The more closely I look at the house (and what documentation there is for it), the more convinced I become that the exterior was once quite charming and decorative. Take a look at the details under the eaves:
To me the carving suggests something in the direction of “Sveitserstil” (“Swiss style”) decorations. This means it’s not wrong to try to make the place pretty again. Very exciting, actually!
I was finally able to make it up to the farmlet after a few hectic weeks in the city. My main goal in coming here was to tear into the wall in the living room to see if I could uncover the window from the old photograph. It had been relatively easy to pull off the thin “huntonitt” panels that were covering the beadboard in the kitchen, so I guess I just assumed it would be pretty much the same in the living room. Boy, was I ever wrong! Here’s as far as I got:
It turns out that the walls are clad in a much thicker Huntonitt panel (a full centimeter thick) that is used as insulation, even today. It’s essentially a kind of fiberboard, so it just comes apart when you try to pry it off. The black is a layer of plastic and underneath seems to be another layer of Huntonitt that is perhaps plastered and covered in what looks to be striped wallpaper.
I’m guessing the wallpaper may date from the major renovation in the 1950s or 1960s, when the upstairs was built out. I tried to feel around underneath the striped panel, but couldn’t reach the wall behind it. Here’s a link to a website I found that gives a great overview of the various materials used in the walls of old houses in Norway. It’s super helpful!
My neighbors were surprised to learn that there was another window there. The septuagenarian patriarch, who has never lived anywhere else but on the farm next door, says he can’t ever remember there being a window there. He started teasing me about the likelihood that I would just uncover a big hole in the wall, which made me realize that this probably isn’t the best project to start in the fall, especially given that the government is predicting record high prices for electricity this winter.
That, and the fact that I managed to break my only hammer, have me rethinking the wisdom of doing this project now:
Oops! Those Huntonitt panels are way tougher than me. I also bruised up my left hand pretty badly, so I’m declaring myself defeated for this round. I should never assume that anything is going to be easy in this project!
I can’t make it up to the farmlet this weekend so I’m just going to post a link to the Pinterest board where I’m collecting images of window in styles similar to what may have been original to the house.
ETA: I took some photos of relevant windows along the walk from the bus stop to the farmlet:
Not sure what the neighbors think of me taking snapshots! The last two are good examples of window chaos on older houses in this area. I feel like this gives me a certain amount of leeway to choose what I like. I love the detail on the windows in the black house!
I went back to the old photograph of the farmlet from before the renovation with upstairs addition, just to see if I could figure out anything more about the windows. Here’s the best close-up I could get of the full house:
Unfortunately, the kitchen window is obscured by the tree, but you can definitely see not only the east-facing living room window (which is much narrower than the window that’s there now), but also, if you look very closely, a window on the north wall that must have been boarded up:
People, this is HUGE! How could I have missed this before? Not only does it tell me there once was a window there. It also gives me the best clue yet for what the original windows for the whole first floor might have looked like. Sadly, the photo is so blurry I can’t be completely sure, but it really does look like one of two or maybe three styles.
It might be the “empire” style I’ve written about before. Or it might be what is called a “krysspostvindu” (cross post window), where the two upper squares each open independently and are separated by a “cross” that divides the window opening vertically in the middle and horizontally two-thirds of the way up. I feel like maybe you can just make out the “cross” as a darker shadow in the north window, but I can’t see it at all in the east window, which doesn’t seem to have any panes in the two panels.
Anyway, now I’m totally confused and desperate for more evidence. I don’t think I’ll be able to make it up to the farmlet until the first week of October (the traditional Norwegian “potato vacation”), but obviously I’m going to have to start tearing out whatever is covering up that window as soon as I get there!
Okay, so I need to face reality concerning the bathroom. One thing is that I was recently informed by the contractor that I still have an outstanding invoice on the work that was done this spring. Yikes! I was sure I had paid all the invoices, but apparently not, so I need to take care of that right away, and unfortunately it’s a big chunk of change.
Another thing is that I had an electrician from another firm stop by to give me a bid on finishing off the job, but he said he basically couldn’t do anything until the wall surfaces were finished. I had called him in to see about moving some of the wiring that I wasn’t happy with, but I’m realizing now that I maybe should just go with how it is for the sake of making progress. It may be that I can’t have the washing machine in the bathroom after all, but maybe it isn’t such a bad thing to plan for keeping it in the kitchen. It’s not the most aesthetically pleasing thing in the world, but i’m pretty sure I could make it work. And as for the weirdly placed outlet for the ceiling lamp, the new electrician mentioned that it might work to install a fixture with track lighting instead of the simple round ceiling fixture I had been envisioning; maybe something like this?. That suggestion kind of unlocked things for me mentally.
So, really the next step is getting the damned floor and walls plastered. I’ll readily admit that I am terrified to do this job, even after having taken a class earlier this summer. There are so many steps and logistical hurdles to overcome, and the plastering itself is an art form that requires a high skill level.
To take one step in the right direction, I went back to the microcement place in Oslo today after work to look at color samples. I still can’t quite shake the notion of having a kind of soft pinkish beige color in the bathroom. They had a sample there done in a color called “Duft” (“scent”), which is NCS 1606-Y75R (shown here next to the pink sample I’ve been carrying around with me for a while now):
It’s a little too gray and cold for my taste, so I’m not quite convinced. I put it next to a microcement sample done in the “Eggwhite” color I’m using for the bedrooms and trim throughout the house, just to see how it worked:
That made it seem a lot warmer, but it’s still too grayed out for what I have in mind. (It also convinced me not to do the bathroom in white microcement; I definitely want a color.) So, I went digging around on the internet and found another option, a color called “Deco Pink,” which is NCS S1510-Y70R. I think this is more what I have in mind. You can see the two next to each other in this picture from a Swedish (hence the alternate spelling of “Duft”) color chart from Jotun:
The more I look at them, the more I think “Deco Pink” might be what I’ve been looking for. I noticed too that Jotun recommends “Egghvit” as one of the whites that coordinates with “Deco Pink,” but not with “Duft,” probably because of how grayed out “Duft” is.
So, it’s not like I’ve made any real progress on the bathroom. As soon as I pay off the last invoice I need to figure out how much it will cost to get all the microcement supplies, and also a way to transport it all up to the farmlet. I wish it were realistic to start on this during fall break the first week of October, but there’s just no way. Instead, I’ll try to spend that week completing the painting of the north bedroom, including the floor. I’m super excited about the blue that I’ve decided on for that (Gjøco calls it “Sky” and it’s NCS 1215-R76B, which appears to be the same as Jotun’s “Risør,” though I’m not 100% sure), and it’s also a project I know I can complete successfully, so there’s that. Here’s the Gjøco color sample:
Hmm. I never thought I’d be going for pastels like these. Seeing them together for this post kind of makes me not want to have baby pink and baby blue in rooms right next to each other. I may have to go back to the other option for the north bedroom floor, which is now a kind of sand color calle “Skimmer” (NCS 2004-Y50R):
Gah, I don’t know! Analysis paralysis, much?
Renovation Tangent 