Finishing the basement

Spring is knocking on the door and almost half an year long winter is soon turning to blossoming flowers. Last week we saw the bravest swans coming back here. Now there's again energy to renovate. Our goal to have the working spaces ready in March is not only an illusion. The rooms downstairs are waiting their furniture, but otherwise they are ready. We installed the doors, tiled a little more and painted again the walls. Then there was finishing touches to make, like attaching the ledges and fixing the ceiling with acrylic. Now everything looks so new and there's a smell of a fresh paint floating around.
Tobi repaired the old doors so we could use them again. He sanded them and fixed little mistakes with filling paste. The oldest of our doors date back to the end of 1800's and are originally from the old farm house. Now they take us to the workshop room and to the technical room. The door to the bathroom and to the office are from here and 50's style.
First we were hesitating to paint the old beautiful surface, but we wanted a unifying look for the different doors. We also found a perfect paint tone from Tikkurila called Harso. It was a little bit imitating the gray greenish color, which the doors used to have. After painting the original handles were fixed and lacquered black. The combination makes a nice contrast.
We got lucky also with the paint for the floor ledges. Tikkurila's tone Basaltti suited perfect for our floor. After painting the walls and the ledges we attached them to the walls.
Since we still had here left over tiles from someone, we decided to use them for our workshop room. The room will be used for messy work, so with tiles it will be easy to keep clean.
Next step was to make windowsills for our new windows (No longer a construction area). For them we used some rest material, that we had here. We made an oak board for the workshop and in the office a windowsill out of pine. The pine board was originally made by Susanna's grandfather and probably from our own forest.
Last we painted the old window frames in the office, which made the final touch to the makeover. Next week we can hopefully show you the rooms better and with furniture. This time we had quite a lot to update. We love how the light of the spring is making its way to the pictures. We have been waiting for it - welcome spring!

Winter vibes

For a while we thought that spring is already coming, but the last days showed us that the winter stays with us still for now. It has been snowing a lot and the days have turned colder, but luckily there's a lot of light already this time of the year. The squirrel above couldn't find his acorns underneath the snow, so it's stealing food from the birds - a daily routine. We are doing lot of things here, only not renovating. Actually we enjoy the situation pretty much, altough there's a lot of renovation work still waiting for us. This post is about our winter here, how beautiful the surrounding nature can be.
One of the most stunning winter sights are the misty winter days. There's just something mesmerising about fog. The sun is at the day time so warm, that it melts some of the snow and at night everything freezes again. Here has been quite slippery lately.
Two impressive sights in our forest are the sun and the river. The light is stunning, when the sun shines low just above the horizon through the trees. Water in our river keeps always flowing despite the coldness and the ice above is creating beautiful pieces of art.
Yesterday we visited the town Karkkila and the lake Pyhäjärvi. The wind had created fascinating textures on the snow. We made a little walk through the lake. This was the most beautiful day of the year so far.
The snow, the light and the wind created this illusion. From the near the snow looks like ice mountains in a snow storm. Really cool!
If the days are continuing like this, please winter stay still for a while and show the best of you! These days are not giving so much motivation to renovate, we just want to go out and enjoy the sun and snow. We swear, that in the next post we have something to show. Till then, enjoy the beautiful views!

Further with our floor

Slowly we are getting further here. The latest achievement was the finishing of the basement floor. Our goal is to have the working spaces finally ready. In November the lights and rails for electric cabels were installed. In December we finished the air ventilation system, but after that the rooms have remained empty and the floor has been left as it was after the concrete casting. We decided to have an epoxy coating, because it is fast, inexpensive and stable solution. First step was to grind the floors to remove curing compounds, sealers and laitance. This makes the floor clean and even, so the epoxy will attach well and create a good surface.
We rented a grinding machine for one day and went through all the floors - office space, workshop and the hallway. After five hours and a lot of sweat the work was done. After vacuum cleaning the dust the work with epoxy was ready to begin.
We started the work with transparent epoxy. The process was like painting the floors, but in a certain time. After mixing the two components we had about 40 minutes to work. We mixed always only a little epoxy at once to make sure, that we will make it before the epoxy turns hard. We painted the floor twice, but the result wasn't pleasing. The floor had turned yellowish.
We decided to make one more layer to fix the floor, but with transparent cold grey from Teknos. All the layers had to be done in 24 hours after making the last one, otherwise the floor needs to be sanded again. Tobi built these spike shoes for epoxy work, that it's possible to walk on it while painting. They did their job well.
We like how lively the color turned out. In some parts can be seen more gray and in some the original color of the concrete. We are not so sure about the shiny surface, but we decided to let it stay like this at least for now. On the photos can be also seen two of the doors, which we repaired. They are both originally from here, still a bit work in progress. We are about to paint them in some point. This was a tiny update, how we are doing here. Today we celebrate in Finland the day of Friendship and that's why we want to dedicate the dusty heart above to all our friends. Many hugs and thank you for reading our blog.

