Gardening literature

Yesterday, I forgot to add to the collection a very much desired Christmas present. A couple of books which I have been asking Mattias as present since we went and visit Sofiero a couple of years ago.

The books are written by Princess Margareth of Connaught, known in Sweden as Margareta. She became interested in gardening once she got Sofiero as wedding present together with her husband, Gustav VI Adolf.

The two books. "Our garden in Sofiero"(Vår Trädgård på Sofiero) and "From the flower garden" (Från Blomsterträdgården)

Of course, these books are for future purposes, since our garden style should resemble the one of Sofiero, just in a smaller scale. I'd like to use it as inspiration when we will possibly sort out the jungle mess that our garden is today.

A page of From the flower garden

A picture describing the structure of part of Sofiero garden

Literature & Collections

Lately, I have spent a lot of time with yet another task. After I went to Hasselagård and wrote that post about it, I have found extremely interesting to look more closely at the history behind the different villas in Åkarp.
So far, the results have been very exciting. Not that I have found something that is revolutionary, but it seems a lot of "important" (from a small Swedish town perspective) people have been living here and that this has always been a quite dynamic small town, despite the fact that today there is very little that could make life interesting.

In order to fulfill my research I have collected few books more, to the ones that I have had purchased.
"Åkarp genom seklerna" (Åkarp through the centuries) was actually a 2012 Christmas gift from Mattias. It is a small book that summarizes the most important facts from even ancient history to more modern times, but it is very incomplete.
"Burlöv Kommun Historia Del I och II" (The history of Burlöv's Municipality part I and II) is currently borrowed but I am planning to get it into the collection as soon as it appears around the market with a good price. It is a very comprehensive book with a rich chapter about Åkarp and its farms. There is also a small chapter about the "merchants" in town.
"Kring Lund C" (About Lund Central Station) focuses on Lund Central Station history and the railway. For this reason, Åkarp is mentioned in some parts of the book and that underlines the importance of the railway for Åkarp's development.
"Hvilan Historia om en skola" (Hvilan, history of a school) narrates the development of Hvilan, which is an important folkhögskolan (a sort of higher education school), the oldest one in Sweden if I have understood right, located in Åkarp. Due to this reason, Åkarp's history is definitely interwined with the one of the school

Literature

On top of this, I have finally put the hands of the so called Åkarps samling (The Åkarp Collection), a collection of about 100 Åkarp postcards that I have been looking carefully at for a couple of years. First and mostly, I have been interested in those postcards were Villa Bellevue was visible.
At this point in time, I have realized that except for some postcards depicting just the pond and some swan, all the ones with the houses were relevant for my curiosity.

The Åkarp collection

Now, I would just need some extra hours every day for being able to dig into everything...

Some more Jugend touch

Our house is surely lacking the "cosy factor", considering that we have barely spent any effort in decorating. In fact, the paintings and frames that are lying around waiting to be hang are countless. Every now and then, though, we manage to get some items that hopefully in the future will contribute to give a nice atmosphere (maybe like another Åkarp citizen with passion for jugend).

A pen set, coming from Mattias' family

A Liberty parfume bottle

A table brush set

Some weights. The 5 kg one is used to hold the child gate opened for the cats

The Freebergs

Just before our summer holidays in July, we had the visit that I had been looking forward to for at least half a year.
During my research, I had found that our house had been owned by Kathleen Cook-Marslen Frieberg. I had talked about her (with a mispelled surname) in this old post.
On top of that, I had managed to find that she had two children, Essie, who I have already mentioned, and Chris.

I have been very lucky to get Chris and his wife's email address and get in contact with them, since they nowadays live in Florida. It is then that I have found out that they were coming to Sweden for a visit around midsummer and we then agreed in meeting.

I was so excited when I went and pick them up at the station, and they were accompanied by a granddaughter and a his sister grandson.
It was not certainly that long ago that they have been around in Åkarp, but I believe also in this occasion it brought back 60 years old memories. When that happen you could see that in their eyes.
Chris was telling us stories about the Tre Musketörer and when he was also working there and how the business started to decline. When it did, Kathleen sold Bellevue and the Tre Musketörer and moved to Näsbyholms Slott, near Skurup.

