Every house has its story. What's yours?

An update post on what has taken place around the ol' homestead.

My final task in the ongoing house drainage saga was to figure out a way to raise the height, top of the old water drain, which would house the underground connections for two separate downspouts as well as the new pipe for the foundation drainage, about 2 feet. Good fun, since I was informed by all that I knew there wasn't an actual set of fittings nor a special pipe available to suit my needs. When that's the case I guess you just rollup the sleeves and do it...so I did.    » read more »

Well, another Summer project is nearing completion. This time I've dug out around the portion of my house that is the most susceptible to moisture/pressure from the mountain upon which our house sits. It's a hill actually, but, for whatever strange reason, they call it a mountain.    » read more »

It began with a gentle whine, so slight that it required the temporary suspension of respiration and a fractional tilt of the head at just the right angle to be sure I was even hearing it. This was followed by a wide range of puzzled expressions, ranging from game show contestant to village idiot (admittedly not a large leap) as I wandered the house trying to pinpoint it. The refrigerator? No. That whines too, but at a lower frequency. This whine was so high that it was just within the range of my early-middle-aged auditory receptors.    » read more »

Our new house, a large, rambling, u-shaped one-floor dream house (at least for us), neatly tucked away on an island in the Stockholm archipelago, came equipped with an unexpected pleasure (or curse, depending on how you care to look at it): in particular, a swimming pool.    » read more »