SFI – vad säger kossan 1

Posted on January 3, 2012 by jcdesilva

SFI = Svenska För Invandrare

SFI as it reads means Swedish For Immigrants. This is a free learning Swedish system for adults that is recommended for newcomers and in some cases mandatory. As I understand it so far, it is intended to help immigrants to learn not only the language but also the culture, traditions, geography, cooking recipes, taxpaying, human rights, driving rules and much, much more.

I would not recommend it if you are in a hurry to learn the Swedish language and you are from a country that is classified as modern (where women can read, write, drive and vote). But if you are a social anthropologist, or have a lot of time and you are curious about what it is about (because everybody talks about it), or a Swede trying to understand better your immigrant population, it is a great school to be in.

So finally I finished SFI, it is hard to start writing this because so many of the things that happened during the last year come to my mind.

I guess the easiest is to go in chronological order.

First, to enroll, you need to go to a central office and interview to figure out at what level you should enter, what school, because there are several in and around Malmo, and what schedule, there is mornings and afternoons, intensive, which is 6 hours per day, every day and ‘light’ which is 6 hours a week.

The central office, or at least the office I went to was really close to Triangeln which is one end of the old town central axis. There was a really clean nice office, like you expect from a Swedish bureaucracy, with all this panels with beautiful pictures of places to study with multiracial happy people in different languages, etc… So I went in and asked for SFI, in english of course, and they said that unfortunately it was not there, it was the next door. So there it started. It was a 1970’s entrance with ceramic wall, ceiling and floor, these small swimming pool-like ceramic tiles, gray in color and with very dirty joints. Since it was a bit more than a meter deep from the façade line, you could tell that someone had slept there more than once. The door had something unusual for Sweden, there were metal horizontal bars on the glass part of the door, added after the door was originally put, I guess to protect them from immigration. Inside was a bit better, the bars were working good, since it seemed no one had slept inside recently (like in the Paris Atm’s, where you have to draw your money silently so you don’t wake up the bum sleeping there), but the furniture was definitely 70’s and not in a retro-cool way. It was the old surviving furniture from the other, renovated, bureaucracy in Sweden. There was a World map on the wall with pins on it and a Plant, on one corner, and I think there was a goldfish tank, I don’t remember, anyway it reminded me any regional tax office in Mexico countryside, with the grayish metal furniture with worn-out formica finish. I presented myself to a nice young fellow, not of Swedish origin, who explained to me in a very nice way I should wait for my turn for an interview, he gave me a paper with some questions in Swedish to answer on my best Swedish, they were pretty simple but still, when you don’t speak the language….

I sat there not for long and then I met my interviewer,  who was really happy and amiable. She started talking to me in Swedish and I answered as best as I could, then we switched to Swedish and English, and then, when she realized I spoke Spanish she started practicing her Spanish which was pretty good. After a small conversation and an inquiry on my capability to help her to remodel her garage to turn it into a room for her teenager son, I left the room with a C level. SFI goes from Level A=nada, to level D, where you can fill in a McDonalds job application without much problem. So I was happy I was better than nothing. As I went out I was kindly asked to put a pin on the map on my city of origin. I saw that the map was pretty full on the Polish and East Europe side, then emptying all the way to Central Asia, with some other regions here and there with many pins. On the American side there were some on Canada and the US, but there was only one from Mexico, from Hermosillo from all places, a Small city on the northwest of the country. I could not believe that I was the first from a 28million people city to have erroneously landed in Malmo and gone through this. You wonder…. On the south there were plenty more, Chile Uruguay and some other countries.

I chose the ‘light’ version, 6 hours a week, two evenings, three hour each, on a School relatively close to my house. I was supposed to get my letter with time, class and all in between 3weeks and 3 months.

I took 2 months I think.

I had been working alone in my house for several months now, and have not met much people except my family (wife and kids) so the idea of going ‘somewhere’ two nights a week and meeting more humans seemed like a great outing…….

 

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Koja

Posted on October 22, 2011 by jcdesilva

Koja, (pronounced koya) or tree house is one of the first finished projects in the house.

We have a really nice plum tree in the garden that has a lot of thick low branches extending like an open hand. It was sometime last fall when  my daughter decided to start on tree climbing, that we found her sitting on that tree, a little bit stuck because she had brought with her almost all her outdoor kitchen toys . My wife gave my daughters old pots and pans for them to have to play in the garden with mud and stuff, and she decided that she wanted her kitchen up on the tree, I realized that a tree house was in order. Of course with all the other things the tree house had to wait, but in spring, as soon as the snow melted, we needed a new incentive for the girls to get out and play in the garden. The temperatures in spring are not t-shirt like, I mean if the snow just melted it means it is just above freezing, but if you live in a country like this one, you have to learn to enjoy whatever is out there that can be enjoyable, I am still learning…

The tree is located in a good spot near the kitchen and we can see it through the dining room window, with that, and the shape, it was the perfect place to put the new architectural wonder of Malmö.

