I really like my postman. Or my postmen (because there are 3, depending on the day of the week). They bring me letters and packages, and - at least during the last 2-3 weeks - received peaches. But all too often they only bring advertisements and invoices. And as my friends, dear as they may be do not like to write cards or letters, I was so happy when my sister told me about postcrossing:





I have been a member of this community for 18 days now and received my first 4 postcards, sent 11, and 5 are still travelling. It's nice and exciting. E-mails are practical and fast, the internet is absolutely great (I don't need TV nor vacuum cleaner, nor washing machine or hair dryer, but would not want to do without my PC and internet connection), but "real" mail is simply the best.

Current Mood: creative

Yesterday I received this beautiful card from lotus_lizzy:




Thank you so much dear, it really made my day. The picture reminded me of a photo I took approx. 10 years ago. I spent half a year working in Brussels. I had found that strange but cute littel apartment not far from the European Parliament, in an old house on the third floor (always had to climb those extremely narrow stairs with my then 2-year-old daughter, the groceries, the buggy...). When I stood on the balcony I could see a park which resembled a bit the one on lizzy's photo, you could see some houses just very far away, apart from that, it was really green - during summer. When autumn came and the leaves had fallen, it looked like this:




All summer long I had not realised that there was a house IN the park.

Autumn is rapidly approaching in Northern Germany, and let's see what sort of surprises it will bring this year. Looking forward to it!

Current Mood: bouncy

That’s how the raw walls looked like after having removed the plaster:




And the new pipes – so that in the end I would finally have water in the kitchen, because since I had the new pipes laid in the bathroom, and they were unable to find the old connection to the kitchen, I only had water in the bathroom. You get used to it, and even now, after 2 weeks with water in the kitchen, I constantly run to the bathroom to fetch water.




After this, the whole wall had naturally to be covered again. I applied one layer of clay, above this the glass fibre fabric to avoid cracks in the upper layer, and then the second clay layer. Sometimes the differences in depth on one wall were up to 7-10 cm, which had to be smoothed and levelled. However, the walls still are not as even as they are in new houses or when you apply cement plaster. But I think, that’s just the charm of the house.

While renovating the kitchen – especially when removing the old plaster – it was sometimes so dusty, that the dust and dirt could be found in the most distant parts/rooms of the house. So you can imagine the fun I had cleaning every morning and evening. Especially since I had to do all the cooking, baking etc. at the same time as renovating. My daughter expected her usual meals – and she was right about that – and I grew hungry, too. So that’s what it looks like when applying clay to raw walls and preparing desert at the same time:




And then, after several months, after whitewashing the last clay layer several times, after laying the new tiles and having the electrician connect all the plugs and the lamp – voilà – one more room finished and habitable again. And I really do love my „new“ kitchen:




This old cupboard stood in the shed, it was painted in a dirty-yellow colour. I painted it twice in white and put some new buttons, and does it not look really nice now?




The window side of the kitchen

As in the other rooms I renovated so far, I installed an insulating cover on the walls going outside. It was a bit tricky in this case, as the space between the original wall and the door frame was so small, that I could not have fixed the insulating layer plus the clay layer. Otherwise I would not have been able to put the door in again. – Well, I have not done it so far, because I never close it anyway, but I could. The trick was to cut the insulation in half, and then apply the clay – it just fits in this way. The wall naturally is not even, but those who don’t know don’t see it – at least I am telling myself this.




I allowed myself the luxury to buy an old scale and a clock you wind up with a key, both dating from around 1920 (via ebay), and I think they do go nicely with the style of the kitchen. It’s amazing what you can find when you are looking for it.




The last thing I did was building a new under-cupboard for the sink. It’s a porcelain sink which had been standing in the garden for the last 10-20 years, filled with soil and flowers. I'ts extremely heavy and at first I was afraid that the cupboard would break - but it supports the sink quite well, hopefully for a long time. That’s how it looks now:




I really do enjoy working in the kitchen now, the only thing which would be even better would be to have an old oven you can feed with wood. Maybe one day…..