New year - new plans

Photo: Özlem Gun.
The year has changed and we had a slow start with the renovation. We have been doing little things, but mainly we've been focusing on other stuff. We had finally also a little time to relax, spend time with our friends, enjoy the winter and sleep a lot. Year 2017 will be dedicated to our dream to have a designer's office here in the heart of countryside. It means that we are going to renovate, but our main focus is to build a working business. It probably means that we are not posting so often, but this isn't a goodbye yet.
This is the first winter for Tobi in Finland. We have been trying to get the most out of it. We have been playing with snow and testing some winter activities. Above is Tobi's first snow lantern. This January hasn't been so cold, but we have a lot of snow here. Altough the last days have been so warm, that a lot of it has melted. We have been capturing winter's wonders with our cameras.
We have quite many deers walking around here.
Photo: Özlem Gun. Fanni and the New Year's sparkles.
We had a little celebration here with friends, when the year changed. We were delighted to have so many lovely people here. And we deserved a little party after all the work.
Photo: Özlem Gun.
Photo: Maria Mercer.
Photo: Maria Mercer.
New Year's night was quite special all in all. The last days of December were dark, without snow and cloudy, but at New Year's Eve we had a beautiful star sky, little frost and we saw the first time Northern lights here. Quite a night!
The house is starting to look and feel like home. Our plants, new and old ones, have found their places. We have been enjoying and warming the sauna many times in a week. Next step with the renovation is to finish the concrete floor at the basement. We have actually started it already, but it's not quite ready yet. The plan is to have the working spaces ready before March. We promise to keep you updated, when something is happening here with the renovation. And we wish you all the very best for the year 2017!

Suomi, sauna and sisu

The last post of this year is dedicated to maybe the most important place for the finns - sauna. It's about Finnish mentality "sisu", which got us this far with the renovation. But mostly it's about Tobi's carpenter skills, which is the main reason for our stunning sauna. In a country with 5 million inhabitants, there is over 3 million saunas. That tells something about the importance of sauna in Finland. When the settlers were moving into a new area, they built first a sauna and lived there so long as the making of the whole house lasted. Sauna was not only the place for washing, but the place for giving birth and the place, where the dead loved ones were washed the last time. Sauna was for us also something considered as self-evident. We already wrote a little about our sauna in the post Smokey sauna and almost ready restroom and now it's time to show it all.
We continued with the walls by attaching the painted spruce panels with a nail gun. Underneath the wood is an aluminium foil, which protecs the building from the steam. Under the foil is an isolation, that the warmth will stay in the sauna.
The best part was to build the sauna benches. We started it by building bench structures and legs out of pine. We painted them transparent black with Tikkurila's Saunasupi, so they would blend to the black walls.
Because of the size of the room and the places of the door and the sauna stove, we came up with a solution, where the upper bench has the shape of u. The structure of the benches were attached into the framework of the wall. Between wall and the bench structure needs to be air, that the wood will stay dry and clean. This was created by attaching little pieces of wood to the structure. Now there is about 5mm gap between the bench and the wall.
We chose aspen for the benches, because of the quality, the bright color and we wanted to use Finnish wood. The almost white wood creates nice contrast with the black walls. First Tobi attached the front parts of the benches.
Next part was to build the sitting parts for the benches. Tobi made them removable, that they will be easier to clean. First the aspen boards were placed to the bench structure. The gaps were done by placing 10mm thick pieces of wood between them. Then the boards were screwed together with black wooden parts underneath the bench.
The finishing look for the sauna was created with the backrest. We wanted it a little slanted, that it would be ergonomic to lean. The backrest was attached to the panels with black wooden parts. Then we tested how the sauna benches work. It was easy to remove the seats and put them back again. Yippee!
Last step was to make the stools. Susanna tested carpenter work by making one of the stools. It was lot of fun for her, but not for Tobi's nerves. We decided, that further on Tobi can mainly focus on the big scale wood work.
We had some struggles along the way. For example the chimney needed to be planned at the very last moment again. We had doubts about the fireplace, would it give enough heat to the big sauna? But all troubles were gone the moment, when we tested heating first time. All worked better than we expected. Also the look turned out the way we wanted. In the warm light and darkness is good to relax and enjoy. We got the Rento bucket (saunakiulu) as a Christmas present and it's like made for here. With our new beautiful sauna we are ready for the new year.
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