The wait between the epiphany and the melting of the snow, gave me a lot of time to think of what to do. I wanted something very simple and eventually, if there is a market for it, expand from there.  So one day, I decided to go and buy wood, I think it was on sale and that was what rung the bell, so I went there and bought some 2×4’s and a bunch of small planks, two different size stainless screw boxes and put myself to work. All this was a good excuse to buy a circular saw with a bench that was on sale as well (I assured my wife that I would be using this big machine later to fix other stuff at home).

It was an unusually sunny saturday and I put myself to work. First I played a bit with the long 2×4’s to see more or less how big the house ‘wanted to be’, after a couple of back and forth, moving and measuring, I realized that if I divided the wood in thirds there would be less waste.

 

So I did a rectangle roughly 230×85, one full piece and two 1 third pieces, I screwed it well and played with it to find the right position.

 

 

 

The idea was a minimalistic platform with no support, so I would have to find a place where the branches would allow and provide it.

 

 

First I found the bearing branches, the ones that will support the weight, Of course since the tree is not a symmetrical piece there was a lot of balancing to do so I screwed some parallel beams to avoid longitudinal movement, later the planks will take care of the movement on the other direction.

I had to hold the frame with straps in the bearing places so it won’t move and I could see how it was deforming on the other sides and calculate the plan of action.  I thought it would be very straightforward, but you always seem to think straightforward and forget the laws of nature, and the frame would slide and move out of place as soon as I started putting weight on it. For this I would hang myself on the corners and try to understand its next move. There was a point where I thought that maybe putting legs was not such a bad idea.

I sort of gave up getting a perfect frame done and decided to start setting up the planks. I thought that once the planks were set it would give me more realistic information. As I found out very early while putting the planks, the ones hitting perpendicular to the branches would need some support or else they would cave in. So with my wonderful new circle saw I cut the pieces that were missing and the frame was getting very firm.

There was though, a little overhang that would flex beyond my desire, or my safety mental regulations, the only way to deal with it was reinforcing it with another beam, a diagonal one (that destroyed a bit the purity of the orthogonal). In an interesting way it created a lever with another part of the frame and a branch and problem solved. Suddenly this non-orthogonal piece became the most beautiful.

I finished putting the planks on both ends and the thing would barely flex with my whole 80k jumping on the tip of the overhang.

I left a hole in the middle to make it easier to climb, and left the spacing so I can fill it later with the same size planks when the market (my girls) so desires. So far it has been pretty successful, every time kids come, it is one of the gardens’ favorites.

 

 

 

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Painting 1

Posted on May 10, 2011 by jcdesilva

For the Painting we decided to paint everything white and then the artwork will take care of putting color in our lives. The house was full of wallpaper, in some rooms it had 4 layers. The idea was to go back to the original stucco fix all the holes, humidity patches smooth it a bit and then paint it white.  It seemed an easy task but it turned out to be a bit more complicated. In some rooms it was very easy, just remove the old wallpaper and the wall was almost perfect, add a bit of ‘Spackel’ some sort of gypsum paste with a long metallic spatula and then sand it down to soften. In two of the upper floor rooms it was a lot more complicated, there was some insulation to tear down. The problem was that the insulation was nailed into a wood structure that was nailed into the wall with really long nails. The stucco being 70 years old was not as strong and when taking out the nails they left holes like bullet shots at best, in one of the rooms, the small that we use as the studio was even worse, there was some old traces of humidity and even a small brick came out next to one of the windows. Since I was going to install new wood parquet floor then I needed to remove the baseboard and this one had even bigger nails. At the end of the ‘cleaning’ with all the holes it looked like Osama Bin Laden’s hideout.

If you have ever removed wallpaper you will know that it is glued with a very liquid natural glue that is very sensible to water, so where there was some moisture it is very easy to remove, and if not you just have to add water. Of course you can’t just bring the hose and start showering the house, so you have to spray some water, let it sink in and then pull a bit, this can take ages, so we looked into faster ways to do it, one that was pretty effective, was to cut some large trash bags, spray the area and mail the trash pags to the wall in order to keep the moisture, you leave it for 10 minutes and then it comes out really easy. Yes the first layer, if you are lucky two layers, but when you have 3 or 4 it becomes a never-ending process. We took, or more like my wife took down a couple of rooms of wall paper with this system. But then we came downstairs where we had the first layer of wallpaper that would come out, but behind it there was one nice plasticky one prom the 70’s that would not absorb any water. we tried sanding scratching yelling but it wouldn’t help, so we took one wallpaper remover machine to help. It is a very simple machine, it is an electrical teapot with a long hose and a flat racket size vapour dispenser. Vapor penetrates really deep and with a 20 seconds stuck to the wall it will loosen the fourth layer in one go. So I finished off the lower floor entirely with that. Even if it is relatively fast and clean it still took me several days to remove the paper.

