Everyday life

I will never stop repeating that living in our house means having constantly something to do house wise.
Even something so trivial as a "spring cleaning" is a major task that takes the whole year (as we don't have a maid differently from the first owners of the house, plus I am working full time). Sometimes some of the rooms just don't get cleaned properly that year and it is not a big drama.
I have now replanned the activity (of course, I like replanning...) so I am prioritizing the kitchen which I had half done more than a year ago.

The kitchen cabinet from 1906

The other day I was focusing on cleaning the inside of the lower part of the kitchen cabinet from 1906, which is located in what once upon the time was the serving "corridor". 

The cabinet is painted with many layers of white and it is possible to see some other fancier color underneath. The original seems a "forest green", which I wouldn't mind to have in my "new dream kitchen".

One can see the original paint of the kitchen

The lower part of the cabinet is constructed in a very interesting way. There is the list on the wall side and the bottom is constituted by floor planks. 

We finally also got the last isolators to have where we had installed some wall lamps some time ago. We had already placed two on a lamp and now we finally got the second.

Detail of the porcelain isolator and the twigged textile cord

Finally, I have kept going on retouching paint in the different rooms and realized I had to retouch some holes, which will mean additional work. But I guess it is about time as they have been around for few years, as most of our tasks.

There was an alarm sensor there

Some of this retouches can be a bit more complicated, as for example this one as the device was not moved when we painted/put mikrolit on the walls. So there will be more putty layers for smoothening up the paint layers

How it looks now after closing the holes at least

I have also finally sand the work done last summer to patch some digging done by the electrician on the wall for finding the ringbell cables. 

When doing that I noticed that my retouches of paint on the wall didn't really work good. The color seems lighter than what I have which is a new interesting problem to solve.

Creative electrical work and the wall patch that I sanded

We stand here with the poolhouse

Progresses do happen slowly, sadly, but there are.
Thing is that although there is vacation there is also a garden to attend, food to prepare, kids to raise, laundry to make, and all the other projects that take bits and pieces of time and sometimes the energy is not there for the sprint that would be necessary to make a difference in this project.
But some things did happen...
1) We got electricity!

One of the switches 

But we miss the outdoor lamp...
2) We got the most of the metal sheet work up and running (and painted).

Freshly mounted gutter and downpipe

However we miss the window and door ironwork as well as the flinger...

3) We got the composting toilet mounted, with the pipe through the roof

The composting toilet is "ready" to be used

but as we don't have doors and windows we can't plug it in as the rain would create problems with the electricity

4) It can be used...

It's "ready" :P

but it lacks doors, windows and a lot of painting on top of all the rest and that is taking its time.

The shelves are waited to be mounted and we need to find also some other small accessory. 

ETA 2030? :)

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"

When a cord matters

In our home lamps and candles are very important. The house is big, with big areas and when the winter darkness reigns, having small sources of light make the environment warmer and cozier, of course.

I believed that I did put up this lamp already on the blog, but obviously that happened just in reality.
This summer I put down the lamp, bought at Erikshjälpen, hoping that it is at least resembly in the stile some jugend window lamp, because when we bought it it was connected with a dreadful white plastic cord.
We also managed to misunderstand each other, so it got cut pretty short and it hanged horribly on the window.

The lamp is shining at the window

I went and bought a more "old fashioned" looking electrical cord at Byggfabriken and finally, after several months and a bit of reminders and nagging, it was fixed by the local electrician (Mattias) and it got back to its place.

A close up

When doing this the base for the lamp of course broke. So, we have still some minor tasks left for completing this operation: fix an old fashioned plug and get a new socket for the lightbulb.

I accept bets on when this will be handled :)

Doorbell

It is interesting that we have been living now in this house for five years and still, we don't have a doorbell working.
We have had some "modern" things on the gate and at the secondary entrance (via the kitchen), which worked so so, until one of them gave up fully.
There are traces of a traditional doorbell at the kitchen door, so that is something that will need furthermore investigation.
Now, when we moved (and even during the showing of the house) no working doorbell has ever been seen at the main door.

The doorbell leftovers on the main door

The previous owner left what he might have bought for fixing the problem for some possible buyer (with a better eye than us?), but apart that I can't find the button anymore, it looks a bit plain and boring.

