The windows during the restauration

During the restauration/renovation of a window, there is finally the opportunity to look under the layers of paint and that doesn't exclude surprises.

This happens often especially if they haven't been taken care for for a long time, but things that look solid at first glance, but not be real!

Here comes, but a bit scattered, a collection of pictures sent by our carpenter while he was fixing our windows. Some pictures show the "nude" window and its problem, some other shows the reparation made. 

One of the windows, before the first inspection

And after

A close-up

One can guess the damage by looking like this

One of the first "surprises"; but quite to be expected. Some wood that is not really in good state anymore

Not the best state for this piece of wood, probably a "sidostycke", one of the side pieces of the window

Another view of the piece

Not so much left of this "gångjärn"

After removing the "hornjärn", one can see what is left of the wood underneath

This seems mildly better

It doesn't seem like there are many windows that are in good state

Window #5, with "spröjs". Can that piece of wood be saved?

It seems that the combination of modern paint ("plastfärg") and the "hornjärn" has been lethal for most of the windows. 

And more

Another one...

What does this teach us? To not use plastic/water based paint!

They never end

Again

The marks of the "hornjärn"

This window had a couple of nails holding some things together (!!!)

The "hornjärn" on the left is probably the style that is original for our house. But when doing reparation, they often didn't bother to search for the proper pieces and took whatever was available. The one of the left is more modern and probably from the 40s/50s. 

The beauty of finding the original color (sadly a darker red than the one we have picked) under the layers of color. 

Beautiful reparation

Most of the windows required reparations

Seamless work

New "gångjärn" is placed on the new wood

The reparation is minimal and one tries to preserve as much as possible of the original wood

Even some wood that doesn't look healthy is often in better state than it looks

It is important to try to use wood from slow growing trees to guarantee more robustness and quality

After all this work, there is still plenty to do. Mostly painting and putting the putty. 

During winter time

It was really not the best timing to do this work. 

This is how our "TV/piano" room looked during winter. 

The "blinded" tower 

On the outside, it was just the look that was affected. It didn't really look pretty with the wooden planks and plastic where there should be the windows. But I think our carpenter did a nice job with setting up a good layer to avoid the worse. 

It didn't really help during the worse winter days. It was blowing through and the room was icy. The fact that it was also dark didn't really help (I moved my plants out of the room so they could get some minimal sunlight). 

The tower room

Playing the piano, but even watching the TV was definitely not cosy, despite the internal sets of windows (innebågar). Of course, it is not like that with the windows we have always had proper isolation, rather the opposite, but still, this would have worked best during late spring/summer. We have though to be happy we actually got the job started at all :-)

This is how the tower windows looked

 It has been high time for a while to try to take care of some of our original windows and, although the will is on my side to try to fix them, there is simply not the time.

We have therefore assigned the task to a window renovator that would work according to the traditional methods, painting with linseed paint and trying to use robust proper wood, for example, for the necessary reparations.

We decided to start with the external windows of the tower room, realizing long time ago that the original color was a bit darker (red, that is) than the one we have chosen so far, but decided to keep it for the time being.

This is how our windows looked like in November, before we started the process:

The tower, in a picture of the company before they started to dismount them.

It is a lot of windows (and these are just the external ones)

There will be still some work to do on the windows frame but also on the metal sheet in front.

A detail of the window (apart that one can see how the original glass is wavy), the hook. I think it is beautiful.

The work started in November. Maybe not the best when the temperature starts to sink...

To be continued....

Lamps - an old subject

Some typical subject for this blog has been lamps. 

We have though lived in the house for about 12 years and still, there are plenty of lamps to fix. One of the rooms that have deserved a bit of love "lightwise" is the kitchen, as when the sun goes down, it is basically impossible to cook (and still it is, on the southwest side of it) as it is dark, no matter which lights one has turned on.

I have had hard time thinking what kind of lamp would suit in the kitchen. The current kitchen is not what should be the "final" kitchen and the idea I have in mind for that one is closer to a modern interpretation of a turn of the century kitchen (we are talking of the beginning of the 1900-century). 