Even if I am writing this so late, it was the first thing we did to the house, it is always a pleasure to rip the old wallpaper of your new house. It seemed as a good starting point. But as you might recall, we had some time constraints, the school was starting and there were many, many things to do to prepare the house for the girls. Since it was clear there was no way I could do everything before the deadline, I called my dearest Polish contractor to save me again. They did the girls room and the office which were by far the most damaged, and in the case of the girls room the most urgent.

Something like six months later I called them again to do the hallway and entrance which had two difficulties. One was the height on the stairway, for which scaffolding was needed. The other was a hideous plastic plaster sort of spits, very 70’s, that were really hard and therefore impossible to remove. I couldn’t see myself scraping the spits from the ceiling at 7 meter height. It would have taken me months and we were already living in the house. So our friends came and did it in a couple of weeks, and it looks much better that if I had done it, whatever the timeframe.

For the rest I did the painting and ‘spackel’, the guinea pig was our bedroom, I did it as fast as I could to see how bad it looked once painted. So I cleaned ‘splackeled’ sanded and painted in a couple of days and at the end it looked pretty good, I mean not as good as the girls room but very good. That was good for me because now I knew that with a little bit more effort, the living and dining room could look very good.

Now the whole first and second floors are done. The living room has the paintings hanging and it looks gorgeous. The only thing missing in the upper floors is the door and window frames and the entire baseboard, that still has this chocolate color with some white paint and wallpaper glue stains that we want to paint in some tone of grey….

The basement is still a big mess, and I guess that I will talk about that in a special basement ‘season’.

 

Pictures coming soon

 

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Kitchen 1

Posted on January 30, 2011 by jcdesilva

The Kitchen is the most important place in the house, kitchens tend to be more and more designed to be a place to stay, talk, work and enjoy. For some people the kitchen should be open, in the middle of the house overlooking every activity, sort of like a bar. As we all know parties start and end in the kitchen, sometimes the whole party ends up being crammed in the kitchen and just making a dinner pause in the dining room, so the bigger the better or at least the more open the better.

As you know, we bought an old house built in 1939 and at that time houses were a series of different closed rooms with different activities, the kitchen was a working place with connection with the house through a door. It makes sense to have some separation to other rooms because of the smells and fat that flies around with the cooking vapors, but these days when we all do things together in the kitchen we want to be part of the action, it becomes very boring when you end up alone doing the dishes and you have no clue what is happening around.

The plan of the house is very simple, so it was very easy to decide how to open the kitchen to the house. Since the kitchen is small we had limitations regarding the size of the opening we could make, in order to have places to cook , work and store, wee needed some wall area and so we decided to do a hole that was big enough to integrate and small enough to have space to install a freezer and a fridge.

The kitchen has a very nice large window towards the street and it seemed pretty obvious to align the opening with this window, the size was enough, only some centimeters smaller than the maximum size we could open and to respect the geometrical purity of the house as originally designed it made sense to do it that way. The making of the hole is explained in one of the demolition posts.

Furniture

Kitchens can cost a LOT of money, as much as you can imagine, they can also be cheap but they will only last so long. We had already installed two IKEA kitchens in two of our previous (rental) homes and we were satisfied with the quality, also they are easy to build and they are over the counter, you can go and buy whatever you forgot at any given moment. Labor is the most expensive thing in building, so it was important that I build the whole thing, so dealing with a reseller would slow things down. So for price and practicality we decided to do so. I have to say that ‘better’ brands have more options but with the kitchen so small we didn’t have so many difficult decisions.

