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.

Broadband Internet

I've been corresponding with the people on Aspö and Nämdö about the progress of our broadband internet project. Since my last update in April, we have made our application, and I am officially part of it.

We will know more after a meeting this fall, but it appears our island neighborhood is one of six that is being discussed for wiring. The key question is when, and we'll know more after that meeting. Realistically, it will be 2 or 3 years I think.

The cost still looks like 20,000kr delivered to the house. Frankly, I'm up for that; 100mps broadband is very appealing, especially out in my favourite place!!!

Sooz, on the other hand, is not so keen. She's plenty happy with our little wifi hotspot today, which, to be fair, although a little slow and fiddly, is plenty good enough for email, Facebooking and iPhone games. She also believes, quite rightly, that the wireless technology should improve, making our current solution better in the coming years.

My biggest fear is not being part of the initial broadband club, and then having a much more expensive installation in the future. I also think Grant would be more likely to visit if I had super-fast internet access. It also may be easier for me to spend time away if I have a strong connection back to the office.  (How's that for rationalization!)

Either way, there's no need to decide just yet. We'll wait for more news later this year.

UPDATE: Apparently Sweden wins at the internet!

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!

A new kitchen gadget

Sooz bought one of these today for our boxed wine usage. I think it goes against the "island simple" aesthetic somewhat. But I also love my gadgets, and anything that keeps my Wildboar's Rock nice and chilled is OK with me!

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!

Swedish Pizza

A staple of Swedish urban or semi-urban life is the local pizzeria. I've had plenty of pizza at the local joints in Järfälla, St. Eriksplan, and even our own local restaurant in Södra Ängby back when we lived in Stockholm over 20 years ago. I'd bet there's one within 10 minutes of most of the population, and they all have a range of named pizzas with odd combinations of toppings.

The name of our local was Lilla Riviera. I took a look online, and sure enough, it's still in business and appears to be thriving! Scrolling down through the menu shows 29 different pizzas available.

One evening there has entered into our family's history. For some reason, I ordered a pizza with an egg. The pizza arrived with the most-barely-cooked egg you could imagine. The whites weren't even white; instead the pizza was covered in runny albumen.

To be honest, I came close to gagging at the time. Even writing this today makes it queasy. To this day, I can't stand the sight of a runny egg, much to the amusement of Sooz and Grant.

The reason I'm reminiscing about Swedish pizzas is because of a great article on the subject in the Huffington Post (of all places). It is an instructive and entertaining read, if a bit hipster-bombastic for my tastes. The key passage for me is:

Anything that seemed exotic or exclusive would end up as a culinary titillation: something that seemed like a good idea to eat at the time.

Since a pizzeria is/was an easy and inexpensive restaurant to start up - great profit margin, not much need for culinary know-how - Swedish pizza was well on its way to becoming the abject culinary absurdity it is today.

I do love everything about Swedish pizza, the general weirdness, the exotica narrative, the ceremonial naming of the pies, the economics of necessity.

My local pizza joint sticks with pepperoni, extra cheese, and perhaps jalapeños as options. I simply can't find a pineapple, banana and curry pizza anywhere in Texas. But I can at Lilla Riviera. It's a number 19.

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!

Photos from Annika

This first one is entitled "evening pleasure"; setting out the fishing nets.

This one's the result from the following morning. A fresh breakfast of perch!

I will have to ask Annika how she made those cool photo montages...

PS on the Stockholm Marathon

I was amazed to learn how many of my fellow Aspö residents followed my race on the internet. (Not to mention Tony, who actually found me somehow!)

My favorite bit of trivia about that miserable day was this: it was actually colder in Stockholm on the day of the race than it was on Christmas Eve. Amazing.

Catching up

After a week back at work, and with the 105° Texas heat, it hardly feels like I went to Sweden at all!

Nevertheless, we did indeed enjoy a lovely holiday, and true to form, we're already planning our next escape visit to Aspö.

Over the coming days, there will be more details on our that trip, along with discussions on the following topics:

• cable lights in the kitchen
• extra deck lights outside
• furniture for the little house
• painting the exterior (once again)

...plus whatever other topics crop up! Stay tuned, dear readers.

Sunday morning in London

Sooz and I are in Heathrow, about to head back to Texas. To recap: the weather on Friday cleared up, and we had a nice fika at Annika and Olle's, complete with a surprise visit from old friends from our time working there 20 years ago!

We also hiked up to the tallest part of the island, which was totally new to us, and had a great view to boot. Along the way, we picked blueberries and raspberries off the bushes like candy. It was really neat.

