Bookshelves

 It is true that we do not have the pace we had when we started the Villa Bellevue's adventure, but I think things are still moving. They move slow and even slower, or with less energy, I approach my way in front of the screen to say what is happening with the house. Both in terms of renovations but also improvements of other kind.

I have been a bit slow also in doing something that I call "Spring cleaning", which in reality is a deep cleaning in a room, including thinking of improvements and fixing stuff that is missing or broken.

Starting to preare the shift

During the spring, I did manage to clean out properly the guestroom and I thought of few things that would have been nice to upgrade. One of this was the bookshelf. 

The Billy is behind the new bookshelf

The existing bookshelf in the room (needed for all the kids books that we have kept and that they are reading during the years) was a simple white Billy bookshelf that we bought for our first apartment. It really fit the purpose, but not the style. 

The "new" old looking bookshelf (without shelves)

I thought then of getting something a bit bigger and old looking and I succeeded in getting something more old looking. I was then a bit disappointed and we tried to put the new bookshelf in Oscar's room. His room is not that huge (it was the old servan't sroom) and the bookshelf didn't really fit in size, sadly (just few centimeters). We then put it back but Oscar was then disappointed he didn't have a bookshelf anymore in his room.

Oscar his pulling down his posters

As turn of events, I realized we could put at least part of the Billy bookshelf in his room, and although he had to remove his football posters and the room is a bit crammed, Oscar is now very happy.

Oscar started to put things in order

It does look nice

Oscar is now happy of his bookshelf

At the end, the old looking bookshelf seems quite ok in the room and required that we didn't have to move the big cupboard (not really a bedroom piece, but...), even though it is now not centered and maybe it is not perfect fitting anyway. 

Voltron is happier

I hope it looks ok

I was not really happy at first of the purchase, but I think it turned out ok

The side shelf from the Billy bookshelf I managed to put it in the "tower room" as cleaning storage. I was doing the so-called "spring cleaning" of that room as well. It had been in chaos for at least few years and I had got also pretty lazy in how to store the cleaning products. Well, at least now they are not lying allover the floor...

The cleaning corner in the tower room

News from the green world

 There is always high potential for improvement in our garden.

There are some flowerbeds that would require some love and we have had also some serious problems, like having Japanese knotwood issues as our neighbours have it in their garden, on the border with ours. 

I am now focusing on three flower beds - one that our gardener, Pia, had tried to improve last year after I had failed to plant some hosta (which i like a lot). 

Last year she planted some lungwort, which survived to this year despite the slugs eating them up heavily during the previous season. She then recommended to plant some geranium, that seems not popular with them.

Let's see if we manage to fill this flowerbed, which is in a very shadowy spot of the garden and make it a bit more maintenance free.

After I planted the geranium and the hosta

I have started to work on another flowerbed, and planted few on one of the flowerbeds I put more effort as there is ground elder suffocating everything (and me). 

I did an investment in few perennial plants and I hope they will manage to survive this time.

The problem with the knotwood is that is very invasive and that we have had to come with a plan about what to do.

We discussed first removing part of the hedge, move out plants from a relatively big area, cover it for at least a decade and hope for the best. We ended up, after cutting the relevant part of the hedge and moving some plants, that maybe it was smoother to use Roundup, despite us not being very keen in chemicals. 

I am just afraid of the consequences on the surrounding vegetation (and our well and cats), even though I have moved around some of it - but maybe not far enough? And anyway now the whole area looks like there has been a tractor detroying everything...

We had removed the fence

The knotwood and part of the area that we had planned to cover at first

The knotwood

Kitchen stairs

 After the beauty of five years, we hav finally replaced the old broken stairs (see first blog post,  second blog post and third blog post), which of course - as most of things in this house - needs to be specially ordered, specially made, special everything. Not only, our speed in making things happen has become galactically slow and, this operation did require some intervention from our carpenter, John, who interceeded for us with some concrete casting company, that otherwise would ignore us. 

The stairs towards the basement

Close up pic

We took also the occasion to refresh the stairs that lead to the basement, as humidity have eaten them up plenty.

