Summer action

I have been trying to find the occasion to write what we have done, small and big, but time always fly away. 

At least today, I manage to make concrete the attempt to document some of our minor efforts during the summer.

Some of the small things we have manage to do have been in the pipeline forever. It feels as the whole past year has been sucked up into work and kids and our own logistic/activities without leaving much space for anything else. Also the energy has been limited. 

There is much more that has happened in the last months, so I hope I will manage to catch up in the future to summarize things that I would like to have documented, from both small and bigger house projects of all kind.

1) 

I sadly do not remember why but clips that were holding some cables in the basement fell off. I then asked to try to find news ones, but what I got was not exactly the same product, was some metall hook for fences, as far as I understood.

I then tried to fix these new hooks to hold the cables, but that didn't turn out to be perfect as it was very hard to hammer them into the ceiling and I manage to create more work for me to fix. Holes that will need some adjustment. 

The ceiling, the cables and the holes

2) There have been a lot of small issues with a couple of doors/locks/keyholes. I still have one to fix that has been wrong since we bought the house and probably for decades. But I have put some effort in trying to fix (again) the keyhole for the pentry door. The holes have been just made into the void, basically and the screws have been not manage to get a proper grip. I have now tried to fix it with some linseed putty, with the hope that when it gets hard it actually holds everything together and not that it becomes to brittle and fall aparts again.

The keyhole with the putty

After being "repaired"

Similarly, I repaired also the bathroom door. Also there, one of the screws couldn't get a grip and seems that has been just poorly placed. A bit annoying as this was done by some pro and I would hope that when you pay for something (and not cheaply at all), it would actually give you some insurance on the quality.

Anyway, I removed all the parts of the handle and then I applied once again linseed putty hoping that it will also hold things in place.

The injured wood

I put the putty in the previous holes

I put back things and I am hoping for the best :)

3) As summer is summer, there are also a lot of outdoor projects ongoing, mostly a general maintenance of the garden.

Being inspired by some neighbours with some similar system, I have invested in an automatic sun driven watering system to be used when we are away (and even when we are not).

I also got some old barrel that I have then oiled with linseed oil and filled with water.

The barrel

The sundriven watering system

The system set up for test

I have still to set it up actually properly, to be able to water the plants and so on. It will require me to cut the little pipe and puzzle it together in a smart way. But I want to move the barrel closer to the pump so that it is also less in the way with all the piping.

4) Finally, earlier during summer I had the chance to check the roof as part of the two-years inspection after we painting it. When doing so, I noticed that there was literally all sort of things on the gutters.

Especially before autumn, it will be great to have the regular task of cleaning them out. If they are stuffed, the rain will just overflow with the risk of causing damage to the house structure instead.

Mattias jousts on a long ladder for cleaning a gutter

Also this is not a trivial activity as for reaching some parts you really need to be safe and sound on a ladder. But work is in progress at least!
 

Picking up apples

 Of course we have been picking up apples also this year, but this post is not about that. I will spare the story telling on our efforts this year in another moment.

However, I try to keep some themes in the house. We have iris a bit everywhere, in the garden, on vases, on mirrors, on the windows... but then we have plenty of apples, as said.

I did found this textile tapestry on some online auction and, well, I simply just liked it a lot.

I thought that a gracious, jugend like, lady picking up apples would make a great connection with the yearly effort of collecting (and throwing) as many apples as possible from trees where apples are almost up in the sky.

I think its placement is possibly not the best one, but it is at least placed where some softening of the environment is needed. Although, probably a carpet would be a more proper investment.

Mattias hanging the apple picking lady

A Christmas picture of how it looks

We have a bad connection with the wind

 I guess we have never connected properly with the local wind deities as at storm time, we are always the ones that manage to be creative in damages.

I was down in the basement, after barely sleeping thanks to very strong wind tonight, when I heard Mattias screaming from the kitchen and then Isabella came down announcing that a tree had fallen.

I was of course terrified that it had fallen on the house, people, garage or even the cars. So, I took one of Mattias jackets and out, in pijamas, I went on the street.

I met one of our neighbours but before even realizing he was there, I just cursed loud.

This is what I saw:

At the sight I got mostly irritated at our arborist. I had asked him now for few years to check the tree and possibly cut it down. We had got already some big branches on the way, at some past storm and it was obvious that the tree was not in the best shape. I do not know why he insisted that it was not going to be a problem, but I will face him with facts now and I will ask him how he could think that it could stay...

For how strong the wind was, it would have never brought down the tree like this if it was not completely rotten inside.

It was a complicated morning this one. Mattias had a lecture at 815 and Oscar had to be at school before 8 for his gymnastic class. 

We have one chainsaw and there was breakfast and kids to get ready. Luckily, most of the breakfast was in place and the kids, when there is some emergency, they are quite cooperative, so they were ready in a blink of the eyes.

Mattias started to cut off some of the branches with the support of our neighbour, who realized he was lucky. He had been driving at 6 and back at 630. Not only he was lucky. We were very lucky too.

The tree fell perfectly on the street. Probably some of the hedge got damage, but who cares. The garage is in one piece, the gate still work, no cats or people ended up under the tree and definitely noone with a car.

I went and took my chainsaw gear and went to give a change to Mattias, so he could get ready. He had started to saw a big piece of wood. So I started to cut from there, but a change in the tension of the log made sure that my chainsaw got stuck. The piece was so big and heavy that I manage to get the chain out just long after...

We ended up gathering some of the neighbours, equipped with saw and chainsaws that managed to get more and more branches off the way, until the whole crown got removed and now it is lying in our garden, ready to be chopped for firewood or simply to be put for being thrown.

Mattias managed to leave in time. I was there and helped cleaning out the last big pieces and finally, I also removed the small parts that one of the neighbour had collected to clean up the road.

I locked the garage, put back all the tools, except the chainsaw that needs to be mounted back. I moved a bit the logs in the garden to give space for the cars to drive (but it is a bit too tight).

I took then some pictures and I have sent them to our arborist. He will come to cut the last of it.

Mattias did suggest we would go and buy some firewood, as the logs we have had have been too wet and in a bad condition. Now, we really don't need to do that.

And I think we will have to have a small gathering with our neighbours, both to celebrate the perfect fall of the tree and that we managed (or better, mostly them) to clean out the road in time for everyone to start their day.

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.