A step forward in the poolhouse project

Finally we have some progresses in the poolhouse, for the missing steps that would declare this project concluded.
One of the parts that were partially done regards the metal sheet. Some protection around windows, doors and the terminal part of the downpipes.

The parts for the windows and doors became correct (I am sure plenty of people will stumble in the door stuff), in aluzink, so I will be able to paint them.
While, sadly the parts for the downpipes were wrong. I wanted again to have aluzink and we got them prepainted.

Window #1

Terminal part of the downpipe #1

Door #1

Downpipe #2 

Window #2

Last, door #2

One can be lucky

The retouching of the walls is almost completed. I am a bit dissatisfied that the new color has turned out to be a bit lighter than what there is on the wall and I have still some minor retouching to do.
I hope that lightness will disappear with time, but right now it is not very fancy.
Except for that and for the eternal house cleaning, I always keep the eyes open to try to improve the home feeling with items to complete the furniture.

As we have barely curtains and few carpets, the acoustic can be quite challenging, especially with a horde of small kids around.
I have always thought we should try to focus on buying carpets, but I have never come around to it, fully.
Though, the other day I did see an advertisement on some selling group on Facebook for a big carpet. I am not sure it is fully original or a copy or what, but it was big and beautiful and I thought it would have worked just fine in the dining room.

The carpet, while we are placing it

I think the result looks promising - we can surely adjust the positioning in the room, but size wise it works as a charm.
It feels very strange though to have a carpet there, where we have never had it. The best is that finally all the marks of Oscar's cars been thrown on the floor to play are hidden under it!

Carpet, point of view #1

Carpet, point of view #2

Carpet, point of view #3

Same day, although time was not on our side, trying to do too many things at the same time, as always, I did finally manage to get hands on a table to put the mangle. 

A mangle is something that Italians have no clue what it is. However, it seems a "must" in a Swedish home, especially with a touch of retro. 

I have started to use it, although I am not yet having a full proper technique with it, I am afraid, but I didn't even have space where to have it when I am ironing or folding the laundry. 

The pink painted desk

Not that our laundry room is fancy in any way, but having a good surface for the mangle and for handling laundry was needed, although it is a bit on the way for the drying rope right now.

The laundry room is getting crowded

Our unfancy laundry room

There is plenty to do here and probably I need to adjust these things several times before finding the optimal position. But a good start would be if I manage to sell/give away the wooden panels that were in the kitchen in the 90s. Should I keep one for "memory" of the house at least?

Everyday life

I will never stop repeating that living in our house means having constantly something to do house wise.
Even something so trivial as a "spring cleaning" is a major task that takes the whole year (as we don't have a maid differently from the first owners of the house, plus I am working full time). Sometimes some of the rooms just don't get cleaned properly that year and it is not a big drama.
I have now replanned the activity (of course, I like replanning...) so I am prioritizing the kitchen which I had half done more than a year ago.

The kitchen cabinet from 1906

The other day I was focusing on cleaning the inside of the lower part of the kitchen cabinet from 1906, which is located in what once upon the time was the serving "corridor". 

The cabinet is painted with many layers of white and it is possible to see some other fancier color underneath. The original seems a "forest green", which I wouldn't mind to have in my "new dream kitchen".

One can see the original paint of the kitchen

The lower part of the cabinet is constructed in a very interesting way. There is the list on the wall side and the bottom is constituted by floor planks. 

We finally also got the last isolators to have where we had installed some wall lamps some time ago. We had already placed two on a lamp and now we finally got the second.

Detail of the porcelain isolator and the twigged textile cord

Finally, I have kept going on retouching paint in the different rooms and realized I had to retouch some holes, which will mean additional work. But I guess it is about time as they have been around for few years, as most of our tasks.

There was an alarm sensor there

Some of this retouches can be a bit more complicated, as for example this one as the device was not moved when we painted/put mikrolit on the walls. So there will be more putty layers for smoothening up the paint layers

How it looks now after closing the holes at least

I have also finally sand the work done last summer to patch some digging done by the electrician on the wall for finding the ringbell cables. 

When doing that I noticed that my retouches of paint on the wall didn't really work good. The color seems lighter than what I have which is a new interesting problem to solve.

Creative electrical work and the wall patch that I sanded

Some retouch

At times there are ungrateful tasks that need to be handled also with some bitterness as it is far from optimal from the current perspective and compromises are needed.
 Now, we are also good at procrastinating so it has been for few years that i have had to paint the plastic lids that are put on the wall to hide electrical cables.
Just to make them melt on the wall and not be so obvious.
On top of that, last year, when we were painting the metal sheets on the roof, we had got a leakage in the tower room and the ceiling over the piano had clear stains.
Thing is that I have to have all sort of plastic paint available for doing this as the wall is originally painted with some of that paint and we have recently threw away some big jar since it had got bad. Today I would have not painted the walls with this kind of paint, so it irritates me to have to go and buy small jars of new one.

