Finishing and restarting

It is summer and, even though we are not travelling this year, it seems that the amount of tasks we are dealing with never decreases.
The days pass by too fast to have reached the feeling of completion when one of the eternal tasks we need to address are actually done, really done.
There are always a lot of leftovers and even if it is summer and we are here, things accumulated from last year are still waiting for us.

The escutcheon is back

With a certain satisfaction I can state that our garage doors are soon completed. We finally managed to put up the last escutcheon, after losing the screws in the grass just outside the garage. A memorable story that one, which should be spared from this site.

Anyway, still some minor steps missing from the door per se', but we are getting closer. 

I am though desperate between the rain and the amount of things just piling up and I don't manage to get really a momentum with things that should have been done few years ago.

Hence, I really pushed myself to go out with the brush and color and start to pain the roof in the poolhouse as we have some decoration ideas that should be implemented as well (luckily, those not by us, since probably they would happne in 30 years).

There, now I have started painting

I never understand why my base color is very thin in pigment although I mix it properly. Maybe for that reason I always end up with three layers of color...

View from the ladder. I have got quite some nice bushes there

 Now, it is "just" to wait to dry. Not a problem. There is plenty more to paint!

One of the two chambers 

Perfectioning the garage doors

The garage doors are one of those things that are never finished and deserve constant adjustments.
I suspect that also the pool house (and some of the windows I have renovated few years ago) will drag in time before we can consider it completed.

One of the things that we could not finish have been putting the key eschultcheon, since the hole was too big for it.

That's how it looked (well, this side still looks like this)

The eschulcheon is finally in place after few years

With some minor trick and carpenting, yesterday at least the front eschultcheon was screwed back in place. I suspect though that this is going to be a bit problematic as it hasn't even been oiled and could absorbed a lot of humidity for the rest of the door.

Next to do, to fix also the one on the inside of the door!

Not a good week

Progresses are currently made by Mattias who is trying to fix a lot of stuff that breaks now or that has been broken forever. 

In all of this, since I am working, I try to come home and hope that the weather is merciful enough for me to pain the pool house or work with the stones behind it.
Of course, I could also paint indoor some parts, but there are also other things I want to do...

We have been having the carpenter showing up, trying to adjust our garage doors, which unfortunately, as they are heavy, have a tendency to tilt slightly.

In a previous attempt, the carpenter had put some washer to tilt back the doors and it did help at the time.

We had asked the blacksmith to fix some metal bars to apply on the back of the doors, to stabilize. The carpenter's hope was that that would also tilt them back, but that of course didn't happen.

The metal bars are mounted on the doors

Mattias managed also to put the handle buckler but we had some issues with the one for the key, as the holes are too big and the buckler wouldn't be attached to anything.

The mismatch with the key buckler

The garage doors. When looking at them one can see the uneven gaps due to the tilting

In an imperceptible manner, I have now geared up a bit towards the pool house painting. The main problem is that when I have the time, the weather is unstable. If I can't paint, it is sunny and shiny.

It is also imperceptible because first I have been oiling everything and now I am putting the first base layer, which though is almost on the transparent look.

This is under the roof. Do you see any form of painting?

Maybe seen from the other direction?

When preparing for the base painting an accident happen. I misplaced a paint jar on the edge of the table, thinking it was longer than it was in reality and the opened jar fell straight upside down.

I used kitchen tool toys for picking up as much paint as I could.

I have almost picked up all the paint here

That was not the only accident of the week. 

I had noticed that one of the downpipes around the veranda was hanging a bit too much, due to the vine that is pulling it out.

Well, the other night it was probably a bit more windy than normal and (together with Isabella's sunflower which had been grown beautifully) the downpipe fell on the ground (and the vine too).

The downpipe is waiting to be put back

With the output, of course, of having an additional task to have to fix.

There is always a lot of meat on the fire

This could actually be the standard title of almost all the posts, as there are always a lot of things ongoing and all of different nature. One has to be simply allover the place.

1) The garage. The garage had an amazing hole in the wall. The theory states that the previous owner had the secret wish to make a door out of a window and started to smash the wall there. Luckily, he didn't succeeded. See this old post.
As we had some good mason around, we took the chance to make them patch, after who knows how many years, that wall.

Patch on the garage wall. Now this looks dried and camouflaged with the rest

As the garage is almost looking decent (except the attic, that is still in need of care), we have started the "decoration" of it with some of the items found during the different cleans up.

Details from some old car are now hanging on the walls

2) One of the two windows in the attic.
Thanks to the mild autumn (I bet that now that I write this, there will be the coldest storm ever appearing tomorrow), I have managed to do some of the painting work that I should have rushed more during the summer.
One of this is related to the metal sheet we mounted back. Mounting back was not exactly as easy as one could think.
The inclination of it has to be accurate so that the water flows out. However, although doing that, the wall around it is not "sealed" around the metal.
This is a problem that we need to address or we will have water issues anyway.

