Wednesday, February 13, 2019

Another piece of Allan's furniture

Mattias took advantage of a day of vabbing (taking care of Oscar being home sick) for continuining his task of reviving the furniture he saved from Allan's house.
This time it is a different kind of cupboard, which in swedish is called linneskåp. I guess it was mostly used for storing sheets or kitchen related textiles.

As always my pictures are not as pretty as the ones from other blogs, also because I took them at night and sadly, in the room where the piece is placed there is barely light. The flash of the phone camera did quite a bad job...

The linneskåp
As most of Allan's furniture there is a strong jugend footprint in it, with the typical apple motif on it (which we have in few sideboards, chairs, etc.)


Mattias did clean up the whole cupboard and repair the ironwork
Now, the cupboard has been in the "black room" for several months. We really don't have a place for it but I thought it could be placed in the tower room, which one day will become a playroom for the kids. Problem is we have to carry it up. We are searching for volunteers :D

Sunday, February 10, 2019

In Jugend style

There has been some progress done with Allan's furniture (what we have saved here), but it is now few months that things have put on ice.
We have still few pieces that are in need of help and some of them are a bit on the way.
Nevertheless, what Mattias have managed to take of so far has certainly a patina, but also quite some charm.
In these months I have indulged myself in online auctions and Tradera (the local ebay) auctions as well, always with the mindset to enrich our home with Jugend details. This is going to be a very long operation but I hope that at least that everything is getting better without ending in an unpleasant excess of useless things.
Now, this is some of the new pieces (or Allan's pieces)

1) A big drawer. Probably ideal to have in a bedroom, but as our bedrooms are crammed with furniture already, this one ended up in the entrance to store hats and gloves (I guess it will be rather empty during summer time).
Few new things in the entrance. A drawer, a stool, the radio and a candlestick
2) An old radio. We have no idea if it works or not, but it is just very beatiful. A bit more art deco than jugend, but still nice. Right now it is over the drawer, but I think a more suitable place needs to be found
All available radio stations

3) A stool and a candlestick. Those are things that I have bought through auctions.

The candlestick. A a drawing of Stortorget in Malmö with the pharmacy "Flakta Örn"
 The stool is in reality a piano stool, but I thought it worked great here as it is the place where we and our guests take off jackets and shoes. The candlestick was just plain beautiful.

The stool, it has the same "decor" as the built-in couch that we have under the stairs
4) At Erikshjälpen here in Åkarp I bought instead the Malmö drawing. I decided to buy it because there was the pharmacy "Flakta Örn" in a corner. The pharmacy was the working place for the pharmacist Anders Nilsson who lived in Bellevue 1914-1919.

All together.
5) The big glass cabinet. This turned out to be an incredible piece of furniture. I haven't yet filled it in with books and other things, but I am getting there. It maybe is a bit suffocated behind the Samsas, but I really can't figure out a better placement.
The glass cabinet

The painting need to be lifted up and centered again. And surely we need to find a better placement for the things on top. Note Pico sleeping on the IKEA couch on the right
6) A nice little local detail in term of a small soap plate (I guess) from "Svenska kalkförsäljnings" in Malmö. There were two on sale on Tradera and I managed to get the one that unfortunately had some minor defects. Still, I love the super perfect jugend line
Jugend in a nutshell in this small plate
7) Finally, Oscar has been longing to have a desk in his room since this summer. Isabella has one, so why not him as well? Luckily, among the furniture from Allan there was a desk which has also the same style as Isabella's. 
He was then super happy to get it in his room, which is slowly getting to something more "harmonic" and a bit less temporary. Still, there is space for improvement, but I think the bases are now defined.

The desk with the Jetson armchair where we sit when Oscar is falling asleep

It is a bit tiny space compared to other bedrooms, but this was the maid's room (we think) afterall

Sunday, February 3, 2019

Some Byggfabriken shopping

One of my favourite shops is of course Byggfabriken. It has almost everything that a modern "byggnadsvårdare" needs, plus the atmosphere of a bit old style shop. Anyway, every now and then we need (casually?) to go and buy some small things for the house. From paint, to other accessories.
Last time it was Mattias' turn to indulge himself into spoiling the house with nice stuff...
This is what he came back with:
1) A porcelain insulator: to have in the cords of the wall lamps that are placed around the piano. They don't really have a *real* function as the cord is already perfetly insulated, but let's say for the sake of how things were done in the past....
The porcelain insulator

How it should be placed, more and less....
2) Some flax insulation (linisolering) to put in the gaps between the floor planks in the "Red room" (the piano and tv room). This room doesn't have a warm basement room under it, so there is a icey draft coming up if you try to feel closely.

The isolation keeps coming up
As we are not expert in this, we are probably doing something wrong, as even though we are squeezing the flax down, it just doesn't want to stick too much.
Maybe this was not exactly the right product for the purpose?
The flax insulation
3) Finally, a chain for a ventilation shaft in the guestroom (now, Mattias' room). In reality we had decided to not get one because it didn't look possible to fix one chain on the ventilation shaft without asking our blacksmith for support. 
But Mattias forgot all about this and bought it anyway and... surprise surprise, he even put it up without any problem!

It is a detail, but it is nice to have a decent chain to open the shaft

Detail of the ventilation shaft. It says "Patent Örnen"