Autumn and news

 Autumn has eventually arrived, a bit later and milder than usual. I do not mind it at all, also because I am late with all the "autumn" tasks related to the garden, especially.

One of the typical autumn tasks is to pick up apples. This year, though, it has been a terrible apple year (luckily in a way, because I do not know how on earth I managed the previous years to pick up all those apples?) and our loot has been a misery. Just 92 kilos. 

Our receipt from Sövde Musteri

I dragged myself out today to cut the peonies, looking at the dahlias that are impatiently waiting to be digged out. It got dark very fast and it even started to rain while I was out, but this time I decided to just finish the task. 

Preparing the garden for the winter

Struggling to get things done, I got contacted by a journalist of Sydsvenskan that wanted to make a reportage about me/us/the house. I could have talked for days about the house, cultural preservation and Åkarp's history and the journalist did manage to get something out of all my blabbing that did make sense and focused on Bellevue (although he could have probably been writing some very boring and long essay summarizing all I tried to say in the few hours he was here).

I was eager to see when the article would be published

In the newspaper

I am very proud of the article but a bit less of one of the pictures, which ended up on the front page of the newspaper! I have a horrible grimace and the picture is there even less clear than on the web, as Chloe is sneaking out from the stairs banister and gives better sense to the composition.

On the front page

Chloe. Still, couldn't they have picked up a better pic of me?

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!

Things happens at times

It feels as we should celebrate since in the last weeks there are some of our projects that have made great step forwards.
First of all, I have finally completed the work on the attic window and I have put it back in its place after almost 2 years.
This is absolutely great as I can feel much more comfortable when it rains/there is wind/anything else. Finally, we have back a window there!

Bellevue got its window back

Of course, meeting relatives to the Pehrsson family boosted the historical investigation part and we have got also additional information. The textile that was weaved by Ellen Pehrsson for the stairs is long 4.4 meters and wide 95 cm.

The textile that was placed along the stairs

Additionally, I have actually carried forward the "torkvinda" (the outdoor dryer) project, by starting to oil it and paint it with the first layer. 

We have "just" to mount it somewhere in the garden and after that I have to give the final paint layers.

Oiled pieces

And this period is always signed with the "gardening" struggle (the garden is awakening and I simply don't manage to follow it up) and an illusion that there would be some spring cleaning. But of course, April means Easter and Isabella's birthday. The weather this year was great and we prepared a little jugend corner for our adult guests.

Coffee in the garden

It is in the walls...

Since the TV-show "Det sitter i väggarna" thought I had done enough research by myself and didn't need their help, I am keep trying to put together the puzzle pieces that are still missing of the quite interesting history of Villa Bellevue.
Finding traces of the owners between 1944 and 1952 has been problematic. This because they had a quite common surname, Pehrsson and the parish books were accessible publicly only up to 1944.
Eventually, I managed to find the woman who, as a girl, lived in our house during that time. Märtha was living in Lund when I contacted her, about 2 years ago. She was 90, so we thought of sending her a letter. After few weeks or months (?), she called us and we organized to meet her.

Märta in front of her house in Kvarnby

Sadly, that meeting has never happened as she is pretty senile and when it was time to pick her up she didn't even remember who we were.
I tried to contact her by calling another time, but she was pretty confused. After that, I decided to let her be.

About a year later, we got contacted by Gerd. She is a relative who, when Märtha got moved to a retirement home, found our letter in her old apartment.
She promised and visit and her, together with Bengt, have brought us some stories, some pictures and a nice good connection.

Nils Pehrsson

Nevertheless, the 1st of November 1944, Nils Pehrsson and family moved into Bellevue.

Move card sent by Nils Pehrson

At the time, he was working as representative (handels resande)for the chocolate factory "Brothers Kanold", but Nils was born of humble origins 1888 and moved a lot, from town to town and changed few jobs as well.

He married Ellen Johansson, who was also born 1888, in 1916. 

Ellen, probably around 1950, in front of the veranda

Towels weaved by Ellen before getting married

Still same woman behind the craft. Ellen Pehrsson

It took a while before they got a child, but eventually Märtha Alexina was born 1927.

As long-waited lonely child, she was very well spoiled and protected by her parents. One of the reasons to move to Åkarp was that Märtha, who was at the time 17, decided to study in Lund as a nurse.

For getting closer to Lund, they moved to Åkarp, so that she could then take the train to go to school. They previously lived in Kvarnby, in a house called Villa Lyckebo,. 

Similarly, they moved to Lund, in a house in Nilstorp, to make it even easier for their daughter. 

But Märtha was forced to abandon the studies since she got tubercolosis by some patience she was curing during her studies. 

She got to be in Hörby, hospitalized, and during the time being, also her parents moved to Hörby.
When she was back on her feet, she started to study social studies instead.

