Too many trees

One of the biggest issues we have is the garden maintenance. For how lovely it is, already when we moved in, there were billions of plants and trees scattered everywhere needing our attention.
During the past four years we have tried to take care of sum at least, and I think slowly one can see an improvement. Considering, still, that this is absolutely not the appearance we would like to have our garden, since going back to some more of "turn of the century" garden is our objective (for when we will finally retired, I guess).

This year I decided to put some effort in cutting down trees. Few of them (about 5) with the aim of having just a little stub leftover. For about 5-6 more, it was mostly about cutting them in height.
Now, if the first operation turned out quite ok, the second at the moment is possibly aesthetically speaking, awful.

I am THE lumberjack

As most of our beloved house projects, we had a good start. Everything was done in two days. Then, some adjustments to the logs took few days more. Then all the leftovers where put on the trailer for few weeks (!?!) until our neighbor, that wanted to borrow it, was kind enough to empty it (chances are that everything could still be there...).

Finally. The trunks need to be chomped in smaller pieces, that we will have somewhere (define somewhere) to dry (for few decades, I guess...) for then becoming firewood.

Post production, or better, cutting down trees.

Two months have passed and noone has come and fix it yet!!! How is it possible :)

At the same time, while the logs are beautifully resting for better days, we have hired an arborist to cut down one of the highest trees which sadly was not in a good state.
Let's say that the green areas are getting tidier ;)

That's the tree that won't be there anymore

Up on the top!

The tree was not very stable, so I guess one need even more to be careful here

The end result!

Shelves and hangers

Well, we have done few things in the spring and in the summer, but they are almost all half completed.
Among few projects, although very tiny, that finally saw completion we have two items: a coath-hanger and a shelf for the kitchen.

In our kitchen entrance, which is the entrance we use the most, we have had an hanger some time ago. Sadly, it fell miserably since it was not mounted properly on the wall and it was too heavy. The place is quite narrow, so fitting things is a bit hard, but we thought then to use the wall over the stairs to the basement which seems more sturdy than the first one.

The coat-hanger

With some luck, since the space is quite limited, I managed to buy something from the 40s that we thought it could be practical in that tiny area.

It is just on the stairs to the basement

While cleaning the attic (operation that has not yet been completed), we found an old plate rack. I wonder where does it come from.

The plate rack 

Anyway, it looked beautiful and after some adjustment, we manage to put it up for holding a dynamic collection of recipes books.

A nice detail

Bellevue

For quite some time, if one wanted to address a letter or a postcard to somebody living in our house, they would have written "Name Surname, Bellevue, Åkarp".
Back then the houses were identified with a name, not with the street and a number.

I don't know why, but Axel Ingemansson baptised his house to Bellevue (french for beautiful view), maybe because it is a bit higher up than the rest of Åkarp and one could enjoy a nice view?

1909. Bellevue

Said this, for several decades the house name had been on the front facade, also the side facade had the name on it, but that was not from the start, from 1906. It came later, possibly around 1915.

Work is ongoing. The line has been filled in and now it is being putty

Having the house name on the facade has been one of my obsessions from almost the very beginning (I don't know why). And after got the opportunity to check the pictures from the first years of the house, we got the right font and we started the process for it.

The weather gods had been merciful to us, for once, during the work

Bellevue is now written back on the facade. Sadly, it was not an immediate thing to do (apart that we had a very talented painter who managed to get out from a picture the text and the proportions) because, possibly during the 60s, the upper windows got a decorative line in the plaster and that had to gone off again. The "filling up the line over the windows" operation turned out to be more painful than expected.

Work in progress. Picture of Maria Attström

What wonderful details!

 On top of that the scaffold had been mounted in a very peculiar way, so that Maria, our painter, could not reach the right top most corner. I improvised myself her pupil and I have probably messed up forever her work...

Putty on the plaster. The first painting attempt without it turned out to make the line too visible

It is freshly painted. Mmm. I am not very convinced of the result.

 Nevertheless, the result is amazing. The facade has gained so much with such a relatively small detail. I love to stare at it against the nice sky we can enjoy these days.

We just need to remove the scaffold

2016, Bellevue.

Bellevue, spring 2016. 

It's "home"

Although, its home has been in Italy until two days ago, I am finally reunited with my (baby grand)piano after 14 years.
I can't describe how it feels - not that when I was studying/playing I would have thought it would have felt like this and not that I have ever played that incredibly well either.
But every day, for many years, I was glued to the chair (not very willingly) and now I wished I would have not stopped. Because now I can't play not even the pieces that I could consider "easier" to digest.

Its new home is in the tower room

The transportation was another piece of history. From a wrong "order" (in English one says baby grand piano and not generic piano specifying the length of the tail), to pure rain when the piano went out of the house.
Of course, it arrived the only day I was away (quite far off) for the whole time.

Essie Freeberg, with her grandmother and the pianist Jack Bagner

I wonder how many of the previous owners had put the piano there. We know that a grand piano was there during the 52-58 period (when the house was owned by Kathleen Cook Freeberg).

It survived transportation quite ok. Just some bumps on a side that hopefully will be fixed without too much problems.

Now, I just need a rehabilitation course...

The crown

Finally the chimney got back its crown!

Villa Bellevue, 1909. The chimney on the front has some sort of crown

We have been looking at old postcards and pictures of the house and we saw that there was something on top of the most southern chimney. Exactly when it disappeared from the house, we don't know yet.

April 2015. This is our chimeny looked like just few minutes before the crown got back.

We then consultated Klingströms Plåt who showed up a template before acting upon it. 

You can read about it here.

Then, the day arrived and we got the piece home.

The chimney crown, side view. It looks a little bit shorter (especially the top part) than what we can see from the picture. 

"Inner view" of the crown. 

 After about one hour of work, the chimney got its crown back in place.

Villa Bellevue with a little crown over the chimney

 

It almost looks like an hat :)

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