Meaningful interior design?

I have been reading Veranda today, the latest issue. 

The houses look like nobody lives in them.  The photos and interior designs are just so you can fill the photo with your own presence, I guess.  But they look so impersonal, in many cases like everything was bought and not gathered through a life. Even the antiques are mostly bought stuff. 

I feel like real families have a mish-mash of things that means something to them, but in these houses, do the pieces mean something or do they just look good together?  Because some of it looks fantastic, sure.  But does it have deeper meaning and emotional value on personal level? Or are these photos of these rooms like still-life paintings. 

I like houses that are charming, where the people have left their mark with the selection of things and furniture.  A kind of assemblage of personal experiences and interests that only living life and being curious about it can bring, not something you buy in a store.  Some of my favorite houses are very different from each other, but they are all alive, you can feel the presence of the owner.  I often feel like that is missing from these articles in these types of magazines.  It is too clinically clean, too perfect, too impersonal.  But my question is, do the photo designers do this on person so you can put yourself in the room in the picture?  So you can dream about YOU having that place, that it is available and unoccupied by someone else?  I don't know, what do you think?

Old and real things last longer

In the small, semi-northern Swedish province of Gästrikland, there is an old village mainly consisting of a 1600s iron foundry with worker's baracks, mansion, farm buildings, storage cellars, and so on.  This is Gysinge Bruk, which has recently been restored and is now used as a conference center.  These rural places have a hard time to survive financially, but Gysinge has found its niche in the Swedish economy.

Some passionate people founded the Centrum for Byggnadsvård (approximately the Center for the Care and Restoration of Historic Houses, website is unfortunately mostly only in Swedish) here, and this has become a pilgrimage place for many Swedes who have old houses they want to care for using old practices.  Paints are sold using old recipes using either oil or flaxseed oil (no acrylic here), and copies of old electrical, lightning, or metal parts are sold for replacement of broken old parts.  They have courses and workshops in careful and thoughtful renovation of these soulful houses, and there are many, many historic houses in Sweden, so the interest from the public is huge.

Part of their center is a hands-on demonstration of a work-in-progress where 1700s farmhouse is being restored and simultaneously converted into a suitable and efficient house for a modern family.  Nowhere do you see chrome, plastic molding, and other modern materials, even if the tools they use are sometimes high-efficient and modern. This creates a unique atmosphere in these houses, a warm welcoming feeling of memories and recognition, at least for me who has lived in several old houses and seen many more in Sweden.

 
The appreciation for the natural materials, the simplicity of lines and designs (even when elaborate), and the history of craftsmanships are all things that form the foundation for this amazing place.  What this center provides is incredibly important for Swedish culture and history, and they really create new life in old buildings. Of course many people use these designs in their modern houses as well, inspired as they are of seeing the shapes, colors, and lines of times past.



On the website the founders of this center asks us the question: "Who would cut up the side of an old T-Ford to press in the door to a new Toyota Corolla?"  Still, this is what many people do when they own an old historic house.  Then they point out that many times this is done because people don't know they can replace old with old, because they don't know about the center in Gysinge where you can buy parts and products. They sell not only paints and parts, but also moldings, wall paper, brooms, windows, flower pots, kerosene lamps, signage, railings, electric switches, tiles and chairs.

More photos from Gysinge here. Click on the photos above if you want to read more about them,

Rapport från en skurhink (Report from a cleaning bucket)

Yesterday evening. 95 degrees heat and high humidity. No air conditioning downstairs in the house. Nice dinner with pasta primavera. After dinner - finds out toilet downstairs have overflowed sometime during the day, nobody noticed. It was bad, really bad. Start to clean up, soon realize that the toilet drain is leaking under the floor and isn't just blocked. The whole sewer drain for the house is blocked, and is backed up into the toilet on the bottom floor. Sewer water is leaking dripping from the basement ceiling under the bathroom onto machinery and freezer - ick! Call Roto-Rooter, their emergency plummer arrives at 11 PM. 90 degrees heat. Wet stinky towels in buckets with bleach and water for later washing. The drain gets unplugged, the toilet drain seal in the downstairs bathroom is still broken and will be fixed later. By midnight we can flush toilets and take showers, but by then I am the only one awake. Sweating and awake. What blocked the drain? We don't know, but an ipod is missing from the party we had 2 days ago. Did someone flush it? Will we ever find out? This has happened before.

(Rapport från en skurhink is the title of a famous Swedish book by Maja Ekelöf)

The last days of building...

on our new wooden deck at home. A so called "altan" in swedish. It´s a "must-have" in Sweden today, urbanised people can´t stand to trot on grass anymore ;-). We had a stone paving that needed to be removed because the rain water collected alongside the house. So now we have the wooden deck instead. It´s been a slow continuing progress building it, carefully measuring twice before using the saw. Wishes from the wife (me), like having a door in the deck to put things down under it, slowed it down.

As always, our comic sketcher Berglin has something to say, (swedish, sorry folks!)

Peepers...

Temporary cardboard window in the kids' bathroom during recent construction. Look closely! Hehe....

What did you do this weekend?

At our house in Pretzeltown, we been putting up "tapet" (ie., wallpaper in swedish), painting, drilling holes in the ceiling to get internet connection by cable to the main computer, eating kräftor (crawfish) and having snaps, dad recited wonderful sayings to the snaps!, made and ate chocolate balls with sugar on them, OK expanded the electric net to our closet in the bedroom for all the routers and stuff and prepared for a TV-connection. The wallpaper (light grey with silver streaks, which shimmer in sunlight) is almost done, nothing shows of the old door to the hallway and the new door is ready with all the lining up.