The basement stairs

The first step has been to remove the banister, which was not the smoothest of the operations. I had in mind that all the leaves would fall down just by looking at it - since that is what usually happens when any kids pass by.

The banister was placed on the side of the house, hoping no kid would play football against it.

The old stairs needed then to be destroyed. New steps and platform needed then to be put in place, which required a small tractor to be in our garden - the usual big truck would never manage to pass through our gates, of course.

The old stairs

The new steps and.. a dog.

The concrete casting firm came with a dog. Our cat, Romeo, didn't appreciate the company, and neither did I (seems that asking if it is ok to do one thing or another in other people houses can be optional). The dog spent 20 minutes barking and trying to pull as hard as he could to attack Romeo, who was not very comfortable. I was trying to work and the dog pitch noise was not music in my ears. 

The stairs are being destroyed

The happy owner of the dog

Tearing this down must have not been that hard...

Preparations for reparation of the basement stairs

Close up on the basement stairs

After some even better dialogue with the concrete casting firm, about how to park the tractor on a flower bed (just fixed up by our gardener) and a rhododendrum cut in half, the new stairs have been put in place and the banister has come back as well.

Final touch on the stairs

Details of reparation

The basement stairs look so much better

Proud John, finally can get rid of this problem

A flowerish lamp for Isabella

We often have been discussing lamps and this post will be about a lamp.

This time it is for Isabella's room. 

Many years ago, like probably 20 or more, we went to some second hand shop in Tyringe for some reason. There we bought some chairs and also a lamp. 

Details of the lamp we bought back then

In our previous apartments, this lamp had been placed in our combined office/guestroom and then in the guestroom that became Isabella's room. Eventually, in our house it was kept in Isabella's room.

Now, I think the lamp was lovely anyway and fitting in the room.

A very bright picture of the lamp

A very "evening light" picture of the lamp in Isabella's room

Then, on Facebook marketplace, I saw an handmade lamp that I believed would be fitting in her room colorwise better and also for the style. Now, unfortunately both Isabella and Mattias believe that the lightbulb works - I do not think so, but we will live with it a bit longer, I guess.

The new lamp, flower shaped

I am really not sure of the lightbulb

How the lamp fits in her, a bit crowded, room

Finally Spring!

 It is finally spring. Which is great as finally there is some sunlight, it is getting warmer and the garden starts to be colored by the different flowers blooming in waves.

If there is a bright side of the medal, there is also a downside, which is that there is a lot of gardening and similar to do - and in reality, it is not a bad side either as I actually do like to work out in the garden. The main problem is that time for doing all of this (and all the rest) is scarce and my level of frustration around the ocean of things I see that should get done and never do increases.

Luckily, at least for the gardening I have got some good help so at least some task get sorted out.

Ivy grows a little bit too much everywhere, so at least the trees should get some oxygen and breathing chances. 

 

The ground elder is a serious problem I have a bit everywhere in the garden. In this "raspberry alley" I have tried to put some stones with flat small cute plants, which sadly died. Now the area is completely clean. I would like to continue with the stones and plants in between, but maybe we should first cover the patch to not have ground elder growing for a while?

Still between the stones on our "eating place" there is always a lot of weeds growing in between. Quite annoying and they can be also growing quite high. This time we caught them as early as we could and now I am trying to fill in the gaps with some special sand that we are testing. This sand is also supposed to not be great for letting weeds grow so maybe it will be a bit harder. 

According to the instructions we should have been vibrating the area after putting the sand, but we can't really do this as the surface is not flat, so we have just to hope for the best and check how this will turn out.

Those pool house windows

 We have had the pool house now ready for few years. We have even bought a mulltoa, but we have not been able to install it since we have not had windows or doors. 

The work around those windows or doors has taken simply forever. 

But we did manage to get some minor progresses on one of them, thanks also to the support of one of our neighbours. The holes were the old hinge were all messed up, so the only thing to do was to try to remove that piece of wood and put a new one. 

It seems a pretty easy task, if you have the right tools. That is where the neighbour came in place. He did have the right tool (and hence he did the job... :D)

After the neighbor's intervention

Did we cut the piece of wood right?

We put a lot of glue...

We glue

We cross our fingers. 

Now, the window is waiting patiently since forever for the next step....