August 2003
So you all have waited patiently for three weeks (or not so patiently, as some of the e-mails have made perfectly clear) for our August update. Well, it's a doozy.
In the immortal words of Jerry Garcia, "what a long, strange trip it's been." So go get a glass of wine, a cold beer, or a cup of coffee or tea if you're checking us out at ten a.m., and wait for the photos to load. On second thought, even if it is ten a.m., go get that beer. If you're on a dial-up connection, finish it, grab another, and then come back.
Don't say we didn't warn you...
August 11, 2003: Well, when last you'd left us, we'd headed to the beach to escape the grit and grime of old house renovations, only to spend two days rinsing and washing the grit and grime of the beach out of everything we owned. Good thought... but clearly, that just.didn't.work.
So we left the country.
We spent ten days traveling through Scandinavia, figuring if that didn't shake the 160 year old American sawdust out of our pores, nothing would. Good news was, it did. We spent ten days traveling about Iceland, Finland and Sweden, rooting about old cities, buildings, and houses, exchanging 160 year old sawdust for 600 year old sawdust. It was a cleansing experience...
We started in Reykjavik, Iceland. Iceland is a country the size of Virginia, but inhabited by only about 250,000 people, half of which live in the capital of Reykjavik. Located just inches from the Artic circle, Reykjavik in the summer sees about 3 hours of twilight, and no real darkness (contrasted with the spring, summer and fall, in which Iceland sees about three hours of daylight, and the rest pitch darkness). Since this is a site dealing primarily with an old house, we'll skip the details on the wild Icelandic summer nights, the restaurants burgeoning with fresh seafood two hours off the boat, the bars, cafes and nightclubs open until dawn (which was when, exactly?), and we'll focus on the architecture:
And what architecture it was. Iceland was founded by Vikings in the 9th century, and has been subject to rather minimal outside influence since then. The culture reflects it, and how. Icelanders are fiercely proud of who they are, and the entire society is, as a rule, uninhibited, unselfconscious, and at least from what we could see, wholly unrepentant. Really, this is a country which gave the world the music of Bjork, paints its houses in ink black, and somehow, it works. Our kind of people...
There are no trees in Iceland, and no industry (unless you count fishing), with the exception of a metal refinery on the outskirts of Reykjavik. But there's rock, and lots of it. There are also a lot of sheep. Very small, very ugly sheep:
It's no wonder they do nothing but shear and slaughter the critters-- 4-H show blue ribbon material they are most decidedly ... not. But oh, they yield some of the finest, thickest wool you've ever snuggled up under, and even more importantly, they give up a damn fine rack of lamb.
The buildings tend to be smaller than you'd expect by North American or European standards, and while they're stick framed, that's about all you see of wood. They're mostly sided and roofed in sheet metal, believe it or not, and painted in positively wild colors.
The entire city of Reykjavik looks like a manic four-year old designed it after snorting an entire roll of crushed SweetTarts and cracking open his very first Crayola box of 64 crayons. But against an ice blue sky, crystal lakes, and volcanic black and grey soil, it looks incredible. It's also surprisingly easy on the eyes when you're hungover and stumbling blearily through the streets at noon looking for lunch, among the twenty-something Icelanders with beers in their hands that haven't even gone to bed yet.
Another oddity in Icelandic architecture is their view on living space additions. There's no New England-style big house/little house/back house/barn thing going on, where you build the main living space, add-on as the family grows, add a kitchen/smokehouse/storehouse or whatever utility space you need, and then add a conveniently located barn for the livestock. Nooooooo. In Iceland, you build the main structure, and then when you need more space, you add another structure just like it. And then you add another, and so on, until you have all the space you need:
Wild. But certainly practical, and oddly attractive, no? But let's face it, it'd be hard to build something that wouldn't look good in that landscape.
From Reykjavik, Iceland to Helsinki, the capital city of Finland, was quite a culture shock.
For one thing, it actually got dark in Helsinki for about four hours a night. For another, people actually went to bed. To bed, we think, all the better to be up and about the next day, hanging out in sidewalk cafes and power shopping through miles of European boutiques that would make any hardcore stateside fashionista sob with envy.
Helsinki's a pretty little city, very compact and walkable, with architecture clearly far more heavily influenced by its Eastern European neighbors than its Scandinavian neighbors to the west. Scroll down and check out that church...
It's the largest Eastern Orthodox church in Europe, and it's probably enough to convert even the most hardcore aetheist, eh?
Come to Jesus, baby...
Helsinki is also populated by the friendliest people on the planet, every single one of which act as if you are their new best friend come to visit, and a casual chat with you is the highlight of their day. It is also populated by the most beautiful women in the world-- tall, stick-thin and white blonde, with perfect skin, teeth, and everything else. That whole "Swedish Bikini Team" publicity stunt from some years back? Fuhgeddaboutit. They imported them all from Finland.
