Sliding doors accessory

I am silent here, but it doesn't mean we are sitting on a couch watching a movie, or sitting outside enjoying the birds chirping... I doubt with my ambition I will ever sit down.

Said that, one thing that have disturbed me immensely has been one of the sliding doors. 

We have two pairs, being the two entrances to the "red room", the room where the piano and the Tv are located.

One of them had a nice, steady construction, painted white, so that the doors, when closing, hit that and stay "put".

The other one had a micro piece of wood, that after a while just gave up, fell off and the doors started to float from a side to another when moving.

So, we scraped off what was under the white paint and remove the piece of metal placed there (this we did it actually for another occasion (http://villabellevue1910.blogspot.se/2016/11/sliding-doors.html). I eventually went with it to my favourite blacksmith and with puppy eyes begged him to fix another one.

At the forge...(picture courtesy of Martin Hansson)

The good thing is that he was actually impressed by the piece of metal I had brought with me, and happily recreated another one.
When I went there, I actually brought him a bunch of... crap to fix. So, he managed also to fix some bookshelves holder for a jugend bookshelf we have.

Hand made bookshelf holder

I went though a couple of times back and forth with the "door stop" because the screws that I bought at Byggfabriken didn't tight the metal to the door frame and the first fix was done on the wrong side...

Adjusted so that the screws would tight it

Eventually, we got it properly done, so finally, both sliding doors can be closed properly.

Detail of the door frame

There, where the door stop is!

The Larsson family

Digging into all the families that have lived in Bellevue is interesting and rewarding, although, one finds a quite huge amount of details and just want to keep digging down.

Today, I met one of the descendants of Lars Larsson, who with his family lived here 1919 - 1928.
Or better, he owned the house during that time frame but lived quite shortily here.
Lars, who was a farmer rooted in Esarp, bought Bellevue 1919. They lived here until 1920, for the moving to Oscarshem in Lund.

Oscarshem, in Lund

They never came back to steadily live in Bellevue. They rented the house to different families and moved back to Esarp.
1928 they went bankrupt (or something similar) and sold both Oscarshem and Bellevue.

The house in Esarp

Lars had three sons born around the turn of the century 1900.
Nils Lorenz, Lars Erik and Knut Oskar.

The Larsson family (we presume)

 Nils, who was 20 when he moved in Bellevue, was studying at Hvilan as a farmer. He got his first car then, possibly one of the few cars in the whole of Åkarp, and that makes me believe that the garage belonging to Bellevue, was built around that time frame.

View from Hvilan around 1927. Bellevue's roof is visible behind Villa Åsa

I have discussed details about this family with different people who are grandchildren to one of the three brothers, so I have managed to collect different details.

Two brothers and the mother?

I will make it short today, for the focusing on the three brothers' families.

Lars started his career as an åbo (someone living and working the land of someone else, if I have understood right) for them becoming a proper farmer, with his own piece of land. It seems things were going fine, owning a manor in Esarp, for then buying both Bellevue and Oscarshem.
He was interested in hunting passion that he shared with one of the three sons.

Lars Larsson successfully hunting

What happened when he went bankrupt and why is still unclear.

The place for a lamp

By chance, we did buy two similar lamps, probably old kerosene electrified lamps. One of them we have put up some time ago (see this post).
Today, it was the turn of the other one.

Lamp has been put up over the alcove with Richard Björklund's painting

 It took just two years after the other one...

Original lamp on the left side, picture from 1909-1910. In the picture there must be Anna Ingemansson's father

Adieu "cocktail bar"

When we went to the house show we did wonder what was that strange thing that was on the side of the pool. Surely, from the pictures from the real estate agent it looked fancier. There were bar chairs around it.

Interesting construction was the "cocktail bar"

We looked at each other perplexed when we understood it was an half-finished "cocktail bar", in reality just a U-shaped wall with larger form of tiles on top.

A last goodbye to the construction

After putting the roof over the pool, we have realized that the tiles are too low and on top of that, we really are tired to clean up weeds growing between them.
Behind the bar wall, it started to grow like a jungle...