I hope they did enjoy the visit as much as I did. When we were out in the garden, Chris was impatient to go inside and his eyes were sparkling when we finally entered the door.
Outside, he told us that the grapes that are growing on the veranda were there also when he was 20 and that in the back garden there was an orchard.
One of the most interesting details was that he was using the garage to park his car (of course, we are the only one not doing that ;-P) and that such car was a Mercedes. It was said that there was a rumour that the car was once owned by Hitler and that had been given as wedding gift to Prince Gustaf Adolf of Sweden and Princess Sybilla of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, who got married in 1932.

Unfortunately, they couldn't find that many pictures of the house, but they had few that shows the sophisticated furniture taste of Fru Cook-Frieberg. She liked antiques and the whole house was filled with very special furniture, some of which was coming from Sweden and in specific, from Vinslöv (Hedbergs).

Chris had been living in Bellevue just few years, from 1952 to 1956, before he moved to USA when he got married with Joan Connie. Their memories of details had been surely faded out. But few things were memorable: in the veranda there was a fountain (!!!!) which was going on and on, with its dripping sound during the long dinners that were taking places in the house, for the guests' unconvenience which were queuing up to the toilet...

Chris' room was our current guestroom. Isabella is instead using Essie's room.
Kathleen's mother, a British who had got married very young in UK and left with two daughters (Kathleen's sister towards the Swedish shores at the beginning of the 1900 century, was occupying Oscar's room.

Katherine Payne. Essie is behind Jack Bagner at the piano.

She was called Katherine Payne and married in 1897 Charles Cook, who was 10 years younger than her. More about her can be read in this forum post.

Essie is getting married!

 When Christ and Joan Connie returned to USA they sent me few pictures. Unfortunately, I was too much excited by their visit to remember to take pictures of us with them. I know that the kids did take few, though.

On the way to the train station, we almost knocked on Tårtrummet's door, but time was flying and there was a train to catch. The Tre Musketörer has to wait their next visit to Sweden.

Two windows renovation

After two months an half, I have finally put back two windows. Finally, considering that few weeks back, a stormy weather was putting pressure on the windows renovation progresses....
But the result makes me happy, considering that one of the contractors' comment when first up on the scaffolding was: "These windows are rotten, they need to be changed!".
Luckily, I am more stubborn than that and with a lot of stolen moments (and a lot of patience from some neighbour that got consulted on the way) the result has been different. We have saved the windows!

The bathroom window before treatment

Away with some color and the putty that spontaneously fell off

Nice details that show how well kept the window was

Who put some plastic material there to keep things together!?

The window frame after the treatment. Unfortunately, I wasn't very skilled with the putty then...

During the renovation, I hade to send the windows to some professional anyway. I can't add pieces of wood and the window sash needed to be glued together again. I surely got help with more than I wanted (considering I wanted to learn few other steps or two), but possibly the windows needed more of this than my butcher touch.

After the beauty treatment

Painting...

Linseed paint shines beautifully

Painting the inner sash

Bathroom view

The first window is back!

This is how it looked when I first saw it

Also this window needed some pro to look at it

We are almost done....

Pity that it is so high up. Few people will see it! Possibly mainly the neighbours :)

It's almost over (for now)...

They have started today to tear down the scaffolding. In a sense, it feels very strange to have this enormous task almost over.

What shall we get angry about?

Will Isabella stop to talk about roofing felt, tiles and chimneys?

I am actually quite sure that we will use our time for doing other things, but also to prepare ourselves for the final leap on the roof, this spring.

We have three things, roof wise, that we want to complete (before we turn 80).

1. Add the "crown" to the chimney (skorstenskrona) as it is in our postcards. We had too many questions right now and we felt that the plater was not having the time for our crazyness. 
2. Ridge tiles masonry with lime mortar (murning av nockpannor med kalkbruk). This is how usually the ridge tiles are fixated, according to tradition. 
3. Painting the metal sheet. Yes. 

Why are we planning to paint the metal sheet? 

Simply because we have chosen a metal sheet (the painted metal sheet, lackerad plåt) which looks too "plastic" on our kind of roof. 

