It's been a great two weeks

We're back in London now after a fantastic time spent in our second home. The weather has remained sunny (and worryingly, dry) the whole two weeks.  Some of the highlights:

• Marcia, Rutger and Camille came for the first weekend.
• The boat is out of storage and after a washup, it was in great shape. 
• We went to the old Guns Livs on Nämdö. The restaurant isn't open yet, and the store is operating at half capacity, but the new owners are talking a great story for the future.
• The Nämdö library was open the day we visited and we spoke to Gunilla about the fibre installation. Lots of work was evident on the island; power cables are being laid on the ground along with the fiber cables. Eventually all of the power poles will be taken away, which will improve the views. She told us the same work will start in a few months on Aspö. I'm becoming increasingly confident that we will have fiber installed next year.
• We attended the yearly island meeting, and Sooz followed along with the proceedings pretty well!
• Sooz also did a bit of morning yoga, and she attended the jewelry-making class on Ladholmen.
• We had a nice dinner with Peter and Jeanette at our place, and a lovely meal at Annika and Olle's.
• The World Cup kept us all entertained, and we gathered in Sofia and Johan's barn to watch the Sweden-England quarterfinal.
• Sooz arranged two successful Mat Hem deliveries. We have plenty of food now!!!
• Ove, the painter, came by to paint our little house with the linseed oil paint and it looks a lot better.
• I didn't have too many building tasks this time around but I managed to keep myself entertained with lots of little jobs.

There is a photo album available of all these activities on my Flickr page.

We'll be back for a long weekend in a few weeks, so stay tuned for more to come!

Guns Livs is no more

I've written many times in the past about Guns Livs, the grocery store on Nämdö. Its been in the same family for over 50 years. People's options about Guns on Aspö are divided. Some of us find its slightly worn-out store and spotty service part of its charm. Others long for a bit more professionalism and modern service.

This past summer was the last one for Guns and her family. The store, restaurant, and marina has was sold to new owners, who stayed mysteriously quiet until the end of the year. 

It turns out that the transaction took longer to complete than planned, but now the new owners have published their vision on the Gunslivs website. The key statement is this:

In the coming years of 2018 we will of course keep the store, the restaurant and the marina open as usual. But a little change will be noticeable already next year - we will clean, paint and freshen up. We want to get to know Nämdö, its conditions, residents and visitors.

From 2019 onwards we want to further develop the existing grocery with expanded range and better service and accessibility. The bar will have a facelift - both interior / exterior. Here we want to create a meeting place in the archipelago where everyone can socialize and enjoy the amazing environment, good food and drink. We also want to invest in archipelago leisure activities and offer a modern and interesting range. Together with the municipality we want to continue to develop accommodation for more year-round accommodation and accommodation for tourists. This in order for Nämdö to be an obvious centerpiece in the archipelago - a unique place for reflection and recreation as well as adventure.

The general approach is that the new owners want to expand Nämdö to become more of a "living" archipelago. They stress that this is closely in line with the kommun's plan to maintain a sustainable archipelago. It's an interesting balance between keeping things simple and charming but perhaps a bit shabby, and offering more modern amenities to draw new people to the area and allow it to thrive.

This will be an interesting development to watch over the next few summers!

Summer plans

I briefly mentioned our return plans in a previous post. Now things are set. We'll be back on July 1, and Grant will be joining us! He can't take much time off from work, so it'll be a brief visit. But it will be great to have him with us, even for just a few days.

Us retired folks will stay for most of July, however. The only big project we have planned is to paint the guest house. I've already bought the same linoljefärg to match the big house; it's sitting in Rutger's garage. It's a small enough job that we can do it pretty easily ourselves, I think.

Other than that, we plan to sharpen our boating skills and enjoy the community on Aspö!

The Arbetsdag

Yesterday was a great day. First off, it was sunny and beautiful for a change. I took advantage of the morning sunshine to clean and water seal the deck of the guest house.

Then it was time for the spring "working day" (arbetsdag in Swedish). Twice a year, residents assemble to take care of various tasks to maintain Aspö's infrastructure. I've always wanted to be part of the working day, and this year was my chance.