Once again, the fish was fresh and plentiful, the French wine flowed freely, and the selection of single malt Scotchs was impressive. We'll be back.
We left Helsinki on the overnight ferry to Stockholm, and we wish we could tell you about it. But after drinking more wine and Scotch than two bodies had a right to, and dancing and partying in the ship's nightclub until 3:30 am, well... you know how these things go. The bar tab was surely impressive. It's probably good that we don't remember signing it.
Stockholm is, in a single word... Majestic. From the minute you step foot onto its soil, you have no doubt that you have been fortunate to land yourself in one of the great cities of the world, one that was once the seat of power and the heart of an empire.
The city is built on approximately 14 main islands, but the archipelago it's located within contains, at last count, over 26,000 islands, large and small.
Oddly enough, the most impressive structure we saw in Stockholm was not a building, but a ship. We visited the museum of the Vasa warship, Sweden's answer to the Titanic:
The Vasa was commissioned by King Gustav Adolphus II, who apparently had decided that his cousin, the King of Poland, was giving him enough of a headache to bring out the big guns. The Vasa, the largest warship ever built at the time, was completed after two years of construction in 1628, while Gustav was encamped outside Poland.
She was set to launch from Stockholm's shipyard accompanied by great fanfare, whereupon she was to go directly to collect Gustav from his encampment, so he could be stationed at the prow to see firsthand the look on his cousin's face as he sailed into the harbor and watched the entire Polish military collectively sh** their pants, lay down their arms, and surrender en masse.
Well, she launched from the harbor, alright, with all the promised fanfare, and sailed away in splendor. Except, exactly twenty-two minutes into the voyage, she met her first gust of crosswind, promptly rolled completely on her side, and sank.
Gah. We will never, ever, complain about one of our construction disasters again.
It took two weeks for a messenger to get to Poland to break the news to Gustav about his prized ship. By all accounts, he was pissed.
Another architecturally fascinating part of Stockholm was Gamla Stan, the old medieval part of the city:
Gamla Stan features impossibly narrow, winding cobblestone streets, and beautifully proportioned buildings painted in some of the most magnificent color combinations we've ever seen. It's a sure bet that if we'd taken this trip before we chose the paint combinations for Brickman House, it would have had a far more distinctly, um, Medieval Swedish flair. Medieval Swedish? Now there's a color palette we yet to see featured on the Sherwin Williams website...
Not to be outdone by either the Icelanders or the Finns, Gamla Stan also boasted a profusion of sidewalk cafes, with the requisite selection of fresh fish, French wine, and single malt Scotch. Damn, those streets are narrow, and winding. But, as we discovered, the fact that Stockholm is built on a series of islands is a good thing. If you follow any one of these streets through to the end, you will eventually hit water. And if you follow the water, you will eventually hit the bridge that will take you over to the next island, where, if you are lucky, your hotel will be located.
But for ye of little faith, who are now thinking that we are nothing but useless sots who did nothing but eat and drink our way through three Scandinavian countries, let us dispel that notion now, as we present to you our account of our visit to the open air, historic museum of
Now, did you get that beer? If you were fool enough to ignore our original advice, fine. We forgive you. But only once. Go get your beverage of choice, or be fated to suffer the peril of waiting foreeeeeeeever for these photos to load. Alternatively, go back, live your life, raise your kids, stoke your retirement fund, and get that drink. Trust us, we'll still be here when you're done, and so will the photos, probably still loading.
Skansen is the world's oldest open air museum, and is, at least by some accounts, the inspiration for the creation of Virginia's Colonial Williamsburg. The museum opened in 1891, and currently encompasses about 75 acres of buildings and compounds, demonstrating the history of Swedish architecture and building techniques from the beginning of the 14th century onward.
Now, Delaware, as you may or may not know, was originally settled by the Swedes in 1638, which made our visit to Skansen an amazingly instructive lesson in the architecture of Brickman House and the historic homes in our area.
In many ways, it was like old home week for us. We wandered around the individual compounds of buildings, thinking ohhhh, we've been here before. We've seen this, and that, and oh by the way look at this molding, and that window detail, and how perfect would this.gate.be. for the back entrance... We were so busy snapping photos of architectural, interior and outbuilding details, that we didn't get a single overview photo of any of the installations. Good thing we bought the guidebook.
The first group of buildings we saw was this one:
We wandered through the courtyard and into the farmhouse, and it all looked hauntingly familiar. We found out why, when we read in the guidebook that it was the Delsbo farmstead, a working farm in northern Sweden from 1850.