View from inside

Details over the beauty

So, we would like to redo the area and instead of having the bar, something that would be more usable for us (afterall, we basically don't drink!). A changing room, a small toilet, an outdoor shower. Now, we are still working in finding some building company to work on it, but in the meanwhile, Mattias has taken the occasion to demolish the cocktail bar. For his own pleasure.

Mattias at work

Heavy work, but satisfactory, it seems. Hopefully we will manage to do something nice(r) out of it.

To demolish is hard work

Curtains!

Anything we do just take some time. Putting up some curtains in our veranda has been a two years old project (and there is still one little detail that needs to be fixed).
I have realized that nothing standardized could be fixed, so we had to involve a blacksmith and a seamstress.

At the forge

Based on some picture I did find on the net, I went to the blacksmith (http://ferrumkonstsmide.se/) and asked to prepare some for me. The prototype he made was very beautiful, but slightly too long. So he cut it and that became the final design of the hook. This got fixed in March 2015.

Simple, but beautiful

I then got some idea of how the curtains should look like. Since we have a reproduction of 1700 century furniture there, it'd be nice to match it with similar curtains. It is hard to identify what kind of curtains were in the house from the old pictures we have...

Based on few models I saw on the internet, I discussed with the seamstress (http://www.cherubino.se/) some ideas and she proposed a first version, which then got transformed into something else..

The first curtain is up, but it looks too modern!

The final version then got decorated by a nice stripe of lace and went up about one year ago.

This fits much better! 

The curtains come up

While the curtains were being made, we (or better Mattias) had to adjust the rods that I bought as curtains rods. In our little world that required a lot of planning: where to put the hooks, how the curtains should look like, how to make the rods fit in the corner...

Eventually we managed to put all the pieces of the puzzle together and last year (March 2016) the curtains were all up and we were happy to not being roasted by the sun during spring time.

There was still a task left to accomplish: the rods were not painted and, although that wouldn't have been the worse thing ever, I thought that having them white would fit better.

This winter I therefore took everything down. The curtains got washed and got to work on the rods.

Preparation for painting

Base paint with linseed paint

I got some professional help for the painting

This is the end result after several weeks of painting/waiting/finding the time to finish up

Finally it is time to put them up

Details, the hook, the rod, the ceiling

Setting the curtains up

A room with a view

Now, the only thing is to adjust one of the rod because there is no space for one of the knobs.

Easter time

It has been since we have moved in this house that I have embraced the more Swedish tradition to prepare the house for Easter. Not that I am hardcore with it - we bought this stuff four years ago and haven't changed much around it (Mrs Wallergårds' blog, sadly the pictures are not visible because the site where they were hosted is long gone).

So, I just want to show again (but on this blog ;-) ) some furnishing detail, although it is not about renovation or history of Bellevue.
It is just that it is nice every year to put this decoration out  just when Lent starts and everyone is alert to spot nature spring awakening.

Narcissus are typical Easter's flowers

 After all the greyness, it is indeed nice to have some color's touch.

An Easter "tree", next to the autumn lady, on a nice jugend sideboard

 The house is too big, I guess to have a turn over (I fail also during Christmas time) and I don't think that exaggerating would do any good.

Each door handle on the bottom floor has some Easter's decoration hanging

Two big hen are guarding the veranda

 It is also very hard to find typical Jugend items, so I just have a mixture of whatever I bought which doesn't make any sense in relation to the house or its age.

Small chicks are spread a bit everywhere

More on the library. Possibly hard to see

This is also part of the life at Bellevue, within the bigger works which includes buying proper furniture (still!), restoring and trying to survive the general maintenance of house and garden.

Spring cleaning

It is the first day of spring, but the weather doesn't look yet super promising, although it is getting better.

As every year though, I started my yearly spring cleaning which usually last until summer and never gets completed. Let's see how it will go this year...

Nevertheless, the only room that is *almost* completed is the TV room (almost because I'd like to paint the ceiling were we have some humidity stains and hope they won't appear again), which though went through a small make over.

Before

After

After (2)

Basically, the main concept is to be able to sit and "listen" to whoever is playing the piano at least looking at the piano. Seems a bit better than before...