Lots of people assembled on the midsummer meadow, and a list of the day's jobs were discussed. One of the major tasks was to maintain the low spots on the path. Big bags of gravel had been brought in to spread around. A wood chipper was also used to mulch fallen branches and provide more path cover. I thought I might do that, since I was one of the younger people there at the beginning. Fortunately, though, lots of actual young people showed up and I was able to leave the hauling and chipping to them.

I instead volunteered to cut new pieces of wood for the path markings. I was able to bring the timber over to my house easily, and it was a simple enough job that I could do it without messing up! It turned out that I had to cut 50, though, so it took me a couple of hours.

Others volunteered to paint my cut pieces, so we had a nice assembly line going. After a day's drying, the new markers will be put up in place of the old faded ones. I like the thought that, on future walks around Aspö, it'll be a little bit of my work marking the path!

We all took a lunch break at 12:30. Peter grilled korvs for everyone, and Jeanette handed out cold beers. A perfect afternoon. I tagged a bunch of photos for quick viewing.

When the work was done, I walked over to Bosse's house and took possession of my new boat. Tony said I could keep it at his dock, so I motored over to find him waiting for me. He even made a little nameplate for my spot! (A photo of that, among lots of other stuff, is on the May photo page.)

The day ended splendidly; Peter and Jeanette invited me over for dinner. Peter grilled an amazing steak, and Jeanette shared her special pesto potatoes. We also drank quite a bit of very nice red wine! It was a superb evening to cap a really special day.

Electric Boats

Let's start the new year with something new: the B/F Sjövägen.

What's so new about it, one might ask? It looks like a standard archipelago ferry, perhaps with a fresh coat of paint.

The first clue is in the designator "B/F". Usually ships plying Swedish waters are "M/S" for a motor ship or "S/S" for the old-fashioned steamships.

In this case, the "B/F" refers to a battery-powered vessel. Yes, that's right, the Sjövägen is an electric boat! I read about it in the local Skärgården newspaper. The initial feedback is positive; like an electric car, it is quiet, and compared to a diesel engine, the ride is far smoother, and with none of the stinky fumes.

Right now, the Sjövägen's batteries can hold about five hours of charge. This will be its first winter on the ice. So for now, it will take only shorter, more inland trips. But the potential for such a vessel is huge, and I wouldn't be surprised to see many more in the upcoming years.

As an aside, it's not just boats that are joining electric cars in the mainstream. Airbus is demonstrating an electric plane which promises to operate much more quietly and environmentally than a current jet engine. With much of Sweden's electricity coming from renewable resources, electric vehicles are a great way to reduce fossil fuel emissions!

Introduction V

It's been over a year and a half since my last introductory post, so I thought it time to update the introduction series on this blog. New readers should click on that link first to get a concise summary on what's happened over the years.

I had bragged in my introductory last post the blog had over 60,000 visits. As of today, that figure is nearly 110,000! Many of those new visitors are thanks to the link from the very cool website Cabin Porn.

We've done a few things to the house over the past 18 months. Most significant is the painting of the exterior with linseed oil paint. I also built a large deck this summer which gives us a significant new living space.

I made a list in 2008 of all the things I wanted to do to the house. With the exception of a fireplace or heat pump, the list is now complete. We are definitely moving from 'building' to 'living' in our little cabin!

Personal circumstances have made that transition easier. I stopped working this year and have found myself sliding a bit towards retirement. I'd like to get back to work, but I haven't yet found the right thing. So Sooz and I took advantage of all my free time to spend most of this past summer on Aspö. Being there for a month is a lot different than a week or two! We were able to connect a lot more fully with island life and our friends there.

I've been keeping the blog updated 8-10 times a month, with my usual mix of practical, cultural, and especially toilet-related information. Given my greater free time, I've tried to make the posts a bit longer and more polished. Feedback on that is appreciated.

Grant has graduated college and he's working at a job he really likes. Ollie is fully settled into Texas life. I haven't yet driven Sooz crazy from being constantly underfoot. Life is good.

Willie's visit

I didn't write much at the time about Willie's visit earlier this month. I had been having trouble with water leaks around a few of my windows. The most worrying one was along the tall window on the deck. It appeared a lot of water made it into the house along that window.

