husband the builder (#tbt)

husband was already a master builder way back then. this is one of my favorite photos of him. ever. i do love these thursday strolls down memory lane. this is in the back garden of his childhood home in sweden. and doesn't it foreshadow the future?

a beautiful handmade wooden airplane

we were invited to a 70th birthday party on saturday at our neighbor's house. he's become a good friend and so we wanted to give him something more special than the standard three bottles of wine in a gift box. since he had been a commercial pilot for SAS for years, i suggested to husband that he try to fashion an airplane out of driftwood. we looked through our driftwood collection and didn't find a piece that whispered airplane to us. so husband turned to the firewood pile and found a piece of birch that was just right. he sanded and smoothed and attached oak wings and tail fins (i'm suddenly in doubt that that's what they're called). i was planning on painting some stripes and call letters on it, but it was so beautiful and pristine in its naked glory that we left it. but now, at least, i can say that i've given a meaningful gift.

husband's sawmill - the big project of 2012

december 21, 2012 

december 30, 3012

december 30, 2012 

husband built doors for his sawmill in recent days - he had two weeks off here at christmas (he starts a new job january 2) and thus lots of daylight hours. the door on the left isn't quite finished, but i imagine it won't be long. what a lot he's done...this was but a hole in the ground back in august and now it's a whole, nearly weather-proof building with a functioning band saw inside. husband is very proud of it and i'm also proud of him. i could really take a lesson from him in deciding what i want and going after it. that's the lesson i want to take into 2013.

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two new pinterest boards: caffeinated. vision walls (more about that soon). 

midlife crisis: an update

i told you previously about husband's midlife crisis. and now there's been enough developments that i thought it was time for an update. the roof is on, the electricity was hooked up this week and yesterday, the saw itself arrived.

the part i'm not entirely clear on is why the building had to be quite so large when most of the saw is outside. of course, when it's not in use, it is inside the building, protected from the rain. husband says he'll move the rest of his workshop out there, so i'm thinking it's a good thing.

husband was like a little boy on christmas morning, tho' he looks quite serious here, as he tests it out on a log.

one of his buddies from down the road brought several logs over for him to practice on. he's got to get the hang of it and get it calibrated. sadly, i missed getting a shot of all of the men, standing around, gazing lovingly upon the saw.

here's the back side of it - not as fetching as the front. it's also much heavier than it looks - 285 kilos - it required heavy machinery to lift it into place. the guy operating the heavy machinery, when asked how much we owed him, said, "just let me come by and watch you saw one day." "it's a deal," said husband. that's what's nice about living in the countryside.

i think it's fitting that husband got a swedish saw, since he's half swedish.

another boy toy arrived this week - a new old tractor. you might recall our other tractor, where i asked you to help us name it. i never followed through on the naming ceremony because basically after driving over here, that tractor never started again. that was a bit of a letdown.

but husband is currently outside, scooping dirt around as i write this, so this one works. and it also needs a name - all suggestions are welcome!

i think his midlife crisis is coming along quite nicely.

progression of a mid-life crisis

july 16, 2012

i'm afraid that i have to admit that husband is in the midst of a midlife crisis.

july 17, 2012

instead of manifesting itself in a sports car or motorcycle, he has decided to purchase a sawmill.

july 19, 2012

the sawmill apparently requires a rather large building of its own.
and big trucks delivering materials.

july 21, 2012

so he stayed home this summer to work on that building instead of coming on holiday with us to the states.

july 22, 2012

he made progress, but not as much as we thought he would.

august 5, 2012

but he has remedied that in recent weeks.

august 11, 2012

and it was at least partially because of bad weather - you apparently can't pour cement when it's raining.

august 15, 2012

he has done this nearly single-handedly, including all the digging.

august 20, 2012

tho' a big cement truck came and poured that cement.

august 27. 2012

he's incredibly dedicated, working until dark every night when he comes home from his real job.

August 30, 2012

using entire weekends on the construction.

much as a normal man in mid-life crisis would lavish attention on the sports car.
(or something worse.)

September 1, 2012

he built himself a lifting device, because he knows i'm no help with heights.

September 1, 2012

as he builds, he's already planning the next building in his head.

September 2, 2012

it's apparently no longer only a sawmill, but a whole lumberyard he's got in mind.

September 2, 2012

he tried to have me help him with that roof construction.

and i WANT to help, but i just do not function well on ladders or scaffolding.

there were tears.