Countertop

The countertop is the most used part of the Kitchen, you clean it a million times, you pour water, oil, vinegar, and every ingredient while you cook, you throw thing at it you accidentally drop things put warm things, cold things  and well everything else. It had to be durable. We have had wooden and laminate. The natural wood you have to oil very very often in order not to stain it, and still it stains, then is very delicate with temperature, it gets really ugly marks if you put a hot pan on it then you have to be careful with water and sunlight, they are beautiful

but for us is better in side-tables or places that are not near water. The Laminate countertops are a bit better with water but you have to be very careful with the seams and the edges, have a good healthy silicone, if it breaks then water comes in and then it is over, it starts to open and there is nothing to do. The laminates are quite ugly and the feel is very plastic, but that is just a personal opinion, they are also glued with epoxy glue and that is not so good. Corian is great but expensive and not bombproof. Stone is beautiful as well but we were not convinced once we did the price estimate, you always end up choosing some really expensive granite or some stone that is harvested in some obscure place in China with child labor. Stainless Steel is recyclable, bombproof, beautiful and very much with the spirit of the Bauhaus house because is above all very functional. We decided to go for a Stainless steel countertop, we did some research and we realized that it would cost as much as the rest of the kitchen, furniture, floor, paint, lamps and appliances!!… Well we had some appliances with us already and we were not planning to buy these fancy appliances, just A or better energy performance and of a respectable brand.

We decided for one that was not the cheapest but it had a very nice (informative) website and the person in charge was really nice and helpful, it was very well specified what will you get as opposed to others that were not very clear.

Thecountertop was a big headache, because it was U shaped in one piece and it had 1cm tolerance to the size of the room, I was going to adjust the leftover space when putting the tile. Getting it inside the house was a real feat and if it was not for the really nice delivery guy I would not be writing these lines now.

As you can see from the picture it came in a large box that was very difficult to get in and close the door, we broke a branch from the outside apple tree getting it in…..

Appliances

We brought with us from France the dishwasher, microwave (useless, horrible noisy but indestructible) and the fridge/freezer. We just needed to buy the oven, cooktop and hood. We ended up buying them on IKEA because there was a good sale, they have the same warranty and well they were cheap. The hood we bought elsewhere because we did not like the IKEA ones.

The Cooktop we decided to buy Induction because is the most energy efficient (by far) even if we had to throw away a couple of pots and pans. Now that we are using it, it is amazing the speed in which you can boil water, it is scary.

Finishes

The ceiling had a wooden false ceiling, that was in a good shape and I didn’t have the energy to think what to do instead so we decided to paint it white, the wooden look did not go well with the rest of the idea.

The walls are so few that I just painted them white, the back wall behind the counter we decided to put white tile all the way to the ceiling the design concept so dictated. (to be posted later)

The floor was the most difficult decision. We had decided that the kitchen would be white with stainless steel, so the floor was responsible for giving the kitchen color, it was very difficult to decide what color. The material was tile for a while but as we moved along with the demolition I realized that a thinner floor would be easier because of the level of the existing Slab which was holding a linoleum floor originally, so we did that; Linoleum. Linoleum is a very environmentally conscious material, it has a nice feel, has texture in the color, is easy to clean, it resist water, etc. The color palette is nice because of the nature of the pigments and that helped us decide because of the limited variety. In Sweden, which was very surprising, Linoleum, as environmentally friendly as it is, is not available all over the place, and the choices are limited. We were between a brick orange and a green, the orange was not very convincing on the catalog, so we decided on a dark(ish) green,  which looks just like grass, it is really beautiful!

The installation.

One would think that if it is an Ikea Kitchen you just follow the instructions a couple of screws here and there and it is done. Well no, the pieces are easy to build but to make everything work, especially in a U shaped kitchen is very tricky. You have to comeup with a lot of solutions to fill in gaps and give tolerances without it looking unfinished.

Now it still looks unfinished because I haven’t had time to do the fine details, I had to move on to other urgent matters, but I will get them done as soon as the dining and living room are ready.

I will make a post to talk about the furniture installation in detail, now I am just going to say that it was hard, but the moment the Countertop fitted I wanted to cry of joy, there was so little margin of error that I was actually very worried.

As I mentioned earlier, I still need to do the finishing touches but this is how it looks like today, give or take a couple of dirty dishes..

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Electricity Plumbing 1.1 – 1.5

Posted on January 16, 2011 by jcdesilva

1.  Check the state of the house electricity to see if there was some important safety issues to be taken care of.

This one was easier than I thought, just because the guy had no intention to check anything, he came with the –I will change all anyway- attitude, and even if I tried a couple of times to ask him if he was going to do something about that he just said, “yeah yeah don’t worry, we’ll see”. Again, this guy supposedly spoke English, and maybe he did speak some but he was unable to listen to English, so he kept doing what he thought was his job all along.

2.  Install a new switchboard that could handle the whole house. This way I could change circuits when I have saved some money and connect them to the same board and not have a bunch of small boards.