That metal should be hooked in the wall

When there is simply a big glitch between wall and metal

3) The garden.When finding 2 minutes of peace, I try to read some magazine (I have of course an infinite long pile that will never end) and the one that has been on my nighttable for few months is about gardening.
The garden requires a lot of planning. Taking care of. And neither one or the other thing has yet happened really, except some occasional saving from our gardeners, who at least take away the worst weeds.
Anyway. I saw this hanging chair and dreamt that it would be accessible price wise and hence purchasable (?) one day...

The hanging chair

Wouldn't it be nice to have the chair for spending those 2 minutes there reading all those magazines? Yes. Of course. We have the hammock too....I should be happy with that :) But....(There is a follow up to this for the next blog post!)

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

Closing (almost) the doors

After several weeks of work and wasting a lot of time in other things, we finally got the doors back in their place.

The garage with its doors

Things worked almost fine, with a small exception (of course, as always it generates additional extra work). Since the bottom of the doors got cut off because in bad state and for avoiding to touch the ground, the "holder" doesn't reach the hole in the ground anymore, so the doors do not "stay put", so to speak.
I realize this explanation doesn't help much, but the only thing is that I will invoke the power of the blacksmith to come and see if there is anything smart he can do to fix the problem.

That's how they look inside (yes, temporary handle and still unfinished details)

That is not the only thing missing though. Painting of the metal is still prio 1 and, after putting the doors back, there are some minor patches that need to be painted again (the top of the door frame and the door got scratched initially, because the door was too "uptight", where the doors were leaning there are minor marks of the pieces of textile that were just under, ...) .

Still a lot of work to do... 

The main problem is that the season is not very favorable anymore for painting, although I have challenged the weather in many other occasions with discrete results.
Now, let's see how long more I have to deal with these doors until they can be really considered finished. Because, after all. I still miss the right handle to close them...! Blacksmith, where are you?!!?

The garage doors

Repeating that there is always something to fix is going to be boring. But I will like to add to that that every project we start takes forever to be fulfilled and there is always some spin off.
One of this summer projects have been the garage doors renovation.

Our garage, probably built for Nils Lorenz Larsson around 1920, when he got his first car.

First task for this was to be able to OPEN the doors, because more and more soil and dirt have been accumulated in front of them, making the simple act of trying to go inside the building basically mission impossible.

When digging out we found out that under all the layers, there were some stones (ölandstenar) and we have started at least to make them visible a bit, although we have - of course! - not completed the task and we have done an approximate job.

Finding the stones under the grass.

So, the doors have been in a quite dreadful abandoned state. They could barely be opened, closed, locked, anything (?), pieces of wood were flying around when Mattias passed nearby (he has a magic touch), the planks were getting apart, ....

They therefore got to have a beauty treatment at a carpenter.

The doors are at the carpenter. Getting repaired where needed

A bit of the bottom will be filed off since it is in a bad state and so that they don't touch the ground too much. The hinge was having masonite under it and got completely rusty

The planks are also getting glued together

When doing the reparation the carpenter removed two hinges, which had been applied with a thick layer of masonite under. The result was that (since they were on the lower part of the door), they have probably got quite some water and they got completely rusty and couldn't be saved.

The bad state of the hinges

How the rust have been eating them up

That required to open a new task. Go to blacksmith and get new hinges, carriage bolts and screwnuts

That resulted into a new collection of items:

New and old hinges

New and old carriage bolts (photo courtesy of Martin Hansson)

New and old hinges, detail

Getting some anti-rust paint

Getting some anti-rust paint

The carpenter had then to try to remove the previous lock mechanism. That was completely rusty and useless.
For doing that he had to remove the handle, which sadly he cut off in two (he stated it was necessary because they were rusty inside and became a big block)

My decapitated handle

That of course generated yet a new more task (for the blacksmith again). Of course, I can buy a new used one that looks the same. But it won't be the same one that every owner of my house (minus two) have been using years after years!

What was left of the lock mechanism

Also the fact that the lock mechanism has seen better years generated yet a new task, but this time sort of "easy" to handle. Just find a proper new mechanism that would fit somewhat our door.

Where the locks where. Now got filled in with a new lock and new wood.

Once the doors got finally home, the hard work of painting them started. First, after scraping the door from loose paint, base paint and then two layers. Hard work but I am pretty satisfied of the result.

Scraping the doors. Removed almost all the paint with the help of some infrared heat. Most of it was coming off itself though 

It looks as the first layer is brown, then white, and then there are two layers of green. 

Base paint

Base paint

Applying the first layer

Second layer

Second layer

What is left now to do is the door frame. I have started to paint it a bit yesterday (I had already retouched it a bit and paint where needed some base paint) and finally, the new hinges need to be mounted (and with the help of God, for once, there won't be any side issues or extra things to fix) and the doors need to be turned for getting paint on the other side.

First layer of brown for the inner part of the door frame

The door frame. Rotten at the bottom. Some extra care will need to be granted.

Now, let's see when I will get done and the doors will be mounted back...(will they work fine, then? I bet there will be surprises...)