Plastered the southeast bedroom Sunday, 06-Feb-22 19:53:48 CET

Prepared for painting a wall in the old house Sunday, 20-Feb-22 22:08:03 CET

Sunday, 13-Feb-22 19:16:44 CET

Southeast bedroom finished

Finished the southeast bedroom and started moving things to the new house.

Monday 7 February

Today my wife was back to work for her employer. She logged in to her office from our new house. She worked from the living room, and I worked from the hobby room on the first floor. As such, this was no particular day. It was sunny, our panels delivered 21.7 kWh.

Our electrician came to us today. He mounted the "windows" the frame around the outlets in rooms we finished painting. I told him about one outlet that did not work, and he fixed that. Then we had a look at the data cables and got the mysteries solved. There are glitches with the data cables, but that is another time.

Today we retired the coffee machine from the electrician. It is a coffee pad machine, and he can have it back now. We moved our old filter coffee machine to the new house. In the old house, we will use instant coffee from now on. This is not incredibly delicious, but we got two big jugs of it, and why not use it? You might wonder what significance this has but having the home coffee at the new house is part of living there.

In the evening, we both worked on the southeast bedroom. It was difficult because we had different ideas about how the plasterwork should be done. We discussed the challenge and considered each other's standpoints. It is the classical dilemma between doing things well versus doing things quicker. Now we need to do a lot of walls, so we need to keep up a quick pace. We also want the result to be pleasant. We also have different strong and weak sides. I am perhaps a little better on the top finish, and my wife is better on the grainier mud.

We painted the walls with primer. This is the primer that should be used with the Auro paint. That was much quicker than the Renolac we used last time.

We slept in the new house.

Tuesday 8 February

It is lovely to wake up in the new house. Now we have been here and sleeping over so many times it is difficult to remember when. We can wake up later when sleeping in the new house because we work from the new house. When we sleep in the old house, we need to wake up earlier to "be at our work" on time, i.e., the new house.

It was a regular full working day, and in the evening, we worked on the southeast bedroom. I painted with primer one more time in some places.

We went to our old home in the evening because we had not prepared anything to eat in the new house. In our old house, we had things in the fridge. How are we going to juggle these things?

Wednesday 9 February

Today in the morning, still at our old house, we considered our options sleeping over in the new house, and one thing that would make it possible was if we could kook a meal. Another thing was the garbage container at the old house being emptied on Thursdays. If we brought the garbage to the new house and things for a meal with us, we could stay over Wednesday to Thursday and then return Thursday evening. Really quick, we decided on a vegetable soup. My wife gathered the ingredients while I went out and picked up the garbage from the container.

It is nice that we will not need to worry about the garbage container at the old house from now on. We bring all garbage to the new house and hence one thing less to remember and plan around. Now we just have clean clothing to worry about. The washing machine is at the old house.

I worked half day. My wife worked in the southeast bedroom. When all preparations for painting were done, she could start painting. In the afternoon, she had finished the first layer. It looked great. Another layer is necessary. No single flake was found in the paint, so she ordered more paint in the evening.

I worked on the shelf for the switch, but it did not become more than a preliminary plan for doing it. I will make the shelf an integrated part of the ceiling on top of the utility cupboard. In front of the shelf, I will need a hatch to access the switch. I searched for the material, and then that was it for today. Here is a glossary for the drawing:

• Bärande balk = loadbearing beam.
• Hyllplatta = shelf
• Gips = gypsum
• Mätarskåp = utility cupboard
• OSB bakre vägg = OSB (oriented strand board) back wall.

Well, I went outside and cleared the space where we got our pile of wood snippets last year. We ordered a new pile of snippets. I have no idea when it will arrive, so this was a good moment to clear the area.

My wife spoke to her mother in the evening, and I could ask about the needle story from my previous blog. Before the war, it turned out that her mother's mother had been to Sweden. It was a trip where they went with a boat from Rugen in Germany to south Sweden. Then they traveled around in south Sweden and back via Denmark. On that trip, they had a visit to Malmö. I started searching again in Malmö to find out if my wife's grandmother went to the Cronquist shop or if that was closed by then? What happened to the sewing stuff of the A. C. Cronquist shop in Malmö, or was it still open before the war?

I finished repairing my first pair of Jeans. It feels surprisingly good. Both the result and the work itself feel nice doing. I got another pair of Jeans that will get the same treatment. Remove one back pocket and use it to repair the holes, or use another fabric to repair the Jeans. I also got a nice pair, but they got a torn pocket. I think I will work on that first.

Thursday 10 February

This morning we woke up in the new house. It was raining in the morning, but a bit of sun was promised throughout the day. We both worked from the new house for our employers. I worked from the hobby room and my wife from the living room.

My wife painted the second layer in the room's corners after work. She still has to paint the window niche sides and the door, but that is for tomorrow evening or Saturday morning.

Then we went to the old house. On the way, we bought groceries, and I cooked dinner. I made the broccoli curry that we have been eating for several years now.

 

Friday 11 February

It is already Friday. We had regular work from our new house day. The sun came out in all its glory, but we were inside. It was also a little colder today. Not that cold that the earth's average temperature is restored to preindustrial values but chilly so that the water bucket of the sheep had an ice layer.