When we discussed this I understood that the guy was going to bring a couple of options and discuss the advantages of one or the other, but one day they just put one ugly box (which I think in the long run will be insufficient) and installed it. As the thing were, we were really behind schedule, deseases trips and whatnot had prevented them to come and I couldn’t stop all to get another one, and I realized that I have hired a bunch of mercenaries that were always thinking of something else and even if I started throwing tantrums, the only possible result was further delays and more money, because of course they charge by the hour, trip and shopping and whatever they do during the day.

3.  Install new Ground for the house.

Another thing I discussed with the boss at the beginning and agreed it was very important, they just did not listened. Remember that at this point I was dealing with plumbing, Painting and demolition and bureaucracy so I did not have the mind to get into long educational discussions.

4.  Connect the washer, dryer and the old stove for the temporary kitchen.

I needed to have a place to cook while I was renovating the kitchen since we were going to live in the house during the renovation, and it was a good decision because at the end we lived from that kitchen for 5 months, something like 4 months more than planned, it is pretty amazing how time flies, and once you have the family at home, how little you can work every day.

The electrician connected a couple of plugs to the old box for the washer and dryer and used the same cable from the old stove and changed the plug downstairs. The main connection box is just across the room from the washer and dryer and all the cables were visible, so it was fast and easy

5. Once the Kitchen holes and were made and patched install all the new electric outlets for the new kitchen.

This was a bit of a mess, mainly organizing calendars. The electrician had to understand the kitchen project and the existing electricity layout to be able to draw the new piping layout, and calculate the number of junction boxes, connections and whatnot. First I had to beg him to do it one afternoon because he wanted to leave and come back another day to do it but that would ruin the schedule.

At this point the main demolition work was finished so I had no more workers in the house, so I had to book the guys to comeback and make all the canalizations on the wall for the piping, they were supposed to come a couple of days later so I I did not have the marking on the wall I would have to book again and then is another week gone. To understand:

  1. the Kitchen is demolished and the walls bare with no finishes
  2. The electrician Marks up the connections
  3. The mason comes and makes all the necessary holes and canals (I could not do it because heavy equipment is needed)
  4. The electrician comes and puts the piping
  5. The mason comes and covers the holes and sets the different boxes in place and at the finished level
  6. The electrician comes and puts the cables
  7. The Kitchen Guy installs the finishes and kitchen furniture, In this case I was the Kitchen Guy.

So with the busy schedule of this guys, each of this had to be done in different days, and they often come up with excuses not to come: delays, sicknesses, trips, whatever. So it was almost one thing a week, I managed to squeeze a couple so this useless and simple tasks took a total of 5 weeks (up to point f.). And that was really chasing everyone and begging them to come.

Finally the stuff was done and I used the masons to finish leveling the floor which had like 7 layers of different age patches of concrete (read the kitchen post, coming soon) and some other details.

After this, all the connections for the kitchen were done, the laundry room connections were ready and the only missing thing for them to do was to install a new radiator that I had ordered that will come later, I was really looking forward not to see this electrician or plumbre again. Just a bit more patience……

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Plumbing 1.3 – 1.8

Posted on December 11, 2010 by jcdesilva

3. Remove and replace the old drains and prepare the connections for the new ones.

The floor slab was opened by the Polish guys and the plumber (also Polish) needed only to remove drains and put new ones, the masons would fill the holes in and finish it with concrete.

The first one was a Gamble, we wanted to install the full bathroom and for that we needed a 100mm drain what we could see was a 75mm so the plumber suggested changing everything all the way to the main connection, of course he is not paying. Then I looked into the old plans, again, and it said 105mm so I asked the guys to break a bit more following the pipe and later they discovered that there was a 100-75mm adapter, I was happy not to have to change all the basement.

The other drain to be installed was out on the exterior stairs, and connect it to the old one, of course this one had no possibilities for connection so we had to cut this one out and change it.

All was OK, the thing I was starting to feel was the time the plumber took to think what connections were needed, he took a lot of time making his shopping lists, I was for the moment fine with that thinking that he wanted to do everything right.

4. Install Plumbing for the sink in the laundry room. (Drain, warm and cold water) This was also going to be used as a temporary Kitchen while we worked on the real kitchen.

That was a tricky one, the main drain was coming down from the kitchen and toilet and had a service trap just before an angle to go down to the main. That meant that either we broke everything or we put the sink drain as low as possible above the service trap. The problem was that the drain would be to high and the sink would be a but high as well. Since this was going to be a cloth washing and some other cleaning use it was not a big deal but for the temporary kitchen would be a bit uncomfortable. Not many options there so I asked tom to make an effort to make it as low as possible.

The plumbing was easy, we had a discussion whether to have the sink faucet installed on the sink but I decided to put it wall mounted so I could easily take away the kitchen once it’s temporary life was over and install it as a clothes washing sink. The problem was that I did not have time to think  and install everything as it should stay, my girls were coming very soon and I still had a lot to do to receive them.