Willie came out to see us with some rubber sealant and a few other tools. We pulled the boards off and re-sealed as best we could. He found a couple of problems, some of which we fixed. But we'll have to do a bit more next year.

The trim boards outside were flush against the deck, and were wicking water up from the deck into the window joint. Willie had a special little saw and we trimmed a centimeter off the bottom of the boards to provide an air gap.

We also found the trim boards had become warped and shrunk a great deal. Since they hadn't been painted until this year, they dried out quite a bit. Willie pointed out they were originally 95mm wide, but were now shrunk to under 90. The boards are also "cupped" along their width, too, with only the center of the board really flush along the house. The edges curl out and away from the house and window. Not good for water sealing!

Willie recommended we get new trim boards for next year and do a few things differently. First, we score the back of the board with a few shallow cuts along its length. This allows us to slightly bend the board so it lays fully flat along the house.

Second is to work harder to smooth the exterior of the house right along the window joint, so the board has a better chance of laying flat. Since the house is made up of strips of glue-laminated wood, there is variability along the exterior; some strips stick out more or less than their neighbors. A bit of sanding or planing would make the surface far more even.

Lastly, of course, is to paint the boards right away so they are better protected from shrinking and warping over time. So we will do that next year for sure.

Eddie and Sooz on Taco Night

It was great to catch up with Willie. He is a good guy and has become a friend over the years. We talked about his son Eddie, whom I've mentioned before on this blog. Eddie has become established in goal for the Vancouver Canucks. To be a professional NHL player is quite the achievement, and it's easy to see why Willie is so proud of his son.

Sooz and I had the pleasure of dinner with Eddie when he was on a recent road trip. We had a bunch of Tex-Mex tacos, and enjoyed catching up and swapping stories about his dad. Besides the great achievement of playing in the NHL, he's a charming and special young man, and we're glad to count him as a friend.

We have been watching the Canucks results closely. It's much more interesting to follow the team when you know the goalie!

Painting, the final chapter

I posted about three weeks ago about how much we liked Ove's paint job on the front of the house. Not only have we protected the wood, the house looks great, and it smells good, too!

I asked him for a quote to do the other two facades. The short side still looks perfect, but the back of the house has an issue to address.

We've kept the trees around back; many of them are quite close to the house. The shade and moisture there has allowed a bit of green growth. I hesitate to say mold or algae, but it's clear the wood there needs to be brushed off and protected.

From the wood's point of view, the front of the house was clearly too hot & dry, and the back appears to be too shady and wet. Thankfully, linseed oil paint can fix both of these problems!

Ove's price to paint the house was high by Texas standards, but not really by archipelago rates. The best news is that he thinks he can be done before we return in July! It will be great to have that all done.

We decided not to paint the guest house right now; we have to economise in some ways, and it's a simple enough job that we can do it ourselves, perhaps next year.

UPDATE: They've already started. I caught a glimpse of the workers on my dropcam, and Annika sent me a photo of the back of the house with the caption "looking good"! So it will all be done by the time we arrive, for sure.

The painting is done

Our painters, Ove and Leif, came by this morning and polished off their paint job.

We are very pleased with their work. Not only were things done neatly and professionally, but the colour itself is just what we were hoping for.

Ove told me the wood was very dry, and that it readily absorbed the linseed oil paint. I'm glad we got it done, for protective as well as aesthetic reasons.

I am thinking very seriously about painting the rest of the house, as well as the little house, too. Ove and I talked about doing that, and he will be sending me a quote.

A messge from Lars today

I received a bunch of info from our handyman Lars today. He is almost finished with washing and sealing our deck, and he is very happy with the results so far.

Through the miracle of iPhone technology, he sent along a little video of the process. It's obvious the deck is much lighter underneath the scrubbed portion! We are looking forward to seeing it in person in just under three weeks.

I don't believe the painting will be done by the time we arrive, however. It's not yet consistently warm enough to paint safely. Who knows? I might be able to be part of the painting process when we're there.

Security

Last fall, I met with Lars, a local handyman who is going to clean and seal our deck, and (finally) paint the front of the house this spring. I've been pestering him with videos and emails about exactly what I want these past few weeks. He has withstood all of my input with good grace.