September 6. 2012

he even managed to roll out that paper under-roofing (not sure of the technical term) all by himself.

tho' i did help with it on the other side.

September 7, 2012

he does occasionally take a break to play hockey with the child.

the building is perfect for that.

September 10, 2012

i guess in all, it's not really a bad midlife crisis to have.

it could have been a whole lot worse.

or so i've been told.

hypothetically speaking...

if your husband paid 11,000DKK (more than $2000) for a pile of wood that looked like this?

but also this (and included those big metal roof plate thingies - 9 of them)..

would you feel justified in adding to your fabric stash?

as you may have guessed, this actually happened to me.

it is a seriously tall tree

she's a whole lot better. thank you all for asking!!

we live in denmark, what can we say?

we had to have lego.

houses and homes

i wish someone had shown me this picture years ago. because then i might have had some inkling of what i was getting myself into. this is my dear husband at the age of 4-5, building his first house. and today, husband still loves doing this, tho' it's not what he does for a living. it does seem to be in his blood.

we built onto our house last year, as you know if you've been reading MPC for some time. we also built (or at least started) no less than six other structures in the garden, one of which is my beloved blue room/studio/writing house/atelier/dacha. you would think that the relief of having that behind us would make us lean back, relax and just enjoy it. if husband really wants to work on something, there is, after all a half-finished sauna to get on with.

however, his little boy builder's heart and mind have moved on. and he now has it in his head that we need to move to a large old farmhouse. one big enough for more than one family so we can share this big place and thereby reduce our environmental impact on the world. i won't go into all of that right now and we are writing about it over here if you want to know a bit more of what we 're thinking. what i will go on about is house-hunting.

in my mind, this dream is a couple of years away (i'm not quite ready to leave the beautiful room we built-on here, nor am i ready yet to leave behind what i see as the perfect kitchen). but i will admit that after we have looked at two available farm properties in the past two days, i'm thinking that i can move things up in my mind. because your house is not who you are and if you are good at making a home, you can make wherever you live into your home. and it would really be quite nice if where we live had a barn for a couple of horses. and was a bit older and more charming than our current house, which was built in 1968.

neither of the two places we looked at are yet THE place, but looking will help us shape what THE place looks like. interestingly, both of them had an air of sadness over them, tho' for different reasons. both were on about 6-7 acres and were from the early part of the last century.

at the first one, the man who owned it showed us around. he was a sweet, smiling and eager person (probably because the house has been on the market for 374 days) and it was clear that he had loved the house and knew it inside and out. he had lived there since 1967, raised his family there and was finding it too large for his needs. we couldn't exactly determine if his wife was still alive but there was a definite woman's touch around the place - antique dolls and a big beautiful old baby buggy - and a woman's leather jacket hanging in the front entry, still, we weren't sure.

the house had a feel of having been loved and taken care of, but the last updates of carpets, floors and the kitchen had happened back in 1967 when they moved in, bringing their grandparents' furniture. husband is normally very able to look past all of that, but the shock of the ancient furnace (clearly predating their moving in by some 25 years) was a bit difficult to look past. it also had that old smell and i don't mean in a good way, like a used book store smells old. it was the smell of paint that hadn't been refreshed in 40 years. and although it was as clean as could be, it was the smell of dust. an old smell, not musty exactly, just the preserved air of 1967. and it left me a bit sad, tho' the owner wasn't a sad person at all - in fact, he was smiling and upbeat and enthusiastic and clearly loved the house.

today's house was a bit more interesting and closer to what we were looking for, tho' they had added on a very strange, cobbled together addition at some point, clearly without the assistance of an architect and quite possibly using bits and pieces they found at the local dump. and that bit happened to contain a rather new kitchen (which, in my view, would completely have to go, as it was awful beyond belief - the absolutely epitome of bad taste in every aspect). there were, however, two 350m2 barns attached that i could picture myself filling with horses quite easily. the air of sadness in that place was because it was clearly the former home of a family that had disintegrated. the wife had taken the kids and moved out and the husband was still living there, half the pictures gone from the walls, rooms half-empty, save two big-screen televisions. you could tell it was just a house now and no longer a home, if indeed it ever had been a home.

i wonder if all of the places we look at will have some air of sadness about them? it will be interesting to see...in the meantime, i wonder if husband can have the sauna finished in time for blog camp 2.0?