He then installed the cold and hot water and even if I begged to have a faucet where I could install a hose they only installed an adapter for a hose on the cold water side which meant that I could not have a hose with warm water, which is useful to wash the car in winter. They took ages to go and buy the stuff and kept coming and going because they forgot something, they charge by the hour, transportation and shopping as well so every bad decision was costing me.

The plumbing was installed in a very sloppy manner, the exposed pipes were not parallel and everything was a bit crooked, I was very disappointed but we had no time for changes, and they took so long to do it that I thought that this was the best HE could do so I would be wasting my time and money trying to have it as it should, this was the straw that broke the camel’s back, the hole experience with this guy was arguing about how to do things, then taking hours to make his shopping lists to always forget something and this after his coffee or cigarette or lunch break. I just wanted him to get done and go…

5. Prepare the plumbing for the shower room and the new toilet in the basement.

This was just the drain on the floor connected to the toilet and just a new connection from the water to later install.

Once that was done, I had to fix all the mess, fix the kitchen walls for him to do the last part of this stage work.

6. Install the large old kitchen radiator on the basement to heat the laundry space.

For this I waited to have the new radiator for the kitchen so he could do both in one day, I ordered a special radiator that was in vertical shape 30x180cm to fit the space in the kitchen.

7. Install the new radiator for the new kitchen.

So the beautiful kitchen arrived to the plumbers ‘headquarters’ and kept it there for a week or so since he did not have a space on his busy calendar to come and install it. By now I was tired of them but I was hostage of their services, they had the radiator and it would be very complicated to find another plumber to come and do the work, I thought this was the last thing to do and it would take at the most two days.

Well it took 3, three days to install 2 radiators. The first day was organizing the pipes and connections he had in his toolbox to see what was missing, reading carefully the instructions and after several rounds of decision making with me deciding the height the radiator should be since to put it in the height I wanted required braking the wall which I already had painted.  He left seven hours later having just marked on the wall the place where he should make the holes to mount the radiator, I really got annoyed and told him in my Tarzan Swedish that he was useless and he was making fun of me by spending all day doing nothing, he was a bit nervous of my reaction and asked me not to tell his boss, who happens to be his son that probably had had complaints about his father’s productivity, he said that he would only mark 5 hours that day. I was, as I said, hostage and had to swallow my anger and let him go, I just said that he could not work beyond friday at noon when I was leaving the city for the weekend. Another day passed and he almost finished. Both radiators were mounted (with my tools, he did not bring a bit big enough) but just one connected, The third day came and finally around 11 am, he finished, we started the system to check for leaks and I said good-by. I knew I still had one thing to settle with this guys (read the electricity section (almost as bad).

The kitchen radiator at the end it looked better because it is like 20cm higher than the opening to the dining room and sort of makes a good composition and the connections are very visible which my wife and I agreed look very industrial, so a bit Funkis….

8. Connect the new sink and faucet for the new kitchen.

This I did myself, probably faster than the plumber, I took the risk, I did not want to see them again and just see my money going down the drain for a dirty sloppy connection. I had to go only twice to the hardware store, read a book of how to connect pipes in the Swedish system and figure out the sizes and all.

I had two pipes coming out of the wall, one hot one cold. Then I needed a reduction to connect the hot water to the faucet and for the cold I needed: One connection to the dishwasher, one connection to the sparkling water system that we are to install and one to the faucet, which meant, two T connections with their separate valves and a reduction to the faucet. It looks like a meccano toy that you build with all the leftover pieces.

The drain pipes were provided by the sink manufacturer and I just needed to figure out the puzzle, but it was easy to connect. Then I had to go yet another time to the hardware store to find the correct adapter to our 70 year old drain pipe.

(pictures coming soon)

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Plumbing 1.1,1.2

Posted on November 21, 2010 by jcdesilva
  1. Remove a big Radiator in the kitchen that was sitting right where the hole was going to be made.

Mounted on the kitchen wall dividing the kitchen and the dining room there was a large rectangular radiator. In order to start the demolishing work we needed to remove the radiator. We were at the same time waiting for the ‘expert’s’ drawings for the beam to support the opening so we had some time, the work was done fast and without much fuss. I asked them to bring down the radiator close to its future place in the basement. This was the first work by the Plumbing and Electricity contractor, the communication as I described earlier was a bit deficient but it seemed OK. We took some time to go around the house and check the work to be done, I thought this was good because next time he will be ready to go with less startup time……

2.   Disconnect the old Kitchen sink, which was connected directly with no closing valves for service.

To remove the old sink and proceed with the removal of the rest of the old kitchen I needed to ask the plumber to do it. There were no valves to disconnect and it was a screwed metal pipe directly to the faucet. This was done some days later after the connection to the dinning was done and I could start fixing the room to put the new Kitchen, I used some of his time while he was installing the drain piping in the basement.