Lars recently told me he's retired from the police force and will be working full-time on a firm that offers security and management services in the archipelago. Their website, obevakning.se, (in English here) is one of the most beautiful and professional I've seen.

The idea is a good one. Most of the people I know on Aspö are there quite frequently, so keeping an eye on one's property is easy for them. But many more island residents aren't.

A guy like me is a perfect candidate for Lars' services: far away, and with little ability to address problems as they occur. Fortunately, I am blessed with such great neighbors as Olle and Annika, who really go out of their way to look after our house, especially during the winter.

Although I don't see myself using his security services, it is good to know somebody like Lars, both personally and professionally. And his website is a real winner!

Lars the handyman

I've mentioned hiring a handyman, Lars Dahlin, to do a few things around our house. I posted recently about our discussion to fix a few leaks, but what Lars and I talked about a lot was cleaning the deck. He's an expert at helping restore island decking to clean condition.

Note: not our deck!!

Lars' secret is a long and patient washing with a scrubber, followed by Thompson's Water Seal. This will brighten and clean up our deck, and lock in the new look for at least a few years.

Sooz and I really want the deck to look less grey, so we are going to ask Lars to do that for us. I found a photo that represents the kind of change we want to see.

The other thing Lars and I have talked about doing is painting the front of the house. I've blogged about that ad nauseum, so I won't go into it any more here. Suffice it to say we'll be using the medium-grey linseed oil paint, and there will be a lot more on that subject coming up!

Wire brushes

There have been many posts about the discoloration on the front of our house and my desire to address that by painting over it. The last we left this subject in October, I painted a test patch with linseed oil paint to see how it withstood the winter.

At Tim's suggestion, I took a wire brush and cleaned off a section of the wood before painting. My plan was to paint over both brushed and non-brushed sections to see if the paint took differently.

I was surprised at how relatively easily a lot of the black discoloration came off, pretty much as a powder. This makes sense as the jarn vitrol is an iron-based product, and I'm sure what I was removing was a form of iron oxide.

The more I ponder it, though, I think I need to brush the face of the house before painting. Paint must adhere better to the wood without the iron in-between; that's just common sense to me.

Of course it is easy to sit at a desk in Texas and say, "sure it's simple to hand-brush 20 square meters of the house!" I am sure I will curse my decision, once up on a ladder this summer. But I think it's the best thing to do.

Our friends at Amazon have a ridiculous array of wire brushes available. I plan to pick out a couple of types and see how they work out during our April visit. I'll do the brushing deed in July, and have the house painted in September. That's the plan, anyways. There has been a lot of discussion about this over the years, and things always seem to change. But that's the plan for now.

Last list of design stores

Nothing fancy, just a few links of places that I like browsing:

• A plus R
• Fitzsu
• Ferm Living
• Raumgestalt

More exciting subjects soon, including paint, wire brushes, and the countdown to my 1000th post!

Settling back

I find it hard to come back to 'regular life' after a week on Aspö. Especially now that we're living in Texas, our little house seems so far away. Easter is the earliest time we realistically would come back, so we're talking six months at least. That makes the house feel even further away, both geographically and on the calendar.

I do have a few interesting subjects to write about in these intervening months, not least our paint experiment. There are a number of cultural subjects to address, as well. So the writing pace may slow through the winter, but it won't stop, don't worry!

Lazy afternoons

It was cool this morning, but not as cold as Stockholm; Marcia said she saw frost when she got up!

It's still a bit too wet to paint or wire the extra deck lights but I plan to do that tomorrow as Thursday and Friday will be dry.

The Cinderella is working fine, in fact both Sooz and I think it is quieter now. Perhaps there have been improvements in fan technology over the past 4 years...?

I'm catching up on email and Sooz is working on a jigsaw puzzle. It's quiet and peaceful. Bliss.

Painting once again

The paint we have purchased is from Ottoson in Skåne, experts in linseed oil painting. They have a YouTube channel with lots of English-language videos about using their product, which is pretty impressive, since most of their production is in Sweden, with only a little bit in northern Europe.