There are a lot of discussions, especially from a cultural architectural perspective, that one should follow the tradition and install on old roofs only, the so called, galvanized sheet metal. 

However, from 2006 this kind of sheet metal has a difference which makes it not so reliable for the painting: the protection layer has been changed to be more environmental friendly. If before it was enough to wait a couple of years before painting, now it seems that this layer is more resistent and the metal sheet is so perfect, anyway, that the paint doesn't seem to get a good grip on it.

Due to these reasons, on the market, a galvanized metal sheet with a prepainted layer has appeared (kulturplåt), but it is not very commonly used and the long term resistance of the material is uncertain.

Although there have been uncertainties, also in the past, on painted metal sheet, we decided to go for that, with the thought that, since we wanted to be at least closed to traditional methodologies, we would have ended up painting it all. 

And that is what we will have to do this spring.

Some minor adjustments are still necessary on the front southern roof.

The new skiljeplåt meeting a new vinkelränna. Under the gutter one can see the newly yellow-painted beams

It will look weird for a while more :-)

The "separator"cut exactly as the old one and spiked instead of screwed. The metal sheet was done using a base of 60x120 cm instead of the more modern bigger sheets commony used today

The northern side with the new dormer windows

Detail over one of the new dormer windows  and the "separator"

Ståndskiva detail (one has to bend the head 45% to the left for being on the right point of view)

The half moon dormer window that was necessary to redo. The window is not yet done, but the window frame has got back its color (or almost).

Painting metal sheet with linseed paint and other stories

One thing we have learnt: never paint on a roof without checking the weather forecast and never trust a guy that comes here with a normal roller when painting with linseed paint.
Why so?
Well, first, if you paint and it is not exactly the right period of the year for doing that (that is, autumn is quite well known for high humidity and probability of rain) you might get a couple of centiliters of pigments on the ground. It is almost like modern art! It is just that you don't want to see it in your house...
Not only, the result on the metal sheet is not very elegant, if by chance you are unlucky with the weather.
The normal roller is instead not the best tool to use for painting with linseed paint since you need to apply it as thin as possible. So, when they do not come with the right tools you know you are going to pay more than you should or maybe, for once, you are just going to be lucky.
I can't really say if the result was terrible due to the lack of experience on the subject or what, but surely, we decided to abort for this season the operation of painting all the metal sheet to give a more "old look" in favor of postponing to the spring.
We were very much wondering how much they were really going to wait before painting the second layer, since that would have delayed everything quite much.

A painted angle chute. The color is "green leaf" from Ottosson. 

Detail of the painted metal sheet after a couple of days of rain. It is now though looking better once dry but still...

New metal sheet has been placed to substitute old one that was too rusty to be reused. The list includes also the ståndskiva on the back of the two facades.

A new ståndskiva

When looking at the new metal sheet, we are happy we are planning to paint it, since it really does look weird in our eyes. Bombastic, maybe?
The northern chimney has also got a new base, which unfortunately, due to some miscommunication between the two contractors involved, has lot the "ladder" decoration on the sides.

A working tinsmith 

While the tinsmith is operating on the metal sheet, the carpenters are setting back the tiles. This is quite a puzzle and they have to do a lot of adjustment to the tiles.

The north side of the roof 

The east side of the roof, with tiles ready to be placed back

One of the most complex piece of metal sheet we have, were on the dormer windows. Initially, we had no planned to change the metal sheet, since it looked reasonably new. Unfortunately, rotten wood was found underneath, so we were forced to remove it.
I have then concluded after some reflection, that they looked newer than they were: they were probably from the 70s and their style was not exactly "beautiful". The details were infact quite rough and we can see that now that we have started to get the new ones in place.

The left dormer window is made of new metal sheet

Let's compare with how the old ones were looking: it is hard to see, but the new ones are more accurate!

We have now started to discuss the chimneys crown and we will hopefully see soon a prototype, while today we were a bit scared of the base of the southern chimney, which looked a bit too much as a spaceship.

Mattias nowadays can't resist the temptation to look at every chimney he sees, especially when driving (...).

It is now not that much left to the completion of this job. Unfortunately, the windows are proceeding slow, but there are progresses.

And for sure, we have the best inspectors on our side!

Pico is inspecting the roof