Lamps - an old subject

Some typical subject for this blog has been lamps. 

We have though lived in the house for about 12 years and still, there are plenty of lamps to fix. One of the rooms that have deserved a bit of love "lightwise" is the kitchen, as when the sun goes down, it is basically impossible to cook (and still it is, on the southwest side of it) as it is dark, no matter which lights one has turned on.

I have had hard time thinking what kind of lamp would suit in the kitchen. The current kitchen is not what should be the "final" kitchen and the idea I have in mind for that one is closer to a modern interpretation of a turn of the century kitchen (we are talking of the beginning of the 1900-century). 

The kitchen spot that needed a lamp/light

I should have therefore been thinking of some wall lamp in Jugend style, but I never managed to find any that would convince me. Also, we had at the same time to provide some form of lamp in the pentry. 

When we came to view the house when it was on sale, there was a nice globe there. When we moved in in the  house there was just a lightbulb. I was hoping to find something that would fit that without having to make drastic changes, but that was not really possible.

The lightbulb support that was in the pentry

I had a thought in mind on how we should fix both places, but at the end I bought something on some Facebook private advertisement which was at least cheap and retro. It would work great in a beautiful kitchen (or bathroom) from the 40s-50s, in pastel colors, but well, it works for now at least. 

One of the two lamps (looks like Mumin) before being mounted

The one in the pentry became even less optimal. The cable positionin was not allowing the lamp to be mounted where there was the lightbulb and now I have a memory of the fact that the globe vanished before we could move in. I actually wonder if it had been on that wall for a while...

So, be light!

A less perfect implementation of my idea

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

What has happened lately

December is always a quite intense month. Christmas is what is dictating the rhythm and, despite corona and the cut of most of events, maybe due to the darkness, things have been moving with a heavy step focusing on the advent and Christmas preparations.

Chloe has discovered immediately the tree

We started to decorate Villa Bellevue directly from the 1st of Advent. We have a plastic Christmas tree (second hand one!) and, knowing that the kittens would have had great fun with it, we decided to limit the decorations on it and exclude the balls. That was a wise choice. 

After few weeks the lights were broken, branches kept falling and the few decorations were thrown allover the house. 

Just before Christmas Eve Mattias started a big restoration and since then it has at least looked decently.

The restored Christmas during Christmas Eve

Eventually, despite the days running too fast, I pushed Mattias to put up yet another shelf that I bought at an auction, to end up in Isabella's room. I am not very convinced of the position, but I guess we will have to live with this until some more drastic change occurs. 

Her previous shelf got crowded quite soon and we knew that she would get a new load of books to devour.

Her room with the new shelf just hanged

The new shelf

After we had got the walls in the entrance restored, we have had the thought of try to protect them.

In september I managed to get in contact with a company that could prepare plexiglass sheet shaped as we wanted. 

We took the measures. And we took them again. And then again. Bah, the walls never seemed straight, so we decided to make a template. But we didn't have the right material for it, so we had to order it and then to find the time to fix the template.

Eventually, again under coercion, we spent an evening trying to sort this out. It had just pasted three months since I was in contact with the company... 

Mimmi is helping

Or maybe she isn't

Ok, I am not sure of the result

Once again, this project had to be put on hold, because even though we had the template and new measures, the company wanted to wait few months as they are understaffed right now.

So, let's wait few months more for this.

Finally, Christmas came. The Eve was spent mostly preparing the last things and for me it meant finally having the time to bake. 

I can imagine that Bellevue has been seeing a lot of Christmas baking during all its years...

One tray of gingerbread cookies

Lucia cats (Lussekatter) 

Two types of fudge

An orange sallad to refresh the heavy Christmas food

The buns are ready and it is time to go to bed and wait for Christmas

The good thing with Christmas is the extra little free time to be able to do some project. 

One of the things that I have been doing has been starting to clean up the boiler room. It was a mess last year. We got some minor order and clean up some stuff, but we never finished, with the result that it got very messy very quickly.

On top of that, the ceiling has fallen down on one side of the room and I am thinking of tearing down the rest of it to fix it up properly.

The hole in the ceiling

I think the higher planks are the original roof. I believe that when the toilet was made, they probably reinforced it with iron beams and lowered part of it

Also this part is soon falling down

While cleaning up I have also noticed how great they have been patching the window, in this room.

Some foam, a big cut, some random pieces of wood, part of the window has never been painted in green. I wonder what did they do to it from the start. I suspect that there might have been a shortcut for filling oil in the oil based heater but that was patched brutally? 

It is weird that in such fancy house nobody did take care of the details of the less noble parts of the house...

How the window is looking from the inside

Wooden bits and pieces are placed on one side of the window

The window has been chopped off in some weird way. That part has never been painted in green - so
not touch from the 70s at least?

In the room I am trying to squeeze in a lot of things to have tools and spare parts and whatever in order. 

Right now though it is a bit complicated if I have to be fixing the roof. So, I have placed some stuff just temporarily in the middle of the room.

There will be a drawer, a carpentry table and a quite generous shelf

Mimmi is approving the temporary placement

A triple coincidence

I usually scan Tradera for Jugend items and I did see at a certain point a couple of old fashion humidifier. I sadly lost an auction of a beautiful one, that would have fit in the bedroom, but I got the hands on one that had a bit more art deco style in it. I had an idea where that should be, but each task takes some time to be implemented and the humidifier was ready to be placed at a radiator for few weeks.

The first dehumidifier

The nice thing is that just after that I saw another one, same size, same color, same pattern. Well. There was no question I should get it (although then, the placement question was starting to get trickier).