I looked at all of their videos and this one seems to be exactly what I was thinking of for our house:



I contacted the company for a bit of advice and, through an email conversation, they agreed that the 50% paint/40% oil/10% balsam turpentine is the way to go. It should cover in one coat, dry quickly, and be able to be applied in temperatures as low as 5°C. 

Although I have the paint already, we will have to shop for the oil and turpentine when we're in Sweden, before we head out to the house in October. More on that next trip soon.

4 Shades of Grey

Sooz and I started looking into linseed oil paint and we found a number of things that we liked. It's a uniquely Swedish product, and has been used on homes for perhaps a thousand years. Linoljefärg is a "natural" paint; it essentially is made up of only the oil with added natural pigments. It also sticks well to most any surface, and should be opaque enough to cover our spots.

One drawback is the fact that its cleanup is a lot messier, (and perhaps dangerous) being oil-based, rather than the wash-and-go acrylic we've been using. But that seems like a small price to pay.

We found a company that carries a large range of linseed oil paint from Skåne. Two things we like about this company (bedsides Emil, their employee) is the wide range of colours available, and that we could buy small sample pots (at 60kr each) for us to do our own experimenting.

Sooz and I decided on four shades to try out: Silvergrå, Mellangrå, Varmgrå, and Mörkgrå. For our English-speaking readers, the colours are, excitingly, silver-grey, medium-grey, warm grey, and dark grey.

I ordered a set of four samples, which are now safely at Rutger's house. Next time we're there, probably in mid-October, we will paint a few test patches to see how the paint holds up in the months we're away. If all goes well, we could call Krister back for a painting job a year from now!

Painting Part 2

I found an article pretty quickly from a Swedish building site about using järnvitriol to treat houses to give that nice silver-grey color we like. The key quote was in the Q & A below, which translates as:

Q: Can you paint over a facade treated with järnvitriol?
A: Yes, slamfärg or solvent-based paints work.

This article, plus Olle's research, gave me a bit more hope about successfully being able to paint our house after all.

The real kicker came a few days later, when we met up with old friends Lotta and Jan-Erik, who coincidentally enough, live a few islands over, and are good friends with Annika and Olle.

Jan-Erik is a man of much experience and many friends in the archipelago, and he gave me the name of a friend who is the MD of a paint company who might be able to give me advice. When I got back to Texas, I sent an email with a few photos attached, asking for advice. Within 24 hours, I received the following reply:

1. It is always best to keep using the same product that was used from the beginning or in your case do nothing and accept the look of the faces. 
2. It could be possible to paint the faces with a linseed oil based paint. Then you would have to repaint the southern face every 10-15 years. We don’t have any experiences of painting on sprayed surfaces [I told him we used a sprayer to apply the järnvitriol] so we can’t guarantee the result. But you could test this on your southern face.

One of the things that gave us pause about slamfärg was that it was a bit transparent, so covering our spots might be a problem, especially if we went for a lighter shade. It also can be a bit chalky, and requiring more frequent touch-ups.

But linseed oil paint? That's worth looking into. And we will, in part 3!

Painting Part 1

I've posted many times, as recently as a month ago, about the discoloration on the front of our house, and our desire to treat it. We thought for a while that it was fungus or mold of some sort, althought without an expert chemical analysis it was hard to tell for sure. Rutger and I put a chemical treatment on the house almost two years ago, and the spots have not changed appreciably since.

We thought about painting, and had spoken to one of the archipelago's painters, Krister, about using the traditional slamfärg on the spotty front exposure, in a color that matched the nice silvering along the rest of our house.

However, after some investigating, Krister felt it wouldn't be a good idea to paint over our the järnvitriol we put on the house three years ago. So we were back to square one: it probably isn't mold or fungus (or it it was, it was inert now), and it didn't seem we could paint over it, so we would have to just let it be for the time being.

We headed to the house this summer, resigned to just ignore the discolorations and get on with it. However, like a thoughtful neighbor (and a great builder and handyman), Olle told me he did some investigating about painting over jarnvitriol. He felt it was quite possible to do, so Sooz and I started thinking and googling on the subject once again.

We found a number of interesting things, which we'll save for further posts, as this one is getting a little long!