 It is very odd that the lime mortar is coming off. Yes, of course it is old, but that doesn't mean it should look bubbly and wet.

Out of concerned, we have contacted a contractor to look around and as soon as he came in, just by touching the outdoor walls, he stated that everything is painted with acrylic paint.
We have still to get a second opinion, but if this is the case, this is going to hit us heavily.
Also, what is quite annoying is that it seems our predecessor did repaint the outdoor walls in 2009, so why not doing a proper job? Acrylic paint is sadly not optimal since it doesn't let the walls "breath" with the result that the water that comes in, doesn't go out, creating humidity problems.
Why it is still used (it was surely popular in the 70s), I have no idea, but it seems still a valid option in the shops, despite the "fame".

How to solve this issue?
Well, we first need to get another point of view over the matter, but for the moment I'd like to use some ethanol and check that the paint is coming off. If that is the case, we have most likely the wrong paint on the house.
But if that is the case, we might need to blast out the paint, possibly causing damage to the plaster and then we have to see if that needs repairing and if that is just lime based or cement mixed.
Then, on top of the plaster we will have to use some lime paint...

Why can't proper material being used in a house like this? (And I blame also ourselves for some mistakes done when hastily, naively and without good knowledge renovation)

A modern fireplace in a jugend villa

Due to a bad translation, I had been searching for months the wrong item for our fireplace.

What I was searching was a spark arrestor, which in Swedish is gnistsskydd. However, until I found the right word, I was searching for a eldskärm, which seems to be an item for covering a fireplace when it is not used and it can be decorated. In fact, I was finding a lot of covers in jugend style, but in wood or textile and I was wondering how they could stand the fire...

After I identified the right item, I had issues finding a nice arrestor in Sweden. The auction sites seldom presented those and when looking at the shops we didn't see anything of our taste. It could easily be that if we would search more, we would have found some small smith selling what we wanted, but we really didn't have the time for such an hunt and we simplified our life searching some Italian website.
We found then Caminopoli, having a quite big selection and we went for one of their products in cast iron.

Considering how modern our fireplace is, I think the arrestor makes it fitting a bit better in the environment and it seems working fine with the fireplace itself. So now, we can be sure no cat will be cooked in the fire! ;-)

Basement stairs from another epoch

We really don't know how was the basement many years ago. We know what kind of renovation has been done by our predecessor, but we have no idea how it really looked like before him or the Svenssons. It can easily be that it was a little bit more comfortable than it looks today, after all downstairs there was the "food cellar" and also the facility for doing the laundry. Somehow as it is today.

2004: unknown work done around the basement stair

Hammering around, 2004

Patched stair, 2004

The thing is that the stairs that go down to the basement are utterly uncomfortable and quite dangerous. One has to bend for avoiding to hit his own head and must be very careful to not slip or there will be quite a fall to make, especially if you are a kid or an "old lady" ;-).

Autumn 2013, the beautiful basement stair with an unsafe fall (note: we haven't chosen the blue color for the stair and the trash you see is not there anymore)

Since we were going to have a good bunch of guests during the holidays, we felt that we wanted to secure in a ugly but robust way, the possible fall. We didn't manage to do it in time for the full invasion of guests, but few days later the work was completed.

View over the fall, now safer

Details

The gap has been closed

Thanks to Mattias' father engineeristic tips, Mattias managed to put together a fence, hooking it to the wall thanks to a triangular wooden strip and a column that has been there since we moved.

Triangular wooden strip detail

We didn't want to burn the floor

Since there are actually laws (if not recommendations) and common sense to dictate that when one has a fireplace, you should protect your wooden floor, we did try to invent something to put under our modern fireplace.

The idea also was to use the space under the fireplace to store the logs. 

We really didn't understand how one could use the fireplace without anything before. Wasn't it dangerous?

Anyway, since the fireplace is in some sort of copper, we went and ask Vinslövs Plåt to make a taylor-made piece of plate, in copper, to have there.

It looks so shiny now!

But the colors are beautiful

Now, we just miss a spark arrestor in cast iron. Not the easiest task on the planet, of course.

Bathroom enhancements

Although we have completed the bathroom renovation few months ago, we have taken our time for finalizing some details.
Slowly, we have added accessories for making the environment more comfortable and practical.

Panorama of the bathroom, as it looks today

We have added a curtain for the shower (bought at Åhlens) and few items of need, like a soap dispenser, a toothbrush holder and a toilet brush. I have bought them through Butik Öland, an online shop that sells items from different brands, including Miljögården. Unfortunately, the toilet brush broke spontaneously after 8 months. Butik Öland was very professional in handling the errand, while I was very disappointed at Miljögården for the lack of interest in keeping customers. Since the product was not of high quality and considering their approach to my request, I will try to avoid them as much as I can in the future.

Soap dispenser

Toothbrush holder

Toiletbrush

Noticing annoying water stains on the floor every now and then, especially when giving Isabella a bath, we have then bought a couple of carpets (Hemtex).

Carpets

Finally, considering that with the light on, everything is perfectly visible, we needed to put a curtain. We thought that a so called cafègardin would have worked fine, but pity, such curtains are not the most popular currently.
Thanks to some expert hands (the ones of Mattias' mother), we managed to put together a nice curtain that matches the tiles color quite fine.

Cafègardin

Lace detail

The pictures are worse than usual since the natural light in this period is scarce and my bad skills can't compensate such environment!

A Wallergård's nostalgia (and not only)

This has been for years Mattias' dream: to get hands on a Jetson armchair.
Why this obsession? Everything is connected to the memories of his childhood, when his grandfather (from mother side) used to sit on a similar armchair and play around with his grandchildren.

We have had the luck to finally spot two of the "right color" (to match our yellow senap wall in the studio) for a decent price, on Blocket and it was nice to find out that, although a bit torn by usage, they are from the 70s and not some newly produced items.

I can now realize that this was also Pico's dream...and we had no idea!

Pico, enjoying the Jetson

Do you want to find out something more about this armchair? You can read here or here.

Finalizing some light

Surely, the attention lately is about light and lamps. 

Since we got the hang of an electrician, we managed to do some small things, that I suppose many would address as trivial. 

Among such things, we have got up some lamps we bought through some Facebook flea market. 

The lamps on the side of the fireplace are two Orrefors wall-lamps, from the 60s, designed by Carl Fagerlund.

One of the wall-lamps

The lamps on the side of the fireplace

Still looking at some Facebook flea market, I saw on sale another lamp. Same style. It was indeed connected to these ones, so I just went and buy it and, since it was too small to be placed in the dining room, it got to be hanged in the veranda, so that there would be still a connection between the three lamps.

Orrefors lamp

Can you see where the lamp is? 

And, since we were at it, we finally found out why one of our auction-bought lamps wasn't working...

No wonder!