I thought about the term "My wife" that I used a lot. I don't like it, actually. It becomes possessive, like "she is mine." We are married, and she is very dear to me, but I don't own her. She is not a thing to be owned, neither am I. So it is the "My" part I don't like.

I could use her name, but that would be too personal. Perhaps she would like to have more distance to the blog. I try to keep her out of the blog to feel comfortable with my writing.

There are other words for wife, but "My" is hard to get rid of. Let us try a sample sentence: "better half and I were out walking." It sounds so strange. I heard that they use the acronym for Dear Wife at some forums. It could work like this: "We worked on the new house, DW painted the southeast bedroom, and I went to the grocery store to pick up items for our evening supper." It is not perfect, but it eliminates the "My" part, although it is not perfect grammar.

I will try to use DW from here on; it stands for Dear Wife, and yes, we are married, so formally, I would add the prefix "my," but I will not do that. Other variations are Dear Daughter, Dear Son.

At the end of the workday, golden hour, the green spider plant (Gras lelie) stood in the sun at the now filthy window. My colony of green spider plants has moved to the new house. There are many spider plants with white stripes, but this plant never had that. I got it from DD on 2 October 2020. Initially, I got two plants. I have propagated them to five. It is still a little mystery when the plant sends out new shoots. I learned that the plant likes light but doesn't want direct sunlight. I will need to figure out how to arrange that.

And cleaning the window has no priority at the moment.

In the evening, DW was painting the southeast bedroom. I went to the grocery store to pick up the meal for tonight. We had decided on Tacos. This is called "Fredagsmys" in Swedish. I lit the wood stove as well; it was lovely indeed.

Saturday 12 February

The nice weather continued. It started with a beautiful morning. Our first task for today was picking up more hay for our sheep. We bought 10 packages of hay. This will probably be enough until the grass starts growing.

Next, DW finished the second layer of paint in the southeast bedroom. There emerged flakes in this pot as well. This is the score so far:

1. The first bucket had a lot of flakes that I filtered on 22 January. I used it for the northeast bedroom. It was enough with one layer because we had white primer.
2. We complained, the company replied very well. Then we ordered the second pot. It was flawless. DW painted with this bucket in the southeast bedroom on transparent primer from the same paint product range.
3. Now she finished the southeast bedroom with the third bucket and noticed flakes. We will need to filter the bucket to find out how much it is. There is paint from this bucket, so we will probably use the remainder in the hobby room.

Next bucket we will filter when we get it.

It is great to have the room finished despite flakes here and there. I removed the protective paper, and the room is ready for furniture.

I worked on the shelf for the switch mounted in the ceiling on top of the utility cupboard. It will be integrated into the ceiling, so it will not be visible. There will be air flowing around the switch to prevent it from overheating. Now it is possible to connect cables from the rooms to the switch and turn it on. I think I will get the outlets of the southeast bedroom connected, but the rest our electrician can do. We will see, there are plenty of other things to do.

Then we went to our old house for supper. We brought with us our small trailer with a hood. The plan is to move my office desk to the new house. This is a new part of this project, moving things to the new house.

Sunday 13 February

Breakfast in the old house, a smoothie. After breakfast, the activities for today started, disassembling my desk.

It is an Ikea desk of solid quality. The steel is perhaps two to three millimeters thick.

We tucked in the desk in the little trailer along with buckets of wool material and projects that my wife mainly uses. The overall plan is to free the wall towards the street in the old house. We arrived at the new house in the afternoon with the small trailer.

I started assembling the desk in the new house while DW made supper. First, I laid the tabletop on the floor as I would like to have them when the table was finished. Then I placed tape on the floor where the table ends. That way, I could remove the tabletop and start modeling the support structure to the shape of the tabletop.

This chosen new configuration was not entirely according to the original plan of the table, so I had to figure out a way of using the available parts in a little creative way. There was supposed to be one metal plate on each side of a tabletop seam in the original design. I had to put a plate right over the seam in this configuration.

When the main beam was finished, we could turn it around. After that, it was possible to put on the T beam. It does not have a fixed position, so it can be placed freely on the main beam.

At this point, I still had no idea if this was going to work at all. The metal is on the hefty side, so why would it not like to be extended like this?

The main beam holding it up was not the issue. Aligning the seams was slightly tricky with this configuration. I added homemade braces to keep the alignment together of two of the plates.

In the evening, I worked on repairing my third pair of jeans. This pair had holes on the butt that made it look like a "rumpnisse" from Ronia, the Robber's Daughter by Astrid Lindgren. I just realized that the English audience was removed from the actual meaning of the one decimeter high characters in the story. In Swedish, Rump plus Nisse is a friendly short goblin of Scandinavian folklore. So Rumpgoblin. Here is my version of the Rumpgoblin.

I placed a new layer of fabric behind the holes to strengthen the place. Then I started sewing the new fabric to the backside of the jeans. I sewed along the edge of the pockets to keep them functional.

This concludes this week's activities.

We finished painting the southeast bedroom and started on a new epoch, moving things to the new house.