My audience is growing

I received an email yesterday from Scott Hedges, an expatriate American living outside of Stockholm, who's familiar with the X-Houses and is a big fan of Swedish building and design. He found my blog through Stefan.

Scott pointed me to the website of Gregory La Vardera, an architect practicing in New England. Greg keeps a blog, and Scott has posted a few 'letters from Sweden' there which are much more informed than my ramblings here.

Scott's emails have made my day, and I plan to read Greg's blog regularly. I'll put up a link so all my other readers can, too.

A (non) update

Janne called Per today- but Per's on vacation this week, so no news. Janne will call him next week.

Our hope is that we will get from Per the preliminary OK to do the foundations- or get an indication when we will get that OK. Stay tuned...

A funny aside

We were in Brussels this weekend, visiting friends. While at the Grand Place, a family came up to me and asked- in Swedish- if I could take their photo. I did, and used my tiny Swedish vocabulary to conduct a very brief conversation, all in Swedish.

I was feeling fairly proud of myself until I saw the look of mortification on my son's face. And here I thought I was going to be a 'cool dad' when I became a father...

A sort-of update

I talked to Janne this morning; just hearing his voice brightened my mood. Anyways, he will call the kommun next week as most everyone is away for Easter. We hope there will be progress when he speaks with them as the 'new building' map should be done by now.

Janne has also delayed ordering the electricity just yet. There's a monthly charge and he doesn't think it would be smart to pay for power for a couple of months if we don't need it. It should take only a couple of weeks to get it installed after we say 'go', so once our schedule firms up, we can do that.

Still planning towards a late-May foundation build and an August 5 house delivery...fingers crossed!

Taking my lumps

I just transferred over another chunk of change. The exchange rate I got was exactly 6.00. Sigh.

What's annoying is that six weeks ago, it was 6.40. Here I am like a sucker, waiting for the dollar to rise when I should have stopped complaining and just moved. Oh well. At least I made a good decision when I got married. The rest is just details.

Sweden selects

Charlotte Perrelli has been chosen as the winner of the Melodifestival with her song, "Hero". She came second in the popular vote but the expert panel put her through to Eurovision. Details (in English) are in The Local and Swedish Television.

Personally, I thought it was the best Eurovision song of the finalists. And she easily had the best costume; to me, anyways, her dress was fantastic. Only 69 days to the final.

Mobile Blogging

I visited a tile store in town to get a few ideas. We're going to tile the bathroom and I want the floor to look like the granite the house sits on.

The room is small so I don't think it would be able to take anything too dramatic. The tile pictured here is about the right colour but it has a subtle linear pattern too, which I think would look good.

Blogger has the ability to make posts through email so I snapped the photo with my iPhone and sent this post in right from the shop. Cool, huh?

Island webcam

The boat operator, Waxholmsbolaget, has a great English-language website. They have webcams at the bigger islands, one of which is Sandhamn, not that far away from our little Aspö.

Here's a direct link for their Sandhamn webcams. There are three views, changing every seven seconds. I'll put this as a permanent link, too.

A song for Europe

The UK has chosen its entry for the Eurovision song contest. It was a 90 minute show, as opposed to the six-week traveling extravaganza held in Sweden. The song wasn't too bad, though; at least it wasn't a comedy routine. I did vote over the phone, although not for the eventual winner. I'm not very good at picking winners in the contest.

P.S. I saw a video of the Slovenian entry. Looks like a winner to me!

A new drawing

Stefan forwarded a new drawing of the foundations. They've decided to add an additional support beam right down the center of the house. It's not strictly needed per the building codes, but Stefan said they are now adding the extra support as a matter of course.

It's a bit more concrete for me to carry, and two more pilings to make, but better safe than sorry. I appreciate Stefan and his team thinking of us even during the quiet days of winter.

The dollar's outlook

I talked to a financier friend and asked him if he had any insight on the dollar's outlook vs my favorite foreign currency.

He checked with his company's experts and shared with me their (publicly available) forecasts on the medium-term. Should've asked about this long ago, really.

Suffice it to say, they don't see it getting any better...and long term is worse. I think I'll find an advantageous day in the currency markets soonish and just take my lumps. Long-term, if they're right, I should sell everything now and move it into kronor!!! Sheesh.

Setting a new date

Stefan sent me a note and said we were only a few weeks away from setting our spot in their production line for our originally-planned early June delivery. Given the delays in getting permission from Värmdö, that's really just too soon.

I spoke to our Janne, and also Janne W the builder; we've decided to go for construction on week 32 instead. That would mean delivery to the dock on Tuesday, August 5. This should give us plenty of time to get the full building permissions, complete the foundations, and be ready to go.

A new sketch of the interior

I asked Stefan if it was possible to have a drawing of the interior dimensions. We're getting closer to detailed decisions on fixtures, especially in the bathroom, and all of my plans have been based on estimations with a ruler.

Within a day, his colleague Johan sent the attached drawing, along with a nice note that he was reading my blog, too. So hello, Johan, and thanks for the quick work!

The main bedroom is 3.1 by 3 meters, or almost exactly 100 square feet. The second is a touch smaller at 96, and the bathroom is a cozy 55 square feet. (The whole house is 627 square feet, and the deck an additional 466).

$1 = 6.28 Kronor

I know Sooz hates it when I mention this, but my gosh. This is getting silly. I had budgeted more like 6.85. Sigh.

The Melodifestivalen

An unexpected benefit of being in Stockholm over two Saturdays is that I could watch two of the competition shows for the 2008 Melodifestivalen.