We were excited to see the outbuildings, because we know, of course, that our house had a number of them, all of which are long gone. And we were doubly excited because, since we know we've got to build a barn, we now had some ideas to work from. Okay, well, one half of us knows we have to build a barn. The other half is skeptical, and is being dragged along for the ride...
The neatest thing about the Delsbo barn was, believe it or not, the gutters:
Click on the photo above to enlarge it, and you will see that they constructed gutters by cutting young trees in half, hollowing out the resulting half-circles, and mounting them on shelf-like brackets under the roof overhang. How cool is that? Sounds like a good project for a slow winter, if we could only figure out how to get ten foot saplings into the house to work on hollowing them out over a few months.
After checking our trusty guidebook, complete with map, we set off from the Delsbo farm for the county lawyer's house, built in 1820 in Varmland. No, we don't have any idea where "Varmland" is, but our guidebook tells us the lawyer's house was transported from there. Good enough for us.
Hey, call it professional interest, call it morbid curiosity, call it what you will, but we had to check out how the ambulance chas... errr, esteemed esquires, lived on the other side of the world.
On the way, we came across this building, and had one of those scary, cross-continental flashbacks:
We don't know if you can see it well, even clicking on the photo for a larger view, but we saw the window trim/detail, and flashed immediately to this:
We kid you not, the window trim that we're rebuilding and restoring on our house is absolutely identical to this 1840 farmhouse halfway across the world.
By the way, it's a good thing we had said guidebook, because all of the actual signage at Skansen is in Swedish. Considering that it was only 10 a.m., we hadn't consumed enough alcohol to read Swedish just yet.
The lawyer's house, by the way, was quite impressive:
So much so that we considered ditching Brickman House and all that we hold dear to take the Swedish bar exam. We decided however, after careful consideration, that our command of the Swedish language might not be good enough to take a three-day written exam in it, and abandoned the plan.
The lawyer had great taste, though, and we snagged a detail shot of the upper story sidelights, shortly to be recreated on a certain barn to be constructed in the very near future at a certain farmhouse near you:
Click on the link for a larger photo of those fantastic little round windows...
We also took a photo of our dream barn interior:
Now, this particular barn was built by a family that had established a homestead in southern Sweden in 1912, after pulling everything they owned across the country on a sled pulled by a cart horse. We were pathetically humbled. Hey, our last donation to Goodwill of junk we don't even use wouldn't have fit on a cart horse and sled (let alone everything we own), and we can only dream that our barn will eventually look like this. But hey, we've got the photo, and we'll strive mightily...
The late 1700's central Swedish manor house, Skogaholm Manor, looked like this:
Ehhh... maybe not. Well, okay, most definitely not. Brickman House will never look like this, in a million years, but hey, we might be able to find a place to fit in a replica of their servant's door:
We also saw a ton of exterior features that we can't wait to recreate on our property. Consider these tearsheets, inspiration photos, whatever. But definitely consider them a preview of things to come at Brickman House...
Our future gate from the main drive into the pool enclosure:
Our future back gate from the private lane into our back driveway:
Our future formal garden (as soon as we can figure out how to fence it off from the deer):
And until we're able to build a proper woodshed, our annual winter deliveries of cords of wood will now be stacked this way:
We couldn't possibly leave you, though, without a glimpse or two of the interiors of these farmhouses. There is now not a shade of doubt in our minds how the Swedes managed to turn Ikea into a powerhouse of affordable, hip, interior design:
The first photo is the interior of the Mora cottage, a farmstead in northern Sweden at the end of the 1700's, and the second is the interior of the Oktorp cottage, a farmstead in southern Sweden around 1870.
Click on the first photo for a larger view, and look at the bed on the left side of the photo. The bed was the "master" bed for the farmer and his wife. Built along the front of the bed is a two foot high bench, which served as a step down out of the extremely high bed, and also served as seating for three at the farmhouse dining table that sat just out of the picture, but was pulled up to the bench at mealtimes. Wrapping around the side of the bed, continuing along under the front of the window was a shelf served as the workspace for the farmer's hobby and winter occupation, clock-making.
In the photo of the Oktorp cottage on the right, the space under the bed was configured for storage, as was the built-in cabinet to the left of the bed. What you can't see in the photo was the other cabinet attached just to the left, equally well-crafted and integrated into the entire unit, where the farmer kept the ducks and hens during the icy cold Swedish winters. Now, we're not planning to house poultry in our house any time soon, unless our circumstances somehow change in a radically unforseen manner, but wow... talk about the potential for multi-use furniture.
Finally, dotted throughout the paths of Skansen are runestones, erected to honor a particularly notable person or event:
We thought it'd be really cool to erect one of these on the property of Brickman House, but ultimately decided against it. The neighbors already think we're weird, and this might just push them over the edge.