The kitchen spot that needed a lamp/light

I should have therefore been thinking of some wall lamp in Jugend style, but I never managed to find any that would convince me. Also, we had at the same time to provide some form of lamp in the pentry. 

When we came to view the house when it was on sale, there was a nice globe there. When we moved in in the  house there was just a lightbulb. I was hoping to find something that would fit that without having to make drastic changes, but that was not really possible.

The lightbulb support that was in the pentry

I had a thought in mind on how we should fix both places, but at the end I bought something on some Facebook private advertisement which was at least cheap and retro. It would work great in a beautiful kitchen (or bathroom) from the 40s-50s, in pastel colors, but well, it works for now at least. 

One of the two lamps (looks like Mumin) before being mounted

The one in the pentry became even less optimal. The cable positionin was not allowing the lamp to be mounted where there was the lightbulb and now I have a memory of the fact that the globe vanished before we could move in. I actually wonder if it had been on that wall for a while...

So, be light!

A less perfect implementation of my idea

Fixing "cremekoppar" in a Jugend cabinet

 As usual, lately, time is not enough for documenting everything that is happening in the house, even though the step forwards in our eternal project (fixing up this house) have been also limited. 

It feels as the last four years, time and energy have been even more scarce than before.

Several months back I bid on a fine Jugend cabinet, not too big, to have in the last free corner of the living room, where the piano is. I was more hoping to get a furniture for Mattias' vinyl collection, but I didn't find anything suitable while this cabinet seemed in my head perfect for the spot. 

The cabinet in the corner of the room, behind the couch

It is just today, many months later, that I finally cleaned it up at best as I could (the velvet has stains and dust that I didn't manage to get off). I probably need to give it a hand of "Fulgentin". It took me some time even to just remove the tag from the action house...

A cute detail from the cabinet

Mattias few months ago asked me what we should put in there. To be honest, I had no idea, except some very faint thought of placing a bit more visible some "cremekoppar" (creme cups?) that I had bought possibly few years back and that have been in their beautiful boxes since.

I love porcelain, especially the old Swedish one. I bought once a big set and since then I bought three more (not as big) and indulged in looking at many more on the internet, but restrained myself from buying anything more as space, even in a house like ours, is limited. 

But this. I saw them passing by on an auction and fell in love with the simple and elegant design. I had no idea what a cremekopp was and I still think that the usage of them will be very limited (some form of broth, some chocolate creme or what). They are more cute than useful. 

A good display of my 11 (+1) cups

This specific set should include (I think) about 13 unique cups as each of them has the king emblem on them. His motto and some historical detail about Rörstrande is written on the back of the little plate. 

One of the cremekopp, the "first" one. 

Eventually, today I moved them from their "hiding" place and managed to find a good way to display all of them (minus one, as it is a doublet). 

Useful modernities

 As we have this incredible controversial relationship with the wind, last year I tried to pragmatically buy a "Weather station" that could support, at least mentally, our handling of extreme weather situations.

I will never be tired to repeat that, as every project for us, things take its time and now, one month and one week later, we are finally able to have the "weather station" up and running, to enjoy being obsessed about temperature and m/s when the wind blows.

The main interface of the weather station: you can read indoor and outdoor temperature, how much it has been raining, what time is it, and how strong the wind is. It also predicts the coming weather

It is of course something that does stick out a bit in the structure of the house. But I doubt i would have ever managed to find something "jugend" inspired ;-)

We need to get happy we could sacrifice the "pumps" house, that has an half painted door, odd tiles and well, it is at least placed in the most wind sensitive part of the garden (that is why we have mounted the wind sensor there).

The wind sensor

We also sacrificed the look of the balcony. Well, that balcony has nothing to do with the original balcony, really. Plus, since it has been probably built in some cheap/fast/unorthodox way, it does look like it would need a hand of paint, or two, or some love and care.

Anyway, I must confess that the rain sensor is just horrible... 

Rain sensor on our beautiful balcony

Now, will all of this help us out to defeat the worst storms that will ever attempt to lift pool roofs and slam trees on the ground?

Let's see if this is just a toy or something useful...