The little grind

 We have a little grind, between where we park the cars and we could sit having dinner. Something that probably the owner just before us installed in the garden. 

Last year, we found one of the decorative pine cones on the ground and we realized it was very much high time to fix this little grind. 

I can't right now find the picture of how it looked then. Nevertheless, the blacksmith came and took the grind with him. He told us to try to sand the pillars and fix them up, thing that we didn't really exactly managed to do. Time but also skills have been an issue. 

The gate is back and the pillars are sanded

This august we finally got back the grind. I then begged the blacksmith to try to help us with the pillars and he did something with one of them, after reinstalling the pine cone on it. 

The pine cone

I had very much hurry then to at least apply a first layer of paint with some protective rust paint (järnmönja) but of course, the weather was not on my side: rain was forecasted.

I went in the evening out and with the head lamp on I applied, as best as I could, the first layer of paint. We then left the sun umbrella open, hoping it would not blow away, for avoiding the rain to just destroy everything I had done. 

It actually worked!

Night paint

End result for the first layer

Progresses for the pool house

Every spring we state that "this summer we are going to focus on the pool house". Then we realize (sadly) that summer is short and our time goes into travels/cutting hedges/do regular maintenance and that the extra work progresses way too slow to be perceptible. In this case, the pool house is still a skeleton waiting for doors, windows, some better paint among other things.

At least, we made some more visible progresses recently.

We managed to get mounted the external lamp that I have bought few years back at a auction, hoping it would work out, both functionally speaking, but also aesthetycally.

I wanted to get a lamp close enough to the one we have on the main entrance.

The main entrance (as it was 2012) with the lamp lit

It seems at least reasonably ok. Now, we "just" have to finish the rest. Next summer, maybe?

Lamp, view #1

The half finished pool house, with the lamp

Lamp, view #2

The final result and the side effects

 This early spring  came finally the windows in place. 

I am challenging myself that I want to fix the windows frame myself, but we will see how it goes with the time this summer. I still have a pile of things to fix for the pool house that are waiting since forever...

One of the windows

Details with the nicely painted "horngäng"

When put like this, it is obvious, sadly, that the red colour we have always painted with is a bit too orange respect to the original one. That has happened because we took a window to Ottosson Färgmakeri in Genarp (one of the half moond windows) and they stated that was the closest one. It is highly possible that that window had a very bleached color. 

Eventually we will have to paint again the windows - I think that the next round we will use a bit darker color. 

Also, I have got a lot of problems with this apricot red in the pool house frames and I wonder if it is how I painted or simply how Ottossons colors are reacting to the impurities that exists in the air.

All the windows are in place

Now, few weeks back - after not so long that the windows got back in place, we noticed only on one specific window this effect:

Bleeding through the paint?

I contacted our carpetner and the thought is that the piece of wood was very rich in resin and it went just though all the paint. 

The windows during the restauration

During the restauration/renovation of a window, there is finally the opportunity to look under the layers of paint and that doesn't exclude surprises.

This happens often especially if they haven't been taken care for for a long time, but things that look solid at first glance, but not be real!

Here comes, but a bit scattered, a collection of pictures sent by our carpenter while he was fixing our windows. Some pictures show the "nude" window and its problem, some other shows the reparation made. 

One of the windows, before the first inspection

And after

A close-up

One can guess the damage by looking like this

One of the first "surprises"; but quite to be expected. Some wood that is not really in good state anymore

Not the best state for this piece of wood, probably a "sidostycke", one of the side pieces of the window

Another view of the piece

Not so much left of this "gångjärn"

After removing the "hornjärn", one can see what is left of the wood underneath

This seems mildly better

It doesn't seem like there are many windows that are in good state

Window #5, with "spröjs". Can that piece of wood be saved?

It seems that the combination of modern paint ("plastfärg") and the "hornjärn" has been lethal for most of the windows. 

And more

Another one...

What does this teach us? To not use plastic/water based paint!

They never end

Again

The marks of the "hornjärn"

This window had a couple of nails holding some things together (!!!)

The "hornjärn" on the left is probably the style that is original for our house. But when doing reparation, they often didn't bother to search for the proper pieces and took whatever was available. The one of the left is more modern and probably from the 40s/50s. 

The beauty of finding the original color (sadly a darker red than the one we have picked) under the layers of color. 

Beautiful reparation

Most of the windows required reparations

Seamless work

New "gångjärn" is placed on the new wood

The reparation is minimal and one tries to preserve as much as possible of the original wood

Even some wood that doesn't look healthy is often in better state than it looks

It is important to try to use wood from slow growing trees to guarantee more robustness and quality

After all this work, there is still plenty to do. Mostly painting and putting the putty. 

During winter time

It was really not the best timing to do this work. 

This is how our "TV/piano" room looked during winter. 

The "blinded" tower 

On the outside, it was just the look that was affected. It didn't really look pretty with the wooden planks and plastic where there should be the windows. But I think our carpenter did a nice job with setting up a good layer to avoid the worse. 

It didn't really help during the worse winter days. It was blowing through and the room was icy. The fact that it was also dark didn't really help (I moved my plants out of the room so they could get some minimal sunlight). 

The tower room

Playing the piano, but even watching the TV was definitely not cosy, despite the internal sets of windows (innebågar). Of course, it is not like that with the windows we have always had proper isolation, rather the opposite, but still, this would have worked best during late spring/summer. We have though to be happy we actually got the job started at all :-)

This is how the tower windows looked

 It has been high time for a while to try to take care of some of our original windows and, although the will is on my side to try to fix them, there is simply not the time.

We have therefore assigned the task to a window renovator that would work according to the traditional methods, painting with linseed paint and trying to use robust proper wood, for example, for the necessary reparations.

We decided to start with the external windows of the tower room, realizing long time ago that the original color was a bit darker (red, that is) than the one we have chosen so far, but decided to keep it for the time being.

This is how our windows looked like in November, before we started the process:

The tower, in a picture of the company before they started to dismount them.

It is a lot of windows (and these are just the external ones)

There will be still some work to do on the windows frame but also on the metal sheet in front.

A detail of the window (apart that one can see how the original glass is wavy), the hook. I think it is beautiful.

The work started in November. Maybe not the best when the temperature starts to sink...

To be continued....