Quaint and cool

As you know I am a fan of quaint houses, obviously because I live in one myself.

Grumpyhouse could have been different and more square, but for some odd reason not known to me, they decided to build a long and narrow house although it wasn`t necessary. These architect drawn "built in" quaint houses are so cool! If I just had the land Grumpyhouse stands on and wanted to build a new house I would definetly contact an architect to help us get a similar cool house.

Have a nice weekend!

More here:

Floors

Mr Grumpy and myself have a wet dream.... One floor througout the whole mainfloor of our house. Our house is narrow, long and tall. We have a basement, loft and three apartments. We live in two and let out one.
Our floors today is a little bouqet of materials- all from different decades....

Our most beautiful floor is the one in our living room. It is the original wooden floor and I will hate to see it go.... Sadly we have no choice since it practically cracks up. It squeaks, it leans heavily in every direction, nails constantly pop out and there is a always a risk of splinters in our feet. We could of course just put a new floor on top of the old but Mr Grumpy has raised his voice loud and clear: "We need to ISOLATE mrs Grumpy. You will not get your new floor if I can not get my isolation!!" So old floors and that clay/ sand they isolated houses with a 100 years ago needs to go.
End of discussion.

As I have told you before we are soon finished with a long and hard (a clichè but true) renovation period now. We plan a sabbatical year this year and then we will see if time, energy and finances allows us to go forward with our floor dream....

Our dream floor will need a post of its own so I`ll get back to you on that matter!

Here are pictures from our current floors (and this is only in one of our apartments...)

The old beatiful floor- over a 100 years old

Kitchen floor from the 80s

Staircase with two different kinds of flooring.
awful but will stay like this for a long time...

TV- room floor from the 60s, also leaning heavily and
there is  a hole in it that we cover up with a thick rug

Any flooring dreams out there??

Cold and cozy Grumpyhouse

Today ended good. A hard workout, a well earned compliment or two and I am back on track!

Grumpyhouse is a cold place during winter. When the temperature sinks below 0 degrees C outside we have on average around 14 degrees C inside. It is still a cold house although we have isolated and installed a heat pump during our recent round of renovation.

But! it is better belive it or not! Last winter we had 11 degrees C inside during winter so it is actually 3 degrees up!

We are dependent on our fire place to keep the house warm. So despite the fact that it is cold when we get up in the morning, in the evenings we have the best heat source ever- a fireplace :) I love the kind of heat you get from fireplaces. So much better than other heat sources!

It makes our living room so cozy and warm that I don`t want to be anywhere else. It kind of orders us to relax. I spend my evenings under a wool blanket, feet against the fireplace, coffee in my mug and a laptop or a book in my lap. Haven`t bothered with the telly for several days.

This is truly as close as I get to my happy place. I absolutely love it!

Sometimes life is not a bitch but an as....

I am truly sorry about the headline but life punched me in the face today. Twice.
Although I have tried to block everything out jedi- style it ruined my day. Sadly innocent people was hurt in the process because of the anger I had built up during the day.

I would very much like to get better at handling these unexpected turns in life because I hate it when the Grumpy in me can not let things go. I try several things:

1- "Will this matter in 5 years?"
2- I try to go to my happy place (but I am not sure where it is!)
3- I try to think about other stuff, fun things, pretty men etc etc
4- Hard workouts usually helps but today is not my workout day
5- I go for a walk, but again- this is not my workout day.

Today and other days also none of this helped. Then what? Suggestions are kindly received!

Anyways- there are good things happening too. Mr Grumpy is aaalmost finished outside, at least the scaffolding is gone. YEY!

There is a backside here as well:
He promised to be finished by new year but as always that didn`t happen because there is a "detail remaining there", and " oh I forgot Grumpy there is yet another detail at the other side too!" Since he also have started working out again, the pace he had before- rehabilitationwise -is tuned down several notches. So new year have passed without finishing, and I am sure the same thing will happen with January. This is the life in a house during rehabilitation. Patience is a virtue.
I do not think we have managed to keep one deadline we have set ourselves.

Enjoy your evening, I will try to enjoy mine. Maybe I should do yoga or try meditating...

My o` my o` my

Finally! My computer is back from the repairshop!!! 3 weeks. I `d say- a minute more and they would have to admit me at psych ward... Sorry- but I have really really missed my computer!

I haven`t taken one photo during the holidays... I have to tidy a bit at the blog now and come back with lots of interesting and less interesting posts!!

Have an exquisite evening and give your computer a hug. I know mine will get one ;)