The next two month we will be traveling around Australia, so for now a before and after picture, from the first picture we saw of the house until now.
7 years of work
A gate opener
Already for a while I had had my eye on a gate opener. After watching a lot of YouTube videos I ordered one from AliExpress. I also ordered a separate Zigbee gate operator.
Putting it together in the living room and testing it worked like a charm. Then I had a weld some bolts to the gate, as the bolts that where there, where for a different brand of gear rack.
The welding is going better every time and the bolts got connected nicely.
Next was pulling electricity to the gate. It was easy to tap in on my office wiring, so I added an outside socket as well, where I put up a light string on an Ikea smart plug, which will also act as a Zigbee repeater, for the dark days.
After I had put the gate opener in place, it did not want to work, then back in the living room it worked like a charm. Could it be Zigbee range or what was the issue. I had a Zigbee repeater within 5 meter (and without walls), so that could hardly be it.
Long story short due to the temperatures, I decided to leave it for now and look at it after spring.
Getting stuff done before the family is visiting.
As the paint on the north side is way less worn then on the west and south, so I got some paint stripper to speed up the process, that sure was worth the investment, it was way easier to get the paint of and after washing it, the wood was ready for oil and paint.
Once the window sills where painted while it looked amazing, like an entire different house.
Last but not least the dormer needed finished and painted, which really was the cherry on the cake. The house looks absolutely amazing from the outside as well now. Just in time before the first family members came to visit.
Loeke and Carla took an extra week, so we showed them around starting on Hiiumaa.
Once the rest of the family arrived, we stayed at a large AirBnB in the city center. The building was constructed in the 13th century
More painting
September was filled with scraping, oiling the wood and painting.
Besides that I also had to do some woodworking, the lower sill of one of the windows of Mattias’ room was in need of replacement and under the window a windowsill was completely missing, so after creating a little test piece, I as able to recreate on as they are used on the rest of the house.
Thanks to a YouTube video I had seen at some point were they moved a piece of wood under an angle over a table saw I as able to recreate the curve very close to the original.
While I was playing with wood, i also made an air windows for one of Mattias’ windows.
I also set up a nice addition to my office. I bought a set of active speaker (and earlier, separately some wall mount). So now I also have good sound in my office
By the end of month we where down to the front of the main house.
Painting the house
As often, sometimes if you have a good reason, you are more dedicated to finsih a project and work will go easier.
In October we will have our family reunion in Tallinn, which I am looking forward to, but this also gives me a nice deadline to finally paint the rest of the house.
I started with scraping the wood, adding some missing pieces of wood an add some window and door frames.
Then we could start painting. Just like the wall on the back of the house, the wood soaked up a lot of paint. So once the side was done, I changed strategy, I bought a 5 liter canister of linseed oil and primed the wood with that.
Just as with the paint, the wood soaked up the oil like it was thirsty. But then when putting the paint on we got a much better yield for the paint.
Aft er the side house was done, we started scraping the side of the main house, and I added last wooden shell to the shed, hiding the rough building blocks they used to build it. And after some paint, everything started to beome a whole.
Towards the end of the month, we travelled to the Netherlands for another party. This time a combination of my dad’s 80th birthday, Tine’s 75th birthday and their 5th wedding anniversary.
Front cam and ‘raamuitzetter’
When Martijn called me due to a scare around his house to ask if he could borrow a security camera I figured it would be a good idea to also install the front yard camera before our vacation.
This project took a bit longer then anticipated. Mainly because the drill had found the main wire the electricity which needed to be fixed before I could continue.
Good thing the drill had just cut trough the insulating mantel and shorted the wires there for a few seconds before I could pull it back. This resulted in a brown-out in part of the house, with some unexpected behaviour of some appliances. After fully resetting them all seemed to be in working order again and I could finish the installation of the camera and integrate it in Home Assistant.
For years I had been looking for some “raamuitzetters” like the once that are used in the Netherlands, but it seems they just do not exist in Estonia, so when I found out Ronald was in the Netherlands, I asked him to bring a few.
As we have double windows the telescopic screw once seemed to be the best option. I installed the first one and as it was a pretty windy day I could instantly see how it worked and it worked like a charm. Now we can keep the window open safely at any angle without flapping.
The rest of the month we spend in Denmark as it is time for a vacation again.
Train roof improvements and cam
For year it had annoyed me that when the train roofs where build the left almost half a meter of space between the garage and the roofed space, and therefore everything near the wall gets wet when it rains.. As I had some left over materials from the roofing of the house, I decided to use that to cover the gap. The metal works easy, so I could make it fit around the profile of the sheeting used on the wall of the garage.