Current Mood: accomplished

During the last months I have been renovating the kitchen, and now, finally it’s finished! It took since around April because apart from really being a lot of work, this is the first year I took the necessary time to work in the garden, too. And I’m quite content with the results. Even though I was absolutely unsuccessful with any kind of cabbage – neither Broccoli nor cauliflower (just 1 piece came out), nor Brussels sprouts grew as they should, and there are three red cabbages which might turn out to be edible.

But I have lots of egg plants in large pots, beans, lots of ripe tomatoes, some green/red and yellow peppers and hot peppers. I got cucumbers in my little greenhouse (just metal and plastic, I’m not sure it will survive the winter, but it was cheap enough, and it did well during the summer). I grew spinach – now frozen and ready to be cooked when needed. And of cause more zucchini than I can consume – will make more „zucchini tea-bread“ tomorrow. A recipe I found last year and it is delicious. If anyone is interested, tell me, I’ll send you the recipe.



I preserved quite a lot of fruit and vegetable already – also brambles and pears collected in the fields and meadows- and now started to „work“ – it really is work this year- the battle against the peaches. Last year I had maybe 10 peaches! On two trees, and this year there are maybe 50 to 60 kilos. The branches are hanging onto the grass, where you can collect peaches lying on your stomach. So I prepared a peach liquor, will do jam and chutney tomorrow and have given away some kilos to neighbours and friends already. And have been eating peaches every night for days now. But they are really tasty and especially when it’s warm, the smell is wonderful.




I made a little fence around this herbs and vegetable bed, because otherwise my dog, not caring for the plants, would always run over them intending to catch his ball – in case I threw it the wrong way. Or he simply lies down on the plants. Seems to be comfortable?




When I moved into my „new“ house, I only put new wall paper in the kitchen, as the old one was really awful and I glued it directly above the several old layers. That’s what the kitchen looked like just before I started renovating. Weren’t those plastic tiles beautiful? ;)



I started removing first the wall papers…



… and then the whole plaster, some of it cement, some old loose clay plaster, some concrete, and removed the old cables and pipes. In the meantime, my electrician – the „best electrician in the world“ – came to lay the new cables:




tbc...

Current Mood: content

Just visited Fran's journal and found her nice photos recently taken and the one with the cat hole. Hi Francis, they seem to be more frequent than you thought. Look at this one!



By the way, this is Putin. She is seven years old and still behaves like a really young cat. She's a little crazy, and it took nearly five years until she tolerated me lifting her and taking her into my arms. But after 1-2 minutes she still starts to mew and complains.
During the birth process - and while Putin was still connected to the umbilical cord, her sister wanted to come into this world and not wait any longer. So the mother, due to the pain, started to run around in my living room, pulling little Putin after her. What a way to start one's life! Maybe this resulted in a sort of trauma. But otherwise, she is peaceful, funny and even tolerates my dog.

After having finished with the bigger tasks in the garden - what rests now is removing weeds, and weeds, and weeds, and watering and some minor work, I started the renovation of the kitchen two weeks ago. First, like with every other room, removing layers after layers of old wall paper.




This is how it looked before I started work. On the left side of the photo you can see the "false" tiles, some plastic-covered thin wood pretending to be tiles - very "nice" - and on the right the brown tiles are very tasteful, as well. I took those down, as well, and have finisehd two walls of three, where I removed the old plaster. 9 boxes of approx. 20 l content, 3 large zin tubs and another approx. 10 buckets full of stones and dust. And the dust is everywhere in the house, covering everything from bottles, to books - even plates in cuboards behind closed doors. it's absolutely useless to try and clean.
I removed the old linoleum on the floor, no idea how old it was, two layers, and it stinks! after 10 days of airing it's getting better.




That's what it looked after removing the wall papers ...