Must have been something similar to this, that we have in pieces somewhere in the basement. Doorbell from Byggfabriken

Inspired by Villa Florens in Malmö, I went and search for some second hand doorbell, with the difficulty that the space on our door frame is very tiny, and hence, limiting the research basically to nothing.

A wonderful example of a jugend doorbell. So beautiful but also huge. From Bukowskis Market

I ended up buying a product from the german Ebay that looks pretty ok and fits the measurement, but it is newly produced (so there are chance it is going to work without too much fuzz, maybe?) and maybe doesn't seem hyper genuine, but whatever.
I can't break my head on everything right?
I have now to "just" try it out and see if the whole ringing thingy is working still....(probably not?)

Longing to test it...! 

Playing in the dark...

Has't been very funny.
Not that the lights really help very much when it is pitch black, but one has, with some fantasy, the possibility to guess what there is on the piano score.

The wall sconces are shining in the tower room 

As always, what we try to do should have some form of old style. Of course, I'd prefer to go around just with candles and kerosene lamps, but I would really need a maid then...(which I'd need anyway).

Anyway, electricity did come to Åkarp 1912, so we can assume at least a century of lamps being used.

In the specific, I have managed to find on the online flea markets two wall sconces old style. I don't know how old, but they looked nice enough (sometimes, it is just too time taking to find the right item and one has to get happy with a good mixture that compromises aesthetic, price and style.

One of wall sconce

The big effort we made was in finding relatively good looking lightbulbs, cord and switch. 

The bulb was not straightforward. But we decided to go for a LED lightbulb (dimmable!) with an old-ish look.

The switch

Cord and switch was bought at Byggfabriken. A nice bakelite switch with a black textile cable, which I chose to be in black. I thought it'd work beautifully with the colors of the room and especially, with the grand piano.
One should mention though that I managed to have to return twice to the shop (which is one of my favorite, of course!) since I had bought the set only for a sconce and not two!!
What a pity! I had to go back and fix the problem!

The place for a lamp

By chance, we did buy two similar lamps, probably old kerosene electrified lamps. One of them we have put up some time ago (see this post).
Today, it was the turn of the other one.

Lamp has been put up over the alcove with Richard Björklund's painting

 It took just two years after the other one...

Original lamp on the left side, picture from 1909-1910. In the picture there must be Anna Ingemansson's father

Winter improvements

During the autumn, we have spent some sleepless nights during some storm. The kids have woken up mainly because the doors have been lightly slamming due to the wind.
Additionally, through some side garret there has been, especially in Oscar's room, quite some draft.
After trying to understand how all of this work, I have improved (or tried to) the situation by isolating the doors (only Oscar's right now). The one to the garret and his main door. Both doors are not closing anymore perfectly, especially the main door, which has a big glitch on top since the door is hangingly poorly on the hinges.

Fixing the flax cord on the door

There are many ways to do this. I chose to buy some flax cord and apply it with a staple gun to the door. 

Now, we have to see if this has really improved the situation or not. 

Another little project that finally happened has been to be able to hang a Christmas star over the entrance window. We have had the idea few years back, but never implemented because we would have had to see an electrical cord around the ceiling. Though, I have realized with time that back in the days, that was the way you had things, so I decided it was ok to see it. 

Our electrician though didn't find the job as easy as he thought. Our electrical system is patched and where he thought he could find the right cables, he became disappointed. 

He then noticed a patch in the wall, where maybe there could have been an electrical box. And I took out some pictures from the previous owner.

Pictures from 2005. On the left wall, where we want to put the Christmas star, There is a whole line patched (which now is under the wallpaper). 

Looking at the picture helped, he could figure out that everything patched in that picture were hidden electrical cables which then end up in the toilet countertop. 

Breaking the patch in the wall to see where the cables were going

That resulted in a simplified work. The cables were already there so it was just a socket that needed to be mounted again.
I have now got though thousands of questions about those cords.
If the toilet has been built 1958 (which is what we have understood when meeting the Edlers), the countertop must be from the same period (but this is just a guess?). So the cords must be older than that, especially because somebody has been breaking the fresco for putting them! Didn't anyone of the previous owner see the fresco and decided to preserve it or restore it?
Though, I get confused by the fact that according to the electrician those cords were from the 70s.
But I guess all of this is not very important, I am probably just very nerdy... :-)

The star is up

Anyway, the star is finally up. Now, when the Christmas period will be over there is the need to put another lamp. So more work to do :-)