He did it fairly quickly and while it was not a beautiful job, I did not complain because later he would have to fix it when installing the new sink and the urgency was to start getting rid of the kitchen and install the Drains in the basement so I did not comment.

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Plumbing and Electricity 2

Posted on November 20, 2010 by jcdesilva

The Plumber came one day around 8:30 we went around the house to discussed what was to be made. He doesn’t speak english so we had to do it in Swedish and he doesn’t speak very good Swedish because he is Polish, so my wife was having fun listening to Tarzan and Jane trying to decide some complex piping connection.

The work to be made was relatively simple but there were a lot of places to work.

1.  Remove a big Radiator in the kitchen that was sitting right where the hole was going to be made.

2.  Disconnect the old Kitchen sink, which was connected directly with no closing valves for service.

    Once that was done he had to wait for the holes to be made and come back to do the following:

    3.  Remove and replace the old drains and prepare the connections for the new ones

    4.  Install Plumbing for the sink in the laundry room. (Drain, warm and cold water) This was also going to be used as a temporary Kitchen while we worked on the real kitchen.

    5.  Prepare the plumbing for the shower room and the new toilet in the basement.

      Once that was done, I had to fix all the mess, fix the kitchen walls for him to do the last part of this stage work.

      6.  Install the large old kitchen radiator on the basement to heat the laundry space.

      7.  Install the new radiator for the new kitchen.

      8.  Connect the new sink and faucet for the new kitchen.

        The Electrician came a bit later, a couple of weeks later, this was because he was in Poland taking care of some health issues. There was no rush for the electricity to start because I had no money to do the whole cable changing. We went around the house discussing the work, he speaks (or at least he thinks he does) English. It was very frustrating to explain him stuff, he was always saying that he was following but then he would ask the same question again and again, he seemed stressed and concentrated in some other project or his health or I don’t know what, but he was a bit absentminded, so it took some patience to explain. I knew that it was going to require a lot of supervision. He was highly recomended by the man leading the team so I just had to trust him, and I didn’t have a choice because to find someone else would be tricky.

        The work to be done was the following:

        1. Check the state of the house electricity to see if there was some important safety issues to be taken care of.
        2. Install a new switchboard that could handle the whole house. This way I could change circuits when I have saved some money and connect them to the same board and not have a bunch of small boards.
        3. Install new Ground for the house.
        4. Connect the washer, dryer and the old stove for the temporary kitchen.
        5. Once the Kitchen holes and were made and patched install all the new electric outlets for the new kitchen.

        For this stage that was all, it was not so much but the fact that is a lot of little things here and there that required preparation and then finishing. This is one of the things that are so frustrating in renovations, it takes so much time and it seems so little. When you build a house from scratch you organize all the work to minimize time gaps and you plan for the different trade’s overlaps, less time wasted, less money, so renovations tend to be much more expensive than new homes.

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        Demolition 1.3, 1.5

        Posted on November 11, 2010 by jcdesilva

        1.3 Demolish a wooden wall to change the access to the basement from the first floor.

        This was not exactly a wooden wall, I say wooden wall because it was a wooden structure, but I should probably say partition. The wall is actually a wooden structured partition finished in stucco. The way they built it is with wooden planks nailed together, they are tied up with reed (also nailed into) to hold the stucco and in the corners and joints they have an open wire-mesh.

        One interesting thing is that the wall was built with construction wood, not the wood you would use to make furniture, and therefore not as dry, and as you can see in the picture, the wood had shrunk quite a lot over the last 70 years (there were no gaps when they built it).

        So as you might imagine that was a fast an easy job.

        They cut the wall with a circular saw which was the same tool they had been using for the concrete cutting which was not the most adequate, I would think that with a recipro-saw would have been better. They activated the fire alarm twice because the wood was smoking while being cut. Risk of fire? I guess yes, but I was looking and it was not so much smoke, the problem was also that the detector was just where the smoke was coming out, combined with the dust probably was too much.

        1.5 Build a wall in the kitchen where the original way to the basement was located.

        For this I had the dream of making a wooden wall with reed and stucco and all, but I was so busy with other things that when I looked again they had already built a wall with a 5cm thick lightweight brick and they were starting to put the stucco on it, so I guess the romantic original idea was gone.