Then we brought our leftover food to Ann and Dave's, and we combined it all into a 'funny supper'. I also helped Dave deplete his Scotch supplies.

Saturday was of course beautiful, and it was hard to leave. When we got to Slussen, we met up with Margaret again, along with her son Callan and his girlfriend Shagha...and also the Pride Parade, which provided many opportunities for people-watching!

We got into London just in time to watch Team GB win 3 gold medals within an hour in the track & field.

Lots more photos up within a day or two. Now to cross the Atlantic!

UPDATE: Now back in hot Texas. Lots of new photos are up now.

Friday morning catch-up

There's been lots of activity, let's see the highlights....

• I did indeed tarpaper the shed roof, using the heavy high-quality stuff that Janne bought for me. I managed to cover the whole roof with just three pieces, as opposed to the seven I used for the first layer. That roof is good for a dozen years, at least.
• We finished up the little house and I have to say it looks spectacular. Sooz wants to buy a lamp and a few bits and bobs but we are very pleased with the way it turned out. Now all we need are guests!!
• I also finished up the cable light installation by drilling two holes in the trim, so the cables seem to appear by magic. I'm very happy with the way it looks. I will get a couple of extra fixtures for our next trip out, and we'll have a very cool light setup there. (Can you tell I am obsessed with lights???)
• We went to Nämdö yesterday with the Harveys for Dave's birthday lunch, which was great fun.
• The big event of the evening, however, was a very clear moose sighting. The best part is that I caught it on video!!!

It's a bit drizzly this morning, but that's OK, we can just chill and perhaps watch a bit of Olympic action. Team handball is very popular on SVT!

Catching up

The weather has been cooperating nicely, and we've been having a great time. Dinner with Ann & Dave & Robbie & Mary was great fun, although it was cut a little short with a lightning and thunder display. The next day, Sooz joined the island's morning exercise class, and I set to work on the deck lights.

I'm happy to report that I completed these successfully with no major drama, other then the 9 ticks Sooz had to pluck off me after all my time crawling under the house. They look great, if I say so myself. Olle and Annika joined us for dinner and we sat into the dusk looking for moose, although we did get a glimpse of a deer, and even a cute little yellow-striped finch. Photos of all (except the finch and the ticks) are posted.

Today's another beautiful day, Sooz is recovering nicely from her aerobics, and I think I might put the tarpaper on the shed. Or I might take a nap. We'll have to see....

Sleepy Sunday morning

...because of a late Saturday night! Yesterday was Aspö Day, down at the midsommar meadow. The students in the sailing school finished and the students held a graduation race. In the evening, a few hardy souls returned for a bit of dancing, and the party moved over to Olle and Annika's house into the wee hours. Photos of the evening are available.

The weather's been great so far. Tonight Ann & Dave are over for dinner; we're looking forward to a nice evening grilling on the deck.

I'm here!

I experienced a marvel of intermodal transportation yesterday. Plane to plane to bus to train to bus to taxi boat with nary a hitch or literally a wasted minute. Heathrow was well-staffed and efficient, everything was on time, and I was with my sweetie on the deck at about 5:30 on a perfectly clear evening.

It's sunny today, so I'll get to work and start posting a few photos later!

Sooz's Photos

...she has been enjoying the cool weather, watching Swedish costume dramas on TV, and generally hanging out.  I received a few photos, with which I have started a Summer 2012 photoset.

I'll be leaving to join her in 48 hours and I can't wait!!!

A dispatch from Sooz

She slept in until 11 and had a nice, quiet day. The mosquitos are bad, it's nice and cool (especially in contrast to Texas), and the berries are out in full force: She sent me this photo of the harvest from her evening walk.

We normally aren't at the house in late July, so it looks like the fresh fruit will be a bonus for our morning filmjölk!

A new welcome into Stockholm

Sooz should be landing into Arlanda just about now. But she won't be welcomed by ABBA into the country this time, I'm sorry to say. Agnetha, Benny, Björn, and Anni-Frid have been replaced by this year's Eurovision winner, Loreen.

How could this be, you might ask?? Has Sweden thrown away its cultural heritage in favor of a fad? Outrage!!

The truth is more complex. Benny Andersson has been strongly opposed to the planned reconstruction of Slussen, the area just south of Gamla Stan. From my perspective, I can understand why the area needs to be reconstructed. That's where we catch our bus to Stavsnäs, and it is not the prettiest or most efficient part of the city, to put it mildly. I also ran through part of the traffic interchange (twice!) during my recent marathon, and, afforded the opportunity to see the area when on foot, the condition of the concrete did not look good to my untrained eye.

