Friday, September 21, 2018

Jugend addi(c)tions

Trying to decorate home is a constant ongoing process/project. I try to find (affordable) time typical items (hence jugend) which need to try to have also a pratical side. During the past months, apart possibly overbuying a lot of old plates, we have added few items.
Jugend vase
Sadly, I haven't taken a decent picture of this vase in a good environment. But the vase is really beautiful and fits the rest of the "home".
A jugend textile (sadly, I am horrible in taking pictures)
It is very typical swedish to have old textiles with texts, quotes and words of wisdom. In this case the text says something like "Enjoy every delight with thankful mind, take care (?) of the roses that life brings to you, take care most carefully of the childhood memory, the most beautiful time of all that is".

Since we have no tasks at all, or half done projects already, we got the opportunity to save some old furniture in a questionable state and now the whole "Black room" (that is house the entrance + staircase room is identified) is filled with semi dirty furniture (appreciated by the cats so they have something to label...).
Cleaning is ongoing, then we have to decide what to do with it, despite them being time typical.
Some of the saved furniture


Wednesday, September 12, 2018

Being a doctor to the house!

As a owner of an old house, one has to learn to take care of it in the "right way" (especially, in our case, the right way can be a bit complicated).
Now, the most interesting one is related to the garage doors. The garage doors project is a very good example of an eternal one (still details need to be refined, although this summer I spent some time painting minor parts, including the new irons).
The frames are landing on the ground and thanks to that they absorb humidity and they are slightly rotten on the bottom.
Linseed oil injection for the door frame
For taking care of them, a hole have been drilled on the side and I am on a daily base injecting linseed, so that the wood get saturated of it and will not absorb anymore the humidity from the ground. 
I just wonder if I am doing right. The oil comes out of the holes when I am pushing it in (I guess it means I have filled it..) and I wonder how long I am going to do this. The wood has to stop to suck the oil in. 
I am waiting from a notification from the door frame...

Since we are on the garage doors topic, I will follow up on my trip to the blacksmith, which was (finally) fruitful. 
Not only I got fixed a minor detail on a candelabrum, but I eventually got fixed also the handles of the garage door. With how much they cost, I could have probably bought 3-4 of them, second hand, but I thought it was worthy to think that these were the handles that all the owners of our house had held when opening the garage. 
Maybe I should be more cost oriented and less nostalgic?
Internal side of the door
External side of the door

What is missing?
First of all the plates to have around he handle and the key hole.
As we have had the carpenter adjusting the lock plate and adding some rings to the irons, since the doors were not aligned, I have also that minor painting to do.

The final healing procedure is related to the metal in the roof. As we have started the painting project, of course we have got some water leak that has made some nice humidity stain appear just above the piano and has made a minor mess in the tower room.
I am not sure I can state it is a coincidence that we have had someone on the roof and all of a sudden (although he has swore he didn't wash that metal since it looked rusty) we get a water leak, but indipendently of his action the metal is not in the best state ever.
This of course was completely invisible 3 years ago when we did the roof renovation... right!?
For once I will not try to hunt down our roof company, as we have had already plenty of discussions with them at the time of the work.

It is hard to see from the pic, but there are a lot of small holes.

The rubber mass that has been sed for protecting the metal has started to get loose

More on the bad state
Today there will be a plater (plåtslagare) coming by and check this out. I know this is not going to be a smooth operation.
Since he is here, I will also ask him to check the possibility to do the fitting for the eaves for the pool house. We want to have it in aluzink (so it should be easier to paint) but there is not available from the producers. 
I am a bit concerned in having two companies working with the metal there, although it is a minor project and I would prefer to have just one (and the more competent one on the matter).
Let's see...


Just a minor hole in a very peculiar corner, not sure this is a culprit to the water leakage


Wednesday, September 5, 2018

Small projects

Our life in this house is constituted by a lot of ongoing small and big projects. Also the small ones require quite some time to be accomplished (even when we try to focus on exactly that one) for a reason or another.

A perfect example is finding the "right" furniture.
This lamp has been waiting to be found for about 4 years (and by the way, I would have wished to have it with three arms).
We have added some new furniture in the house since I was more active on the blog. Some of them were pieces that we had been longing for for a while.
Lamp from the 40s or 50s
A project that has started two years ago is the outdoor dryer. You can read about this here.
We (well, actually, Mattias), finally started to play around with it and made good progresses.
Next step is to finish the sawing of the decorative part and I have to oil everything.
Mattias is in action preparing for some sawing
Look! His hands are so fast, it is impossible to take a pic (or I simply took a blurred one and I am trying to be funny)

One of the pillars is waiting to be oiled
Considering the people in action and long projects, we have our blacksmith doing a lot of small and big things.
One of them is trying to fix the handle from the garage doors (see here to read how did it broke).
His first attempt was unsuccessful so I went and harass him again.


Preparation...

At work!
Now, tomorrow I need to go and visit him and see if he was really successful this time...