Bellevue. Probably around 1944

Bellevue, front facade

Nils was born in Fränninge. His father, Per Nilsson was an arrendator, married to Matta Bengtsson (Bengtsdotter). They lived in 1891 in Brunslöf 2. Nils' siblings, Ingrid and Anders, were born there 1892 and 1895.

Anders kept the Nilsson surname. He died 1916.

1901 they moved to Vomb, in Bruksgården where Per died. It is then that they moved in Norregård, where Nils is a dräng and Ingrid a piga. Ingrid would never marry and would end up in Lund where she died 1979.

Nils comes back to Norregård 1910 after being in Veberöd a couple of years, for then going back to Veberöd 1912.

Lyckebo (Maryhill) in the background. 

When Nils and Ellen got married, he moved to Limhamn. He was working for Hagerman and Malmgren, who were wholesalers. Nils at that point was a a stock clerk, even working as bookkeeper for this company which later in 1946 would be purchased for entering the ICA domain (at that time EOL).

Hagerman and Malmgren from 1910, predecessor of a modern supermarket

When working for Hagerman and Malmgren, Nils kept his contact with Lorentzon, the farmer he was a worker for in Veberöd. 

In 1919 though, Nils was involved in a small case that ended up at the district court of Torna and Bara. Suspected for perjury, Nils was inflicted of 3 years of punishment work (plus 2).

Basically, Lorentzon together with Julius Andersson did sell 10000 kg of cornflour containing 10% of seashells to Hagerman and Malmgren. 

Later on though, the highest regional court cut out the punishment as Nils was declared not responsible.

Of course, although there was some awareness of this part of the story, details about what had happened to Nils had not been spread to the family whatsoever. Everything points out to the fact that Nils was not involved directly but decided to take the blame for saving his employers. Maybe since he had the connection with Lorentzon he felt somehow responsible? 

We will never know, of course...

Articles about the event

What happened next? Nils moved away from Limhamn towards Malmö 1923, living quite central and starting to work as a business man/trader. It is unclear where directly, but it is obvious that he was quite successfull in the business as when he lived in Åkarp he  was working for a chocolate company located in Göteborg.

Nils business card 

As family Nils and Ellen are described as very neat and a bit strict. Ellen wasn't very happy if someone would be playing around on the piano, for example. 

Ellen and her cousins would spend a lot of time weaving. A part from towels, she had also created a wonderful drapery that hanged over our stairs when the couple was living in Bellevue.

Ellen bringing coffee in

When looking at the pictures of Bellevue from the second half of the 40s and compare with the earlier pictures from the Ingemansson, as well as the later ones from the Edler, it is clear that the house was very well kept still close to its original.

The name of the house probably disappeared when the Edler renovated the facade, although already in this picture it is quite obvious that the color is very white (it should be more light yellow). Of course that is a hard detail to grasp from a black/white picture. The base is clearly very grey though. 

The meridian is shining in front of a facade

Interesting to see how much vegetation was growing on the facade, almost half a window is covered!

On the veranda though one can see the vine half of its size of today, the same plant that Christer Freeberg remembered when he visited us.

When looking at the garden one can see the small gravel walk between the flower beds. It seems that the structure of the garden is closer to the original one, actually. 

Big lime trees existed back then already

Interesting enough the fence that beautifully defined the edge with the road in 1906 is gone and already substituted by a hedge. If it is the same as today or not, I can't judge, but the lime trees, which Inge Edler would cut himself, are still the same.

The hedge

When looking at the facade, I can still see the windows on the very dark and shiny tower. Windows (which we knew already had been kept original until 1958) in white but the door having mullion on the windows. That was a detail I have missed.

The lamp over the door looks quite different than today.

Ellen and Nils just outside the veranda

Nils with their dog outside the veranda

From these pictures we can also see few things that I have especially been curious about. How the balcony looked back then and which door existed on the veranda before Edler modernized it.

For the doors, it looks as a double door which we might have up in the attic - hopefully!

For the balcony, it is clear which was the style of it. Still the front decoration which was hyper visible in the Ingemansson pictures, is a bit blurred here, but possibly, we are getting close to see how it really was.
Over the balcony there are some constructions/poles that are fixated in the walls. We wonder what they were those for?

Sadly there were not much pictures from the Freebergs who bought the house 1952 and nothing about the house from the Larssons, who owned Bellevue 1920 - 1928.

I guess one can hope I will eventually find some traces with the Nilsson (1914 - 1919) or the Berggren (1928 - 1944).

Building new and discover old

In few months we have actually been getting going with few things. Starting up projects is always pretty easy.
One of them was planned for later on in time. But the occasion and opportunity arose as I got in contact with an italian conservator and thought, why not getting also this ongoing (after all, we have nothing else to do...)
The task here is try to recover the old (original, I suppose) wall in the entrance that has been covered now by some structured wallpaper. As it turned out from the traces one can found, the wall has been covered at least since 1958 (wallpaper from the late 50s and the one from the 70s were visible).
First step has been to see how removing the wallpaper would be.
If the painting would be completely destroyed out of that, or if it would be savable.