There's a great deal of controversy about redeveloping the area, with Benny as a strong opponent of Norman Foster's plans. From what I can tell, there are two main objections. First, is the disruption caused by nearly 7 years of work in an already congested space. Second is the historical aspect. Ugly or not, Slussen was an engineering marvel 80 years ago and it is a big part of modern Stockholm.

Now what does this all have to do with ABBA's welcome at Arlanda? Well, Benny said that he'd withdraw his permission for the photo to be used should the redevelopment be approved.

In a narrow vote, project was approved, so the photo comes down and Loreen goes up in its place. I hope there will be room for both artists again soon. More practically, I hope our journeys to Aspö won't be too disrupted in the coming years!

UPDATE: Sooz texted me that she arrived safely, and a bit early, into Arlanda. She met Erik, and old friend from 20 years ago, who was a youngster when we knew him, and is now a pilot for Cathay Pacific! They're taking the train into town now and I'll provide any updates she sends me.

UPDATE 2: She did her grocery shopping at the Coop in Slussen and caught the earlier bus to Stavsnäs, so she could catch the earlier Waxholms boat. While she was en route, I got messages from Ann and Margaret to send her up to Ann and Dave's for dinner. I video-chatted with her a few minutes ago (about 16:30 Central time) and she had a great evening. Everything worked out perfect, although she was darned tired!

Painting

I've a posted lot in the in the past about the black splotchyness on the front of our house.

This has proven to be a fairly intractable problem. At first, I thought it was mold. Rutger and I applied a mold solution a while ago but that didn't seem to make a difference. There hasn't been any change over the past year and a half as far as my photographs can tell.

It doesn't seem to be a problem with the jarn vitrol, either; the other two exposures, and the small house all look just the way we had hoped. It has to be something with the interaction of sun and wind and rain on the exposed front of the house.

Our plan from last fall was to ask Christer, the archipelago's paint expert, to paint the front exposure in a color that matched the rest of the house. He visited, and we even picked out the paint type and color.

However, Christer investigated and became worried about painting over the jarn vitrol. Rutger and I also spoke to some painting specialists and they both told us the same thing; that painting over the darned jarn was not going to be successful. Our two options were to wait a few more seasons to let the wood weather it away, or to sand-blast to remove the wood's top layer.

Needless to say, we're going to wait. The condition of our house's wood is fine, and we can watch the spots to see if they grow, which would indicate mold again.

The main reason we chose the natural silvering of the jarn vitrol was that we wanted our house to fit into the landscape. We perched our house on top of a rock: we're not big on cutting down trees or landscaping. Sooz and I like the idea of our house turning grey and fitting in. We've got a bit more fitting in than we bargained for, but that's something we're going to live with.

Cable Lights

I installed cable lights over the kitchen counters when I was last at the house. My plan was to provide more focused lighting for the stove, sink, and workspaces, but to do it in the least obstructive way possible. I hit upon the idea of cable lights and I had a 50-50 experience with them.

The good news is that the kit installed very easily and looks just as thin and simple as I had hoped. It also works perfectly. The bad news is that I chose poorly on the lamps themselves. I needed to have a spotlight fixture, and instead the lamps I bought have glass shades and send light all over, with very little of it to the countertops themselves.

It looks like I can rectify my mistake fairly early, however. First I need new light fixtures that can hold spotlight bulbs. These are pretty cheap, so I bought a few different kinds, from providers in the US and UK.

Next are the bulbs themselves. I found these bulbs come in many types, with beams of various angles. They normally cast a beam of around 40 degrees, but they can be had with an angle as narrow as 12°.

I found a website that allows calculation of the size of a light's coverage area, given the bulb's angle and distance. Fortunately, since these bulbs work on 12 volts, I can buy an assortment here in the US pretty cheaply, too. On my next trip to Aspö, I'll be carrying three light fixtures and 5 different bulbs. I will report back on the success of my lighting experiments!!

Travel Logistics

This appears to be a pretty common subject over the past years on my blog! I count a dozen entries about the logistics of living on Aspö.

Our original plan was to leave Texas a week from today, get into Stockholm around 2PM Friday the 20th, and head to Stavsnäs for the 6PM taxi boat. That gives us about three hours to get from Arlanda airport to Slussen, shop for fresh food (remember we left a lot behind in the freezer), and then catch the 5:15PM bus. (Marcia and Rutger are away, which is a drawback of the July date we've moved to. Not only will we miss them, we can't use their home as a base camp!)