... and that's the status as per today.

I plan to finish the walls in the same manner like in the other rooms, that is one layer of coarse clay, cover with glass fibre fabric, and then another layer of clay, smoothed with water and a sponge. I'll insulate the wall going outside - where the window is - with the Pavatherm plates. The problem with those is, that the distance between wall and door may not be large enough and I'll have to cheat somehow. But one thing I learnt while working on the house: never make too many plans, there are always new discoveries and things preventing me from carrying through with a fixed plan. So best be flexible and work with what you got.

And now - off to play in the dust.

For the first time since I moved here, I was able to prepare my garden for the coming summer. I dug every available space where there are no stone plates or grass, and where I could plant/sow useful crops, herbs and vegetables. I bought two small greenhouses (metal/plastic) and the tomato and cucumber, egg plants and melons started to spread. I really hope we won't have another heavy cold so that they don't die. The strawberries are blossoming - it's a pleasure watching.




We have not had any rain for the last 14 days, and everything is absolutely dry. I have to water the plants and especially the seeds every evening. That's ok for me, but the fields around our village are very dry, too, and the farmers start having problems. So for once I'm hoping for rain. But I know that, when it comes, and it rains 24 hours/day, and I go for walks with the dog four times each day, and come home drenched four times, it's not nice, either. Why can't it rain just some hours during the night and be nice during the day? That never happens here!

As it's the first time ever that I try to grow things like eggplants or melons - pumpkins grow quite nicely here - I would be grateful if someone out there kept their fingers crossed and wished me luck with the new experiment.

Well, this new year is already 8 days old - and apparently will pass as quickly as the last one - but I don't want to miss the opportunity to wish each and everrrryone of you (every time I hear or read this expression I think of Fudge and the Quidditch Worldcup, silly, isn't it?)

a very happy, healthy and peaceful New Year 2009.

It's quite cold in Germany at the moment, but this gives us also beautiful days like this one:



or like this:




While my dog does not mind these low temperatures - he rather refuses to go for a walk when the temperature rises above 30 °C - he suffers from the salt all those idots spray on their sidewalks where sand would do much better.

The cats prefer to stay inside and while I rarely see them in summer - don't know what they do, they just come in to eat, sleep under the roof - they sleep on the sofa, on chairs and tables, and mostly prefer laying on freshly washed and ironed wool pullovers.




May this new year see us all happy and in good health, solve crises and conflicts and keep climate change at a minimum. - And may there be lots of beautiful new H/D fics!

Love to all of you!

Current Mood: content

In October 2007 I put some photos in my LJ to show what the house looked like when I bought it, and the first work done until then. The last thing that was done was removing the large plates covering the red brick stones. I had removed the plates on three walls but in order to get rid of all the debris, had to rent a container. You only have this container for one week before they come to take it away again. And it would have been absolutely impossible to take off the plates on the southern facade within one week. I therefore paid two guys to do this work form me.

In June/July I started removing all the loose material and particles in the joints between the bricks, and refill them with clay.




In the photo you can very well see the technique: the uppermost square has not been worked on yet. You can see how loose and dry the old clay is, missing in some places. There were even some squares where I had to remove and reinsert complete brick rows, as the bricks threatened to fall out of the wall. In the middle square, the joints have been cleaned and in the lowest, refilled with newly mixed clay. In cases where there were really large holes – sometimes reaching as far as where the interior insulation commenced, I used the old material and just wet it and mixed with some new clay. Works perfectly, and the straw contained in the old clay helps fill the holes easier and faster.

I could easily work on the lowest row of squares, and with the help of my small scaffolding, even on the second row. But impossible to reach up to the highest, or to work on the interior of the roof. Fortunately our local carpenter was sooo sweet and lend me a scaffolding which was an enormous support. And even though seen from the pavement it did not seem to be very high, when I was working up there my knees would tremble and I suppose I had a quite high adrenaline level all day long. I really suffered from vertigo.