        The big problem while remodeling a house that you actually need, is that things have to get done and you have a real deadline, in my case was my daughter’s start of school, then you have to settle with the products that are readily available and the things that the people that you are working with know how to handle, so the romanticism you leave for the non urgent parts, like the TV room.

        On an environmental note: one advantage here in Sweden is that is hard to find hazardous materials, pesticides and hard solvents over the counter. Most things are water-based and interestingly enough most products have environmental labels because the market here is so demanding for environmental solutions, then, even if you have a not so informed contractor, it is difficult for him to buy something really wrong. That comforts me because I have had so little time to check everything and when I do it takes me so long to understand the Swedish that every time I go to the hardware store I go out three hours later with a headache and just bought a couple of things.

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        Demolition 1.2, 1.4, 1.7

        Posted on November 7, 2010 by jcdesilva

        1.2 Demolish a non-bearing wall on the basement that separated a room that will become the TV-guest room.

        For insurance purposes we asked the expert for advice, I knew it was a non bearing wall but it was original so might as well ask. He said that there was no problem, although there is no official advice, he just said it, I guess we could have asked for a written permission. Anyway, I guess nobody will ever ask.

        This was an easy one, the Polish worker just started his demolishing machine and did it in half a day. I just asked them to be careful with the existing wooden door frame. So he took an extra 5 minutes to carefully break the wall around, took the frame out and then kept destroying the rest. The scar left by the wall that was interlocked with another interior wall was later covered with mortar. There is a small difference in level between the two rooms  which will give me some trouble later when I put the tile floor.

        1.4 Demolish the basement floor slab to accommodate new drains for the guest shower, an exterior drain and a new toilet.

        The Plumber as all plumbers wanted to demolish the whole house, change all the pipes and then have someone else fix his mess, of course he was not paying, or was in a hurry. The basement had several drains, one on every big room and none on the small room that was to become the shower. It also lacked a drain on the exterior stair to the garden, so all the rain would drip inside the house and go into the closest drain. Since the basement is going to be used as a living space, and on the original design it was only intended as storage and machine room we needed to make some changes. Of course we would not have the rain pouring in from the outside, so we needed a drain out on the stair, so that was not a big problem. Then we needed an extra toilet, the house has only one on the upper floor and for guests is very comfortable to have their own and for us was also more comfortable. First I thought of making a big full bathroom in the smallest room, it had a window and a lot of space, but one day showing the project to a cousin of my wife he kept looking for the Bastu (Sauna) and then we realized that there was enought room for at least a 3-4 person Sauna in this small room, so we decided to build a shower and a Sauna instead of a big bathroom. Then I decided to put the toilet in the bigger room in a space that was a bit residual and I thought of putting a walk-in closet, so it was perfect there. Of course just next to the Shower room, so no problem with doing extra work for the drains. The plumber was convinced that we needed to change the complete drainline because the pipe would not be enough for the toilet needs (min 100mm) so I checked in the drawings and confirmed it was 110, so we broke the floor to confirm and yes it was! so I saved a lot of money and work right there.

        So The polish took their cutting machine and cut some lines, then started hammering and we just needed the plumber to come and do his job for later cover the whole thing. And so they did after the plumbers job that I will describe in another post because it has been quite an adventure.

        1.7 Demolish a wooden wall to open the laundry room in the basement.

        For that I just waited for a half a day window of time. The workers did not come for a couple of days to let some gypsum to dry so I was alone for a couple of days. I wanted to save all the wood to make some built in shelves and closets, so I wanted to do it carefully. I took the hammer and started to figure out how it was built so I would damage the least. The problem was that it was built to last in 1939, it appears in the original drawings and it’s still standing. First I took of the upper shelves that were nailed all over the place,  once I took the first one out  the rest was easier. The wall itself I thought was a frame set woth some nails to the floor but it was actually tounge and groove planks nailed to a 5x5cm piece of wood on the floor and on the ceiling. After trying to take out the first piece I realized there was no good way to start, the tounge was braking but I had no space to move it and it was again nailed to the end wall. The first one came a bit hard then it got easier for a while. Planks were coming out in one piece with little damage but suddenly in became really hard, I couldn’t really figure out why untill one of them broke at the bottom part because ofsome insect damage.

        It happens that the concrete slab was broken to accomodate the electricity supply, sometime during the 50’s and the planks were not moved, so they were stuck in the concrete, so I started hammering hard and all of them broke in the bottom. The good (or bad) side was that it was easy to break because of the insect damage, then I took the leftovers from the slab with a screwdriver. The space really changed after that, it became big an light just as I wanted so I has happy. I just had to sacrifice the future shower/sauna room in the basement to store all the wood.

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