How was your weekend?

Bathroom- not yet finished, but soon

This is how it look, now that we´ve started to use our new bathroom. If feels great and even though it's a few details left to finish, the big work is completed. We added a bit less than 2 square meters to the bathroom but it feels much bigger! We´ve added an extra sink and a niche for the laundry machine.
We have floor heating (electricity) but it´s not on yet.



Our towel dryer, next to the bath tub, gives you a warm towel after the morning shower!
In the hallway, the new door to the master bedroom is almost finished. Later on the new wall will get new paint or wallpaper, just as well as our bedroom walls.


We have still to pay for this improvement, but it feels well worth it. We have absolutely improved the living in this house.

Bathroom in the making

The bathroom.

We haven´t used it yet, but it´s nearly finished.
It still lack electricity and some mirrors and cupboards and paint. But most of it is ready for use and it feels luxurious. The pictures don´t give the best impression I´m afraid, I have no picture editing program in my computer right now. I had a computer breakdown and had to reinstall the op.system.
Example of tiles, 20 x 30 cm size. Flooring is also tiles. The towel dryer is connected to the heating system, so it also works like a radiator. We will also have a niche for a washing machine, to the left in the photo.


Hopefully I can take some more photos when it´s all done. In the hallway and our bedroom there is still work left to do, building new closets and putting up wallpaper and such. But we´ll get there! :-)

Natural heat...

Ice storm outside and warm inside with the fire going in our furnace (värmepanna) in the basement. Here is one of our first wood fires ever in our combined oil-wood furnace, a great danish TARM firebox.

We have also bought the fantastic Swedish AGMA wood splitter to get the wood down to reasonably sizes. We also have a great ax from Sweden that my mom brougth with her in her suitcase a few years ago. No, not in the carry on :)

Now all we need is some solar electric power, solar hot water in summer and a heat tank, a diesel generator for emergencies when we have no power and the basement fills up with water, a new animal fence around our vegetable garden, and our Vermont Vigilant wood stove installed in the living room. Hmm, wouldn't all this be nice!?

How about some chickens for fresh eggs and a rabbit or two for rabbit stew? The best success this year in the vegetable garden was our chili peppers - we have never had so many before. They are now in Swedish Christmas sausage and homemade mustard, hot sauces, and pickles, and we still have lots of leftover dried ones.

Bathroom no more!

We are a week into our bathroom renovation and this is the progress so far. They have spent a week breaking down and tearing up the old floor and putting in new pipes. Yesterday they put the first concrete back into the grooves with the pipes and maybe, tomorrow they will raise the new walls to the extended bathroom.


It´s the old floor and roof that is standing in the lower part of the pic to stop the children from playing with the tools.
It´s a fine dust in our house, but we´ve used a lot of plastic to stop some of it. It works pretty good.
Before they started we sawed through the bedroom wall and made a new door opening, since the old one ends up in the new bathroom. This is what it looked like before they started to tear down everything.
See the line on the floor? This is about where the new wall will be. The washing machine will be in a niche and we´ll have 2 sinks and a bathtub. The window will be smaller, to fit a future shower corner.

Our new bedroom door ...without door and the old door opening.

To be continued.

Busy weekend

It has been one of those weekends here at Screech Owl Meadow (I just made up that name, in Swedish I guess it would be sparvuggleglantan). Busy, busy, and now our bodies are aching as a result. When I started makin this list of what we accomplish I got amazed. 4 people can do a lot! (Kids, thanks!!!) We did: Digging holes in the basement, wheelbarrows of gravel, rocks, and old coal, scraping and painting window sills, washing mosquito nets for windows, washing windows, oiling soapstone counters, scrubbing kitchen linoleum floor and then shine it up, washing 3 loads of laundry and hang it outside, clean all bathrooms, put up new shower curtain in kids bathroom, wash walls in kids bath (once a year this needs to be done), two people got eye exams, one got new classes, we got new pillows and a wider comforter, make jerk seasoning, made dinner two nights (filet mignon and lobster! and jerk shrimp, hot and good), mop the stairs, fix the lawn mover (for the 100th time), change water filer (too late, filled with icky black stuff), made labels for all homemade oils and vinegars (about 15 bottles so far), take in laundry, shake carpets, wipe down walls over stove in kitchen, read New York Times, clean up stuff hanging out of a cat's butt (ough! horrible), kids' cleaning rooms, order garlic for fall planting, order a insulating box for the attic stairs, going to Lowes to get renovation stuff and carrying it to the barn, going to liqour store for wine, getting corn at the farmer's market, dropping of a child's desk at a friends, went to sleepover party and pig roast (AREA) and playdate (LA), planned dinners for next week, did homework (kids), wiped down shelves, looked for a missing hook for the kids shower curtain, tried to find the lost tablet pen (no luck), carried stuff to the barn, into the attic, and upstairs, and watch to Road to Perdition. No wonder we are tired tonight.

And no kids asked for Sunday candy all day! Thanks PP, AREA, and LA for all your help.

Input wanted

We are planning our new tile floor in the hallway - grey and cobolt blue little tiles. What do you think about this design? PP did the edge, LA did the center. The edge design will go all the way around of course. I love it. If you have better or different ideas, let us know in the comments.