After having filled all the joints, I removed the old residues from the wild wine which had climbed up just below the roof – and did quite a lot of damage – and painted the inside of the roof. While the clay was drying, I removed the strips around the windows – plastic, eww! – and put new wooden ones, which then were painted in green.




I then painted the old beams which certainly had not been treated for decades. I would have loved to really remove all the old paint and only treat the wood with some oil, but it was impossible to remove the old paint. I used various methods but just the necessary consumables would have cost me hundreds of Euros. So – well, I just painted them with some wood-compliant brown paint, and it does look nice and I hope will protect the wood. The bricks of the squares were painted with normal facade paint – open for diffusion. In most places it covered nicely, and looks clean and white, in some places, however, when drying, the subsurface comes out and the whole thing just looks „yellowish“.




I have still not found out why this is exactly. At this special spot, the rainwater which should flow along the gutter and then go down into the sewer, spills over the top and against the wall. So this would be attributable to moisture. In some other places, however, there is no moisture at all, and some bricks when drying look dirty and brownish. I’m working on that problem, hopefully I’ll find a solution. But if anyone reading this knows what might help, I would of course, be most grateful for any piece of advice.

I then painted the window ledges, had to rebuild one from scrap as some bricks had just fallen out.

And during the last weeks I also removed all the old plaster on the base. As can be seen in the second photo above, it was quite broken down, also due to the constant impact from rainwater.

And on one fine sunny day I finished work outside for this year. This is the result:




Wouldn’t you admit that it looks nice?

I’m not sure whether I just try to fill the joints of the red brick wall and paint the whole thing, or whether I put a new cover of plaster. That will be left to decide for next year.

And just to show you what my animals were doing while I was busy working:




Cato was sleeping...




... Putin was sleeping ...




… and my dog Räuber was sleeping, too. And even IN MY BED!
Has anyone an idea how I could train them to help me working on the house?

In early summer next year - I would like to renovate the kitchen and the entrance corridor first thing when spring comes - I will have to paint the remaining upper beams on the east and north side of the house, and paint the stone plates and beams of the shed. But for now, I've started preparing to work on Christmas presents for my family.

I dug all the beds in the garden last week, spread the little compost I had and started cleaning all the tools. If the weather stays friendly and does not turn too cold too soon, I might even go and bring in some dung from a paddock nearby. I so would love to have nice vegetables next year. This year which is ending soon, due to the fact that the work on the facade lasted a lot longer than I had thought beforehand, there was not much time to really look after the garden. I did, however, grow some beans (even if I do not really like eating them, although we did), but they looked nice,



as well as the cucumbres in pots




and sage and thyme blossomed just beautifully:




I'll enjoy the winter time, getting lots of new ideas to plan the garden and the renovation of the other room or the attic, but I'm already looking forward to next spring.

… continued from part II

The next three photos show the result of the efforts and work: and I admit, I’m quite satisfied, and as Severus Snape would say - although never with regard to Harry: “its acceptable”.










What’s left to do is the installation of the oven. There is an old oven in the shed which probably had been removed when the electric heating was installed, I suppose some time in the 70s.




Up to now I do, however, not have the slightest idea how to move it from the shed to the library. It's so incredibly heavy. Suppose I'll have to find some "strong men" to help me with this one. -- To comply with fire protection regulations, the floor where the oven is placed has to be covered with either a glass plate, a metal plate or tiles. The cheapest option was to use tile residues left from work in the living room, bath room, and some I found “lying around”. 2 weeks ago, I made the mosaic, the photo shows it before the joints were filled:




The protection has to be 20 cm to the sides and 50 cm in front of the oven. And it is reasonable, as sparks and burning pieces of wood would not be very sensible on the new wooden floor.

In the next entry, hopefully within the next days, I’ll describe the work done on the façade.

I hope everyone is fine and looking forward to the winter season with candles, tea, gingerbread, all leading up to Christmas.