Drying clothes during summer (a tale)

We have an ocean of space outside and I find it ridiculous to dry the laundry in the tumble dry when it is sunny.
Ok, this year we have seen the sun with a binocular, but as a general rule of thumb....
The conclusion after some deep thinking is that we should of course dry outside when the weather allows it.
But I can't surely be satisfied to have in our garden some primitive (or simpler) system.

A nowadays standard dryer

So, last year, I have looked around and decided what I want, because, for how our trees are looking and are located, it would be impossible to put a cord between and let things dry there.
Therefore, I found an old fashion (surprised?) dryer.

An old fashion dryer

But, for some unknown circumstances, nothing happened last year and I started then this year to gather forces to make this happens.
So, I surfed more and more and found that there are some instructions.
Like for example this:
http://www.hemtrevligt.se/husohem/artiklar/fixa/20120628/torkstallning-de-luxe/
I made a shopping list and....
one could think that by now we had already this in place.
But sadly, we still don't have the right wood :)
We did actually by some but it was impregnated and I'd like to avoid to use that for the environment.
So, we are still at square 1 with some minor knowledge about what we need to have in place for making this happen.
To the next chapter...

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!

Hope for a pool area?

The biggest project for this year has been to redo the pool area for a series of reasons.
This we wished to have it done before the bathing season.
Of course, it didn't become like this at all... :-)

The work, which we initiated (well mostly Mattias) by tearing down the infamous cocktail bar, has started officially just 10 days ago.
This consists of the following steps:

1. Remove all the tiles from the pool, fix the layer under them and raise the level of the tiles to the roof height.



The joint between tiles

2. Joint the tiles with some concrete-similar material, to reduce the weed 
3. Build a concrete foundation for a little house, for which we have got some form of authorization to proceed from the municipality authorities (a very formal one wasn't needed, since the building is quite small, but we wanted to be on the safe side with documentation and stuff).
4. Build the walls ourselves, using second hand old tiles and recycling windows and doors from the "Baltiska Villan" which got tore down.
5. Reusing our tiles leftovers for the roof, build a roof.
6. Use the house as changing room combined with a toilet.

Now, we have step 1 and 2, ongoing, with other minor gardening tasks.

Tiles around the pool have been removed 

Work ongoing

After, the east side of the pool has the tiles well placed and a new slope towards the garden, instead of tiles, will have grass (maybe?;D)

 As side activities, we are trying to remove some old firewood from behind the pool. Big pieces of wood has been left lying on the ground. There is a big lime tree and it is no good if the roots are "suffocated" by heavy material.
It turned out that most of it is rotten or full of insects, so it will be thrown, but still, we need to clean up the jungle behind there.
We thought of moving the firewood behind our garage, so a proper stapling of the existing stuff had been started.

Firewood in abudance

Behind the garage it now looks better. Still a lot of work to remove weeds despite last year attempt.

Sliding doors accessory

I am silent here, but it doesn't mean we are sitting on a couch watching a movie, or sitting outside enjoying the birds chirping... I doubt with my ambition I will ever sit down.

Said that, one thing that have disturbed me immensely has been one of the sliding doors. 

We have two pairs, being the two entrances to the "red room", the room where the piano and the Tv are located.

One of them had a nice, steady construction, painted white, so that the doors, when closing, hit that and stay "put".

The other one had a micro piece of wood, that after a while just gave up, fell off and the doors started to float from a side to another when moving.

So, we scraped off what was under the white paint and remove the piece of metal placed there (this we did it actually for another occasion (http://villabellevue1910.blogspot.se/2016/11/sliding-doors.html). I eventually went with it to my favourite blacksmith and with puppy eyes begged him to fix another one.

At the forge...(picture courtesy of Martin Hansson)

The good thing is that he was actually impressed by the piece of metal I had brought with me, and happily recreated another one.
When I went there, I actually brought him a bunch of... crap to fix. So, he managed also to fix some bookshelves holder for a jugend bookshelf we have.

Hand made bookshelf holder

I went though a couple of times back and forth with the "door stop" because the screws that I bought at Byggfabriken didn't tight the metal to the door frame and the first fix was done on the wrong side...

Adjusted so that the screws would tight it

Eventually, we got it properly done, so finally, both sliding doors can be closed properly.

Detail of the door frame

There, where the door stop is!

The Larsson family

Digging into all the families that have lived in Bellevue is interesting and rewarding, although, one finds a quite huge amount of details and just want to keep digging down.

Today, I met one of the descendants of Lars Larsson, who with his family lived here 1919 - 1928.
Or better, he owned the house during that time frame but lived quite shortily here.
Lars, who was a farmer rooted in Esarp, bought Bellevue 1919. They lived here until 1920, for the moving to Oscarshem in Lund.

Oscarshem, in Lund

They never came back to steadily live in Bellevue. They rented the house to different families and moved back to Esarp.
1928 they went bankrupt (or something similar) and sold both Oscarshem and Bellevue.

The house in Esarp

Lars had three sons born around the turn of the century 1900.
Nils Lorenz, Lars Erik and Knut Oskar.

The Larsson family (we presume)

 Nils, who was 20 when he moved in Bellevue, was studying at Hvilan as a farmer. He got his first car then, possibly one of the few cars in the whole of Åkarp, and that makes me believe that the garage belonging to Bellevue, was built around that time frame.

View from Hvilan around 1927. Bellevue's roof is visible behind Villa Åsa

I have discussed details about this family with different people who are grandchildren to one of the three brothers, so I have managed to collect different details.

Two brothers and the mother?

I will make it short today, for the focusing on the three brothers' families.

Lars started his career as an åbo (someone living and working the land of someone else, if I have understood right) for them becoming a proper farmer, with his own piece of land. It seems things were going fine, owning a manor in Esarp, for then buying both Bellevue and Oscarshem.
He was interested in hunting passion that he shared with one of the three sons.

Lars Larsson successfully hunting

What happened when he went bankrupt and why is still unclear.

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

Adieu "cocktail bar"

When we went to the house show we did wonder what was that strange thing that was on the side of the pool. Surely, from the pictures from the real estate agent it looked fancier. There were bar chairs around it.

Interesting construction was the "cocktail bar"

We looked at each other perplexed when we understood it was an half-finished "cocktail bar", in reality just a U-shaped wall with larger form of tiles on top.

A last goodbye to the construction

After putting the roof over the pool, we have realized that the tiles are too low and on top of that, we really are tired to clean up weeds growing between them.
Behind the bar wall, it started to grow like a jungle...

View from inside

Details over the beauty

So, we would like to redo the area and instead of having the bar, something that would be more usable for us (afterall, we basically don't drink!). A changing room, a small toilet, an outdoor shower. Now, we are still working in finding some building company to work on it, but in the meanwhile, Mattias has taken the occasion to demolish the cocktail bar. For his own pleasure.

Mattias at work

Heavy work, but satisfactory, it seems. Hopefully we will manage to do something nice(r) out of it.

To demolish is hard work