You'll note I said 'original plan'. The pressures of my work will make it impossible for me to join Sooz as planned. I'm now shooting to leave on July 25, which gets me into Stockholm mid-afternoon on Thursday the 26th.

This puts stress on Sooz as I'm usually the pack mule on these trips. She's going to travel extra-light on the plane so she can carry as many groceries herself as possible.

To complicate things, since I'm arriving on a Thursday the next week, there won't be a late boat available. I'll need to get our own taxi boat to get to Aspö that evening.

We plan to make that an advantage, however. Sooz will go to Gustavsberg on the noon Waxholms boat on that Thursday. That gives her a few hours to hang around and shop, and I'll meet her at our favorite ICA straight from the airport to take on my pack mule duties. I also think Ann and Dave will be joining Sooz, so the boat will have a bunch of people and groceries on it, not just little ol' me!

Deck Lights

I posted previously about a deck light kit that I thought was pretty cool. For my last trip, I bought two of the bulbs, and the special drill bit needed so I could do a test fitting.

We liked the way they looked, so I measured out a pattern on the deck. I have 22 lights to play with (the kit of 20 plus my two extras) and they would fit perfectly at 180cm (6 feet) apart.

I'm also able to put a light on the edge of every other stair leading up to the house. I've circled on this picture the little masking tape dots I made when I was measuring the deck.

The kit is very easy to understand, and it comes with a neat little remote control. We have power under the house for the transformer, so the installation should be very straightforward. The hardest part will be to drill the 22 holes in the right place, but I get to measure that carefully before I start.

That should be a fun project on a summer's day, and it should be very attractive on a summer's evening.

Shed Droop

I've blogged extensively about my search for, and subsequent building of, a little garden shed. I'm very happy with it now, except for one nagging issue, which is, I think it is sagging a bit.

The front door has come out of true and a few boards have shifted a fraction, showing the unstained gaps beneath. The funny thing, though, is that when I use a bubble level on it, it seems to be true. But when I look at it, it seems the shed has settled in its back-left corner, although my measurements aren't proving that. Also, both Rutger and Sooz think it looks OK and that my eyesight is playing tricks on me. (They could be right; my eyesight is terrible, even in good circumstances!)

I did manage to improve things on my last visit by doing a bit of adjustment to the hinges. I also bought a bit of hardware at Lowe's to put a cable tension on the door. (A digression: there is a lot of shed building information out on the internet!)

I still think my shed needs to be jacked up a bit in the back, though, no matter what my instruments tell me. Fortunately, there'll be a lot of eyes to take a look at it when I'm there next. I'm sure the collective wisdom of Margaret, Janne, Ann, Dave, Olle and Annika will tell me if I have a problem or not!!!

The Bristlecone Pine Forest

This one's not Aspö- related but I had to share. Last weekend, Sooz surprised me with a trip to the Inyo National Forest, in the White Mountains of Eastern California. We went there to hike up to see the Great Basin Bristlecone pine trees, the oldest living things on earth.

Ever since I was a third grader, when I first read about these ancient trees growing in a remote place, I always kept a visit as a dream trip in the back of my mind. For my birthday this year, Sooz made all the arrangements and we went to see them. It was an amazing experience.

Pictures don't do these amazing trees justice, but I did try, and I have a small photoset on Flickr for anyone interested.

Eurovision Final 2013

I received an email from the soon to be completed Friends Arena in Stockholm. I'm not entirely clear how they got my address, but I'm glad they did. They were asking me to register my interest in attending the Eurovision final next year at their new arena!

Of course, I registered, or, more accurately, Sooz did, as her Swedish is a lot better than mine. It appears that our friends at the Friends are trying to do put some pressure on the selection process for the rights to host the show.

As Margaret told me, the Globen is booked for the 2013 World Hockey Championships in May, taking the most natural venue out of the running. The daily Eurovision news website (yes there is such a thing), reports that both Gothenburg and Malmö have booked their stadia and hotel space, just in case. Both cities have held the competition before, but their venues are fairly small, about a third the capacity of the new Friends Arena.

I do hope it's held in Stockholm. It will be a lot easier to try to attend. I can't imagine how much fun it would be to see it live- in Sweden! I'll keep my fingers crossed.

UPDATE: It's going to be in Malmö! Bummer.