All in all, we had a phenomenal trip, and we're already trying to figure a way to juggle our calendars, and our budget, for our return. In the meantime, we'll be hitting our local Ikea for a Swedish meatball fix (hey, it's not Stockholm, but after having the authentic version, we grudgingly admit Ikea's cafe really doesn't do a bad job of it). And if you suddenly don't hear from us for a while, well, the international phone code for Stockholm, Sweden is +46 +8. We'll fit you in somewhere between the meatballs, lingonberries, and French wine.
August 18, 2003: We hit the airport after our vacation in Scandinavia, and almost turned right back around to book one-way tickets back. The wall of heat and humidity that assailed us as we waited for our car service to pick us up was so thick we couldn't breathe. It was no wonder, as we soon discovered, because it had rained non-stop the entire time we were gone, and the temperature then creeped back up to 95 degrees.
Now, we can't say we regretted missing a week of solid rain, after having experienced the Scandinavian summer of clear, sunny 78 degree days without a drop of moisture in the air. We can say, however, that we sorely regretted the lack of a lawn service.
While we were away on vacation, our three acres had been having a block party. It was no fun trying to hack our way through foot-high grass, dragging ten days' worth of luggage. Short-sighted as we were, we'd not thought to pack machetes to bushwack our way to our back door.
Consistent with the way this season has been progressing, and consistent with the way our luck has been running, it rained all day Saturday when we got back. But if we've learned anything at all from this sodden spring and summer, we've learned not to fight it. So we celebrated our return to the good ol' U S of A with a wholly American pasttime-- popcorn and a movie. "Seabiscuit," anyone?
Thankfully, Sunday dawned bright, beautiful and clear, so we dragged out the lawn tractor to bushwhack our way across the lawn, and hopefully begin to make it look like someone actually lived here again. But after an hour on our tractor chugging through grass high and thick enough to feed the entire sheep population of Iceland (remember, they are small), we surrendered and went begging to one of our favorite neighbors for the use of his lawn tractor, as well.
What unexpected fun... After chasing each other around three acres on two Scott's lawn tractors, and getting the entire property mowed in two hours, we've decided we are now in the market for a second tractor. Preferably used-- since we borrowed the second tractor from our neighbor, we didn't feel it would be right to actually indulge our equally intense and wholly mutual urge to experiment with a version of "bumper cars," lawn-tractor-style. Hey, we've never said we don't sometimes get bored around here, and we never claimed to be normal.
But borrowing the second lawn tractor, and getting the lawn mowed in unexpectedly short order, left us with an entire half-day to do something with ourselves. We decided, therefore, to explore the wisdom of the great philosopher Blaise Pascal, who so sagely declared "I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man's inability to sit still in a room." And so, we sat still. Okay, so maybe maybe it wasn't exactly in a room, because it was actually on the pool deck, and maybe we didn't exactly sit still, because we had to get up and down from our chairs to play in the pool and get drinks and snacks, but hey, we did manage not to inflict any damage on ourselves, or others, or our property for an entire six hours. That has to count for something.
And you know what? It was fun. Sometime around 4 o'clock on Sunday afternoon, with the late day sun filtering through the trees, a couple of dead bottles of wine strewn at the bases of the adirondack chairs on our newly-laid flagstone patio, we arrived at a revelation: We. have. a. really. nice. house. Taking time to enjoy it is a good thing.
August 25, 2003: Our educational trip to Skansen notwithstanding, we've given up on trying to convince you all that we are not pathetic, lazy sots. We're here to admit that we are, and the scary thing is, we're coming to embrace it.
We had gorgeous weather this weekend, 85 degrees, clear, sunny, and dry. The clapboards on the house are sagging ever more sadly with each passing day, we have to dodge the pieces falling off the trim around the windows and doors, and the parts of the property we can't reach with the lawnmower are looking ever more ripe for a horde of itenerant Hobbits to establish residence and colonize a Brave New World with each passing day.
So what did we do? We invited good friends to spend the weekend with us, and spent the weekend lazing by the pool, and checking out the sidewalk cafes in town. Pathetic, lazy sots? Yeah, in a hugely pathetic, lazy way.
But on Sunday, sometime after the Bloody Marys and Mimosas at brunch were killed, after the two bottles of crisp, chilled white wines lay empty by the pool, an entire bottle of sunscreen had been squeezed dry and stuck to the patio, and the pile of six (or was it eight?) stacked-up issues of People magazine were soaked, ripped, and read cover to cover, we decided that this.must.stop.
A month of pathetic, lazy sodden-ness is enough, and hey, Labor Day weekend is, ever so conveniently, next weekend.
Time to get into three day weekend, renovation mode. Time to gather the take-out menus, get the local pizza and Chinese food joints on speed-dial, and go full bore. So stay with us, and check back on Tuesday. There's hope for us, the clapboards, and this poor house yet!
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