The winner of the Melodifestivalen will be Sweden's entry to the Eurovision Song Contest. I don't have the writing skills to explain this contest adequately, especially to a non-European. Suffice it to say it is an amazing amalgam of camp, earnestness, cheese, and nationalism, and I deeply love the Eurovision Song Contest, much to the puzzlement of my friends.

Sweden takes it pretty seriously; this is a 6-week, nationwide process, as opposed to the BBC's rather embarrassed selection show. Of course, Sweden did have the most famous winners, way back in 1974.

Update: Apparently Ireland (a 7-time winner) has chosen a turkey puppet as its entry. This is the kind of show that has turkey puppets, opera singers, and Moldovan girl groups all on the same stage. Amazing.

The bathroom shower

I've always liked glass bricks, and Sooz mentioned that she thought we could use them in the bathroom as part of the shower.

Janne suggested we visit Fredells, a huge building store just south of Stockholm, and sure enough, I found exactly what we were looking for!

A simple glass brick wall and a glass door makes for a small, simple and stylish shower area. The ones shown here are frosted but we're planning on going clear, with maybe the off blue and green block added for interest.

I want to build it myself, although Sooz isn't convinced about that!

Kitchen details

It's hard to find good images of the type of kitchen we're looking at. There are lot of IKEA-focused blogs and forums out there but none of them show our ideas very well.

Here's a snapshot I took of the 'Rubrik' cabinet fronts, which shows the look of the black, white, and green doors. The stainless looks just like stainless steel.

We've decided to go slow on the initial installation, to get the base cabinets and countertops installed and to do any taller or wall cabinets in a second order. It's probably best to get a good idea of the available space so we don't overwhelm our little kitchen!

An Update

Our lovely Margaret writes in: "Janne spoke with Per this morning. According to Per, the 'new-builders map' should be finished by the 15th of March and then that map will be handed over to Per, and that's when he starts the building permission process. Janne asked if he could get a preliminary (oral) permit and Per said maybe in May.

Probably better news is that Tony reports that the Värmdö paper just ran a big scathing article on how bloody long these applications are taking and it's unacceptable. Apparently the office attached has responded that they are working on a way to get the waiting time down to 1 month.

Fingers crossed, by the end of May, you'll be ready to build."

That gives me a while to get myself into concrete-hauling shape!

Foundations

Janne and I talked in more detail about the process of making the foundations. Once we get the permit go-ahead, Janne will rent a drill and order the concrete, along with reinforcing steel bars and a bunch of paper tubes.

For each foundation point, he'll drill down at least 20cm, (maybe more depending on the quality of the rock), and slide in a few steel rods. The paper tube goes over the rods and is filled in with the concrete to make a cylindrical post. The tubes are supported by lumber to keep them straight during pouring and curing. The plan for our main house (shown above) calls for 10 foundation points.

Janne has a laser mechanism to ensure the tops of all the foundations are level. Because the rock is uneven, each of the foundation tubes will be different heights. By the front door, they'll be 20 or 30 cm, and in the back, facing Claes' house, they'll be much higher, well over a meter. That will be handy to for us to fit the water tanks under the house.

About hundred 20 kilo bags of concrete will be needed. I plan to take a few days off when Janne's ready so I can provide the manual labor to haul everything up from the dock, and to help him with the foundations as much as I can.

Electricity Pt. 3

I found the nearest pole to our property (that's it in the photo) and Janne has contacted his electrician friend Göran to get our order in.

Göran will make up a circuit-breaker box with provision for Janne's tools on a temporary basis. That should be ready in a couple of weeks and Janne will then mount it at the house site, perhaps on a tree or a pallet. Once that's done, Göran will order the electricity to be dropped from the pole, along the ground, out to the box.

It's my hope this will all be done by the end of March, and Janne thinks that's reasonable.

Phone numbers

I should have thought of this earlier- I bought a SIM chip for my phone so now I can make and receive local calls much more easily (and cheaply).

The number's 0708 949177 for the adventurous.

PS. Yes, that is a Swedish phone and yes, I have one just like it!

Arriving at Aspö

We took a 4PM bus from the city to a 4:50 boat on Monday night. There were about 3 other people onboard with us. We got off on the dock at about 5:20, and as the boat left, we were pretty darned alone in the dark.

Janne reminded us to take our flashlights and were we glad we did. When you're on an almost-uninhabited island and it's dark and cold, getting lost is the very last thing you want to do! After a bit of stumbling, we made our way successfully to Janne's, and it was sure nice to see him waiting for us in his warm kitchen.

Personnummers

In Sweden, everybody has a personnummer. It's like a social security number in the US, or a UK National Insurance ID. Without it, you can't, say, sign up for internet access, or order electricity.

Fortunately, Sooz and I both had personnummers when we lived in Sweden. Marcia gave a call to the tax authorities, and with surprising ease, our old numbers were dusted off and we're good to go. Another hurdle crossed.

IKEA Kitchen

We went to the IKEA in Barkarby first thing this morning and got lots of kitchen stuff decided. I wanted to have some color, and not wood, since we're in a massive wood house; Sooz wanted it to be neutral so it didn't dominate the whole house. We decided on a 'Rubrik' cabinet type, which allows us to mix stainless steel, dark green, black, and smoked-glass white. I hope to do a Mondrian pattern!

Manchester United 1 Manchester City 2

It has nothing to do with building a house here in Sweden, I know.

But, damn, am I happy!