Juggling with many balls at the same time

This is how I currently feel. There are - as the Swedes would say - too many balls in the air (Italians would never dream of saying something like this).

These are some of the ongoing projects right now...

• Balcony door renovation. The door needs to be painted on the outside from green to red. So far, I have fixed (or tried to) a nasty rotten part in the most left corner of the lowest glass. The white side has been painted. Now, I am working on removing some horrible glueish synthetic putty from two glasses.

The balcony door 

Get off!!

• Pool roof. We have finally the pool roof in place. Pity though the jetstream pump still needs to be fixed and all the tiles around the pool need to be cut and put back in place.

Work in progress on the mounting

• Curtains in the veranda. Since every spring the veranda becomes a sauna and if we sit in the dining room, the person facing the veranda needs sunglasses to survive, we decided to finally put up some curtains. First we had to think of how to put them up. We made a blacksmith produce some hooks, then we got the design of the curtains in place (sort of, we had another design presented but we then decided to the current one). Few things still ongoing, one curtain to be adjusted, one wooden stick to put in the bottom of the curtain got lost, the rods need to be painted white (I wonder how to do it), hooks need to be adjusted and screws to be changed.

The first curtain up

•  The chimney crown. That has been made. It has just to be delivered and mounted. Doesn't it look cool?

The chimney crown

• And more... :-)

An empty wall

What do you do when you have a lot of books (in Italy) and you notice that your floor and walls are not straightish and the wooden lists are so big that no IKEA furniture will be in place properly ever?

You take a big wall and decide that it will all become a bookshelf, handcrafted, in massive wood, personalized for the room and the house.

The wall in our studio

The idea is that our studio will host not only our desks, but also a small "library" with armchair (the Jetsons) where one can (we will when we are 70) rest and read a book.

So, this is how this project started. The bookshelf is now under production, after few years in finding the right carpenter (Lodrätt) and define all the details.

Inspiration: an handmade library painted with linseed oil paint. 

What we are after is a bookshelf where there are open shelves and some doors so that some stuff can be hidden there. 

Our bookshelf will not look exactly like this. There won't be the "wings" on the sides and it will not go up to the roof. It will follow the lines of the wooden lists from the windows frame and the lines of the floor wooden list. We will have also small decorations taken from the stairhouse wooden panel to keep the jugend style.

The jugend decoration from our staircase. Picture, Gunilla Carsten

Color test. Natural, Ottosson Linseed Oil Paint White cream, Ottosson Linseed Oil Paint Titanvit, Osmo Dekorvax Snow, Picture, Gunilla Carsten 

As color we decided to use linseed oil paint (from Ottosson) because we like better the white nuance, and of course, we like linseed oil paint.

Then, we got a lot of help (we would have been lost otherwise!) from our carpenter, to choose the right accessories that are needed in this kind of furniture.

The hinge, from Kleelux (German website)

Eschutcheon (Nyckelskylt) in Jugend style, from a German website

The slide, from Specialbeslag

The lock mechanism. From a German website

The key. From a German website

 All these details are going to be in brass.
Now, those are chosen, the wood has arrived, the color is decided. We just have to await the final result :-)

Massive wood for our bookshelf

A chimney head (?)

I don't really know if this is the right translation for the word "skorstenshuvud" or "skorstenskrona" but that is what we had when the house was built.
And since this is becoming a "let's move into 1906" project (yes, I definitely have openings for a maid) we are of course trying our best to reproduce that detail.

The chimneys as they looked 1909

Already when we did the roof renovation, we were aiming at getting back that piece of metal sheet. Luckily, we didn't do it at the time and that was a wise choice. From other pictures it looked like there was one piece on each chimney, but we got this picture later on and it turned out clear that that was not the case at all. 

Anyway... we finally got an hang of some proper tinssmith and we discussed design and function. 

Hence, few months ago we got a template for giving us an idea.

Out template, a section of how the "chimney head" should look like

Now, after the ok. We are just waiting that we will get the real thing....

View of the template from under (in theory at least)

We do take it easy...

We definitely do. It takes forever sometimes to do some small improvements in our home. But then, all of a sudden, few things happen.
Today was one of those days where there was a good flow.

The biggest action was to buy a desk for Isabella. Not that she is planning to study there right away (and, based on my experience, I guess it will take more than few years before she will do her homeworks up in her room), but considering that we had a quite unsuiting IKEA bookshelf (an old Expedit with 25 compartment) and she showed some interest in the matter, I decided to prioritize the search and I was lucky enough to find a very good bargain for a desk from 1936, with a nice patina.

The desk. Work is still ongoing

We also took the time to finally put up few things (yes, I do realize my photography skills are beyond redemption. Now that I load the pictures here I think I should take better ones...).

Oscar's name on the door (we got them 24 months ago)

Isabella's name has been there for a while. 

Oscar's birth wrath has been finally put up inside. Maybe not the perfect thing to put on a door, but it was such a pity to just put it away

Some Elsa Beskow's reproductions that comes with Mattias. They are now in Oscar's room.

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 :-)

Last half a year

I have to remind myself to not wait for eternity before making a blog post about the small things we are doing around the house. Finding the pictures or a sense in the pictures that can be found become quite an activity.