I paired these two together on the big, curved, radiator in the tower part of the living room

This didn't end up here (and note, we didn't put the dehumidifier on yet...). I was scanning again Tradera, when I saw yet another one (!), same color, same pattern, but slightly slimmer. 

No doubt I should have it. 

The last, slimmer, dehumidifier

At this point, I knew that all three would fit perfectly in the living room, where, with the William Morris curtains (when back), they wold have a great match in color and pattern.

Close up on a Jugend/Art deco dehumidifier

Even the toilet...

 ...deserves proper attention :-)

In reality I have even long term plans for this room, as it is almost intact from 1958 when the Edler had moved in in Villa Bellevue. The same tiles were found in the bigger bathroom and as far as I have understood, they were also in the kitchen, at the time. 

The toilet is breathing 60s with its style

I sadly haven't had the time to look behind the paperboard that is today on the walls. I have seen a picture from the previous owner where the walls had some yellow medallion wallpaper, but I do not know if that is from the 70s or earlier (I doubt it was the original one).

The roof is lowered - I guess for adding the ventilation, but who knows, maybe there are other interesting traces there if one would there to open up? - but my understanding is that this was a small wardrobe room from the start. 

Windows and doors were in dark brown with a slight tint of red. 

I am probably repeating myself from previous posts where I have described the toilet and what I have deducted/found around it, but I do not remember everything I wrote in these years :-)

Nevertheless, although I have the ambition to one day fix this room but simply patching where the column for the upstair bathroom has been placed, paint doors/windows with the right shade, have once again the 60s-70s bathrooms accessories (hangers, mirrors, etc.) and have the most appropriate wallpaper on the wall, right now we are happy to just add some minor decorations.

A perfect jugend newspaper holder

As the space in the room is quite limited, being it pretty small and narrow, I can't add much furniture in it. But the walls can be decorated. 

It is probably a bit suboptimal, in a toilet from the 60s, to have a jugend decor, but I think the mix and match works quite ok in this context.

The latest addition is then a jugend embroidered newspaper/magazine that matches the toilet rolls holder on the wall and can keep some of the "toilet cultural material" in place. 

It at least got some attention through this blog post! :-)

A turn of the century feeling

 We have ben very inspired when watching the old pictures from the Ingemansson. When looking at the dining room picture, I indulge in staring at the details and trying to understand how did the room look back then.

There are of course missing details, like the chest panel. But I see a drapery where there is the sliding door, there is some textile decoration over the left door and well, there is a nice wall pendulum.

A dinner at the Ingemanssons, 1909

Now, I have been looking for several year to find a wall pendulum that I would like. I think the one in the picture is slightly biger than the one I finally managed to purchase. 

View over the wall pendulum

It is not exactly in the same spot, but at least in the same room, and right now it is surrounded by a jungle of plants, since we want to save them from the kittens, which are still quite wild and interested in destroying my vases/plants!

The pendulum is from 1907

The watch maker was from Nyköping and was called Frans August Nilsson

Sadly, we haven't yet tested it. It would be nice if it would be working :-)

Something else that we bought, that is semi working (and ideally it should be connected with the few ringbells we have in the house) is an housekeeper bell display (in swedish betjäntklocka/pigklocka) which I think gives a very nice touch to the kitchen, the housekeeper's kingdom.

The housekeeper bell display

There, now we are ready for service ;)

It would be wonderful to find out how many bells we had, where was the display originally and so on. But I guess we will be content by having two of the bells still existing and working. Amusingly enough!

Shelves

Sometimes one has just to have patience.
Switching from "Billy" IKEA bookshelves (or similar) to better ones requires a bit of luck, especially when the kids' bedrooms are already crammed with furniture and toys and putting a classical big jugend bookshelf is utopia.

The idea has been then to try to find something that could be hanging on the walls, and as the time was passing I thought we would have ended up asking the carpenter to make one for us or similar.

But one day, in one of my daily checks for jugend items on Tradera (the local Ebay), I did find a very lovely piece that would have fit us very much (and it seems Isabella appreciated that too).

A beautiful flower decorated shelf

The small shelf is decorate with inlays of flowers, possibly Iris, which seems to be the recurrent flower in our home (both as windows, furniture and even flowers in the garden).

We are putting books on it

Details

The corner of Isabella's bedroom with the shelf

Certainly, the shelf beauty is a bit hidden by all the books, but that's just a detail.

Then, of course, also Oscar wanted to have something (well, he didn't really scream out loud on it or nagged about it) and on an auction online I saw a Jugend shelf that didn't get very popular.

I can guess why. When I went and pick it up, it was a massive piece and if the one of Isabella's seemed tinier than my imagination had thought, this one was definitely larger. 

My bad that I never check all the parameters of what I try to buy.

Oscar's shelf

Luckily, despite my clumsyness in not making sure the measurements would fit us, the piece fit the wall where it was supposed to be placed just perfectly fine.

Details

The good thing with the size is also that it can swallow a lot of books and items. 

Maybe I am on my way to get rid of a Billy bookshelf, finally?

Oscar's room with the shelf

Vinyls

Sometimes also Mattias has his moments to fill the house with stuff and this time he decided that he got passionated in old vinyls from the 80s.
He first actually managed to buy a record player (and he didn't matter that I wanted to try to get home the one from Italy).

I don't understand anything of record players, but he was thrilled of the purchase despite the plastic cover being completely cracked.

The record player

After, somewhat creating a space in the living room for it, he managed to get home 500 vinyls (!) as a bargain. It is mostly music he likes (poor me) and I have actually no idea where to put it. I am wondering if the ping pong table should go out for accomodating all of this...

Boxes full with vinyls

Cute ;)