I got some rebar and practiced my welding again. Some spots look half way decent yet other spots would earn me a failing grade if I would have done this for a welding course. But the most important thing was that everything was baked together, ready to have the roof sheets connected to it.
All in all it did seem to do the trick and the space underneath stayed dry.
The next week I started cleaning up under the roof. The container was full pretty quickly and there where a few piles for the next weeks. After that I started cleaning some dirt and 13 wheel barrels later it turned out there was a pretty nice concrete floor under it.
From some materials I had found during earlier cleanups under the roof I build a little side wall and besides that I put in a few pallets where I put the outdoor carpet roles and the big metal storage boxes. I nice start of cleaning up this area. Next I need to get rid of a lot more crap, so I can build a workbench and some shelves there so I can temporarily store stuff there when I am working under the roof.
On the marketplace at work someone offered a branch shredder for a nice price, it turned out to be the same one I had rented last year. As I noticed that with all these trees in the garden we very often have branches that are to small to actually put in the sauna oven, I figured it would be a good idea to get this, so we can make mulch for under the berry bushes and around the garden. A very useful way to get rid of your cuttings and reuse them around the garden.
Another one of those little projects that I did not get to was install some security cameras. In the mean time the integration for Home Assistant was way better and I also saw that Frigate has a nice local video analyzer that could help with alerting. The camera in the back yard was the first one. I improved the electricity wiring that I had set up for the first backyard light and extended a cable to provide the camera with power as POE was not supported. All in all it gives a good overview of the back yard. On to the next part.
Lots of garden work
We started the month with filling the raised beds, first all the smaller branches from cutting the tree, then a thick layer of peat and lastly a top layer of vegetable garden dirt. The beds are ready for this seasons plants that we have started inside as the weather is still behind on schedule.
Spring is also the time we often help out Mo’s mother with getting the wood for her heating inside. As a truck load had been delivered and the weather was nice during the weekend we piled it up in the back of her greenhouse.
Meanwhile a shipment of materials for an irrigation system came in. It will be nice to figure out how to put this together. But at the moment we have very regular showers, so besides no need, it is also not the weather to put it together.
Next to the back door deck Mo wanted to have a new herb garden, the previous one was nice to have close to the back door, and this sure is the warmest spot so you can start growing the herbs already early in the season. This time I made it from the same wood as the raised beds and was able to adjust the cover, to have the option to make it a little green house as well.
In the last week of May we finally got some nice days in a row (but still a regular shower in between as well), so we cleaned up some more in the garden. Especially around the well we had collected to much stuff. And since that is a nice and sunny spot Mo wanted to have a flower bed there. After cleaning up the shape quickly formed and I used some natural stones to make a border on grass level. Ready for some plants.
Raised beds and clean up
April weather sometimes pretends to be spring, so like previous years garden work start to come more to the foreground. We decided to remove the chicken coop and as the raised bed produced some nice crops we decided to add three bigger raised beds on the place of the chicken coop.
Preparation is as usual the biggest job and once that was done, the raised beds took shape pretty quick. As the season is late this year the sale of garden stuff is also late, so we’ll wait a bit before getting the dirt.
The covered veranda had collected a lot of stuff over the years and was in need of a clean up and some organization. I had found some L-brackets in the garage that we had used for our temporary kitchen years ago, which now got a second life to hold shelves in the veranda. This suddenly organized a lot of the gardening stuff that had piled up. And after a weekend you could actually walk in the veranda again and find stuff.
My dad and Tine where visiting again, so I had switched cars with Glenn, to have 4 spots. And guess what this weekend the garden dirt was on sale, so my dad an i drove twice with the Opel Astra to get the dirt which otherwise would have easily fitted in the back of the van.
Cutting trees and branches
Martijn had seen the clip of the controlled decent of the tree branch, so he asked me if I would like to help to cut down a tree in the garden of his stepfather. You don’t have to ask me twice. I packed my equipment in the van, picket up Martijn en drove there.
After checking the tree and the surrounding we decided to cut it more or less in half and then drop to bottom half freely to be on the safe side. I geared up, climbed in the tree, prepared the robes and made the cut. The drop went well and it is nice see see back the clip how much movement was in the tree, which also show why you are tied to the tree. Some branches caught the decending robe, so it did not slide down very smoothly, but after a few more cuts, it came down nicely.
The bottom part went very smooth and then there was a nice lunch and a nice thank you in the form of a bottle of whiskey.
Later that month I cut some more dead and crossing branches from the pappel in our garden. The cutting is the easy work, but after that you need to clean up all those branches, so putting them in 30 cm pieces (as the sauna heater takes 30 cm logs) and splitting the bigger pieces for easy drying and better burning.
All in all a nice pile of wood against the garage again.
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