During the past half a year, there hasn't been any major makeover, purchase or discovery however, we haven't been inactive and we have accomplished many small and medium tasks, or at least some have been started.

Spring and summer (and part of the autumn) are the months where I get some itchy sensation and, a part from wanting to clean everything possible, having major plans that will never take place, I try to spend as much time as possible outside, sorting out the mess that is our garden.

This outdoor season was spent pruning some apple trees (next year I will not touch them and if I do it will be in the summer!) and cleaning out the compost area which was a scary operation. At a certain point we found some plastic sacks and we were afraid what the content of such would be (luckily it was just soil... but why!??!?!).
One of the things I manage to dig out from the nassle jungle was the old original gate which unfortunately, by being abandoned there, will be probably be used just as "inspiration". Most of it is rotten.

Original wooden gate from 1906

After cleaning out the area from the worse (still incomplete task), I did cut the hedge and some of the beech hedge had become quite some tree and required my intervention with the chainsaw.

The chainsaw solves most of the issues in a overgrown garden

Probably too late, we have started also our major tasks. Mattias should paint/fix/repair the metal sheet while I try to take care of the windows.
For the metal sheet, we got a very good contact and after a very informative meeting, Mattias got all the equipment he needed and he started the operation. I think this will last at least other 30-40 years considering the speed ;-)
Jokes apart, it is never easy to start something completely new and the first time one puts the hands in something like this, everything is very slow and one is wondering if he is doing right or what.
Anyway, at least during the spring, this should go a bit smoother.

Removing the first rusty layer with a rotative metal brush applied to the drill machine

Our metal sheet on the cornice looks awful. Most likely many tinsmith would try to make us change that, but the expert we got was not that dramatically impressed and told us it is fixable.

Brush a little

Cut a little

Apply a special tape that will "melt in" with the metal

Now the metal sheet is patched and one can paint over it. We bought Isotrol, although we first wanted to use järnmönja 

We decided to go for Isotrol for the infinite amount of recommendations we have heard, although possibly it is not exactly the correct thing to do, since this is not the traditional way to fix a metal sheet. But fixing the metal is not exactly so easy anyway... I think a practical "shortcut" which is though still compatible with a proper way of handling the metal sheet is absolutely ok to embrace.

We have even used it for trying to save our railing (which hopefully will receive more attention next year).

Saving the railing 

I took care of our windows, once again. Pity I started too late with the operation, so, although we are completely off season, I am still working on windows (!!!). Luckily, this has been a mild(er) autumn.

I had very big plans when I started. I haven't yet finished.... These two windows are in not very good state.

The putting has fallen off from most of the sections and the bottom part is rotten. 

We have renovated the door with the droppnäsa a couple of years ago, I was hoping I had just to paint it red...instead also the door had surprises

This has been a lot of scraping, and I haven't finished yet!!!

The window frame of this window was rotten in the corner, the bottom part of the window too. Luckily the rest was ok, but I managed to crack two glass in the window when scraping it.

When scraping this door frame, I could study all the layers of color. Some green, a couple of white and the red, the original beautiful red color.

Auch, this corner of the door is rotten too! 

Nice patching of our window frame

Still, work in progress with the windows....

Something is finally happening

It seems like we have been under the hood for a while, and partially it has been like this in the past half a year.
We have had many guests, we have travelled and we haven't done anything major with our house, although, we are always busy with small and medium activities and plans.
 One of such activities has been to enhance our pool with a roof. This should bring us few advantages:

• Keep the pool warmer (and in Sweden this can be an issue, especially when the breeze over the warmed water is ice cold)
• Keep it cleaner (and yes, our pool is smartly placed under a big tree. You can easily figure out how much chemicals we use and how much time is spent in mechanical removing crap)
• Keep it safer (although we have two kids who have learnt their way around the pool, you never know...)
• Keep it protected under winter (and avoid to use an enormous balloon that needs to be blown up with a very noisy machinery and that has tons of holes everywhere)

The thing is that although the purchased went relatively well, we thought it would have been feasible for us to mount it. Yes, in our perfect days made by 80 hours where the kids are not arguing/can eat by themselves/change their own diapers).

First. It arrived in a very handy format. And this happened in May.

A small truck blocked our street for some time. Our neighbour were thrilled by this.

It was very practical to get that big package out of the truck. 

Luckily, we made use of some of our guests to help us out, otherwise we would be still there. 

Finally, starting to unpack some small parts.

The different components of the pool roof came together with a tiny book: the mounting instructions. Tiny is of course a sarcastic comment. The book is almost as big as the Lord of the Ring and complex as a book about astrophysics. 

Result, after buying additional equipment that should help to "prepare" the pool area and the first items to be mounte and after spending ocean of time, removing weeds from the tiles (which anyway needed to be done, though) all the components have been lying distributed on our garden, waiting for a miracle to occur.

Or in reality, waiting for the only person we know that could help us out to be available.

Finally, our miracle - after promising he would find some time in August - appeared few weeks ago. 

And I then came to the conclusion that we really need to make sure we know what we are buying and how to mount it, because no way in the planet we would have ever fixed this by ourselves.

We do even have to build a small underground wall on which to secure the whole construction!!!!

The work has now finally started:

The first wall preparation

Overview

Let's see how much time this is going to take...:)