Starting to paint the lids in the living room

Anyway, I have finally started to work on this task and have completed four rooms of six. In few of them though I need to do more retouches as the wall has holes or got patched and I have to investigate how to fix it properly or at its best.
A small task, but still time taking in its simplicity...

Wonderwoman and the curtains

I did mention the curtains last time, so after this big teaser it is good to show at least some parts of the progresses.
On the sides of the windows (the four from the tower part and the other window) in the living room, there should be curtains in form of a drapery, hold together on the sides.
The textile was chosen and delivered. After a lot of thinking, as it is hard to make jugend style curtains in that area, i think, we picked some William Morris pattern. It is not really jugend, but it is often seen in old environments and it will work fine even if in the future we will have a wallpaper on those walls and not just the red paint.

Curtains, rolled up

Curtains have been sewed up, but as I miss the "inner" curtains and, especially, the rings to hold them up, I haven't put them up as it is probably not going ot be the smoothest operation.

The living room got also some further update when I quit my job at Assa Abloy. One of the girls in my team is an illustrator as thanking for my effort during the year there she made a wonderful drawing of WonderWoman, definitely my favorite character from the DC comics world.

We thought that the portrait would fit close to the board games (as in the playful part of the room, I guess)

WonderWoman portrait

WonderWoman and the board games

Finally, I thought yesterday that we live with the best shop ever closed to us. 

Erikshjälpen. I checked online what they had the other day and I spotted a letter holder in Jugend style. 

I went there and in a leap of an impulsive purchase I brought it home.

Letter holder

   At least some reward as in this period I am "spring cleaning" (in winter time) the kitchen and that's not funny at all...

Ariadne and the raindeers

I have had the goal to be regular in updating the blog, but this autumn I just didn't manage to make that happen despite my attempts to have also a "diary" of what happens regularly in the house.
Anyway, after a quite uneventful autumn, where we have picked up just less than half a ton of apples, there has been Christmas and its histerism for then trying to come back to routines and our intense logistic daily puzzle with a lot of new years propositions, at least for me.

Not much really has happened on the house front except my occasional purchase of things on auctions or Tradera, the seasonal decorations and their removal, more plates, things to repair, etc. the only highlight is that we have big progresses on the curtains for the "red room" (the tv/piano room), but one set of curtains are still missing, rings for them and the curtain rod needs to be shortened. So there is still some to do before the final steps.

Among the items I have managed to get home there are few items that are a bit special.
First, a small figurin, a statue from Gustavsberg, copy of J H von Danecker, with a lovely "Canova" style. The figurin represents Ariadne on a panther.
I think Canova has a clean, incredible sculpturing style and something that resembles that is pure beauty. That that little status has my name on it (being Ariadne the greek original version of Arianna) was a no brainer.

Ariadne on the panther

I often try to look for random jugend on Tradera and sometimes I take the courage to bid on things if I can figure out a place for them.

One of the items I managed to secure is a small arras with nice, vivid colors and a lot of raindeers.

I don't know why I liked it, but I like this kind of items as it makes the house "warmer" and the sound level more acceptable.

The raindeers arras

By chance, both things ended up being closed to each other in a corner that is starting to get a bit of decent shape, but needs still some adjustment. After we have put the glass cupboard there we need to lift the big golden framed painting which seems suffocated there.

This corner of the dining room

September

September has been quite uneventful from an house perspective. After the school start, also all the activities for the whole family starts and the every day puzzle can be already quite exciting without adding major house chores.
So, everything has been quite standing still.
I haven't even managed to pick up properly the apples during this month, so a lot have gone wasted (and it is not like October is looking so much better).

One of the big things that happened during September, have been though the "Kullavägen party" where most of our neighbours reunited themselves at our place, as per tradition (the tradition dictates that every 2 year someone living on the street should host the event).

The party!

The weather was not the best, but we managed to pull this together with the cooperation of few other neighbours. So this was definitely not single handed, although it was handled in our garden.

The weather since then has kept being worse and worse and right now it is almost as winter cold. 

There are still some sunny days, but I am not daring (neither managing time wise) to paint more, while I have been doing some minor gardening.

A beautiful Dahlia just blooming

I managed to put more stones on the slope behind the pool, although there is still more to put and I have to find a way to remove the ground elder from the area.

My experiment both from a agricultural perspective and culinary are always involving Mattias who gets additional tasks.

This year I have decided to experiment with some rowan-berry, which is now in the freezer.

I had an ocean of tomatoes, that never got ripe, which are being used in different ways. 

Yesterday I did 1.5 kg of them as a jam.

We got delicious hazelnuts this year and as always, we can pick up some occasional mushrooms which I can tolerate despite my aversion to them.

The harvest of September - without the apples

Let's see how it will go with the apples this year, but it doesn't look very good right now.