Removing the first bit of wallpaper

Last piece of that piece of wall

It was easier than one could imagine, though depending on how much glue was applied, some pieces of the colors have been tore away with the wallpaper.
I guess it has been covered since for adding electricity on that wall, they had to destroy the wall and recovering it would have been too much of a work.

How the painted wall looks today

While we dig into old walls in the house, we are "modernizing" the pool area with an extra building.

Especially with the thought in mind that kids would become teenagers and have friends over swimming in the pool, I have realized that having them running over the lawn and entered full of freshly cut grass and dripping water in the house would tickle my patience.

For their survival, we have been then planning to help everyone out by building a toilet + changing room.

But this I have mentioned before...

First layer of bricks

Designing the house has been an interesting process - also because, of course, we are not expert in the field and I was wondering if this would have worked at all.

One of the thought has been to not use leca blocks, but old bricks and get as closed as possible to build in the "old ways".

We almost managed, I guess.

The structure of the house is in place

We recycled the same tiles we have been using for the house roof and, last year, we went and pick up some windows and doors from an historical house that got tore down (Villa Stighill, Baltiska Villan). 

I didn't of course think that I would have to add many items to my already crowded list of "windows renovation tasks".

So, right now the windows are a bit in pause. The frames are though in the house, painted with the base.

One of the windows frame was in poor shape

This gave the chance to Mattias to proof his carpenting skills. One of the windows frame had been eaten in the bottom piece by some worm/insect. He cut it off the piece and put a new one together.

Good precision job!

I was imprecised with the communication with the building company who is performing the job and they mounted the old frames with a modern technique, instead of using wedges in the wall. That is something I still have to fix, because I have now to patch the holes and glue the piece of wood that got broken in the process.

This was not exactly how I thought the frames should be mounted

Lessons learned is to be very precise on how you want to have things done. Hard when you are not aware of how many different ways there are to do things.

The house seems quite "huge", but we were not sure of what proportions to have. Though, I think it turned out pretty good with the roof height.
I was hoping we could have the same gable as the garage one, but this didn't work out as expected either. 

The roof is being mounted

The roof under construction

View from above

The base of the house was possible to add, instead. Maybe a bit too high, especially if one compares with the garage one, but still working pretty good with the proportions of the house.

I would have preferred to be able to think thoroughly around the paint. I knew (know) what I wanted. But it was not possible to get. And we simply messed up the color of both the facade and the base. Not a disaster, as anyway it melts with the house, but still. It was something I wanted to handle differently. (Lessons learned again...)

Now the facade is painted. I would have thought something a little more beige than this

Also the base is painted. That color maybe was better on the facade. We were aiming at something greyer and with more contrast for the base.

From the original plan we have specified few things more and added some on the way. Some possibly can be questioned as they are not much "old house" feeling, but they have elements that we have found in the house, at least.

We have refined the rooms with some extra tiling. Those blue small tiles have fallen from the well. The previous owner had put them there, but it seems they didn't want to stay there at all.
We have saved them and now we thought we could use them in this project.

We refined the floor with some list of the same tiles (in slate, as we have around the pool) and we made a band of the blue tiles

We had found in the house some other tiles. A zodiac mosaic. We never know what were they supposed to be used for, but they must have been planned for some outdoor thought as they have a built in sundial.

Might be not very much jugend or past century style, but maybe it works in a pool house construction!?

The zodiac mosaic

The house with the zodiac mosaic on the pool side

As we are amazing in being unclear, we have spent some time trying to get to the details with some drawings. It is sometimes very hard to define those before hand, as a lot of thoughts come up while a project is ongoing.

One of our drawings

I am sure there are still things that we give for granted and that instead we should have learned to pinpoint as soon as possible.

Another add-on has been to have a sort of inner roof, to cover up the modern wooden supporting beams. The current plan is to paint it, but I guess with the amount of windows and painting that we have to deal with it is not a highly prioritized task.

How the inner roof look. The ventilation hole is visible here

A minor detail is the ventilation hole. We have one for each room. For this purpose I went to Byggfabriken and bought something old style looking.

Another item to paint?

The grid for the ventilation hole

Finally, we need some down pipes and similar. As we have spent some time in the past around this subject, at the time we renovated the roof, we are at least familiar with materials and style.

So, we knew what we wanted style wise and after a quick search, I promoted aluzink as material.

The down pipe is waiting to be mounted

Aluzink should be reasonable to be painted and this will allow down pipes and gutters to have the right colors as the house is having. Let's see how it will look like after they get mounted.