Half September 2011 I went to Scandinavia again tin search to buy a cabin for
vacations and relaxing. I had seen a nice one in my pricerange wich checked
positive for all my points on my checklist, after a 1900KM drive and 22 hours
later i arived at the camping where i would stay for a few days.
Did some
panning for gold successfully found a tiny bit of gold wich was fun.
T
After
afew days i went to look at the cabin where i came for and fell in love with the
place imediatly. Unfortunatly the cabin had some major issues like 1 wall wich
hs to be taken down and place 2 big ned windows and stuff.
It is a big cabin 70 square meters, logs make up the outer walls and the roof,
on a big amazing plot of land of 2200 square meters next to a creek and
between some mountains.
he pictures showd some mold in the roof and i was expecting to have replace
that, on my visit it became clear that the mold on its own was not a huge
problem since it did not destroy the wood where it seemd to feed on. However the
leak in the roof cause water to drain in 1 of the walls wich seems to have been
painted over and over to hide the mold. Instead it created a waterproof layer on
the wall wich trapped the water and caused the wall to rot from the inside out.
Not alowed to do any damage to the house so it was difficult to know how bad the
damage was exactly but it was clear that work had to be done on the wall and the
windows. But this was only 1 wall in 1 room of 4 so all in all it was quite good
for my budget and decided to buy the property and sign the papers rite then and
there.
So now i could not go back anymore and had to wait 2 days before i could sign
the final papers and make the payment, the owner of the camping i stayed at said
this was a record sale if i could enter the house 2 days after going to see the
property for the first time.
2 days later it was so far i signed tons of papers and finaly received the huge
key wich allowed me to enter my first vacation home i ever owned.
First did some
shopping since i had experienced already the 1 hour road to the village from my
cabin. Then finaly to my cabin with some suplies and inspected the property what
a nice place realy but what a sruff the previous owners left was unbelieveble
even the dirty socks where still hanging in the livingroom.
Wich felt kind strange the first week just like in a movie that all the people
die or vanish all of a sudden and everything is left behind just as it was.
It was not a mess but it was full of things that i did not need or wanted new
anyway so it was very clear i had a big job in front of me to make it liveable
for me. Considering that the property is not to reach with car and was a 400
meter walk thru fields wood and rocks.
Thats most likly the very same reason
that the whole property was full of used things and wood wich had never been
thrown away, instead it was hidden in piles on the property and in the shed.
Oh well first chop a big hole in the wall to see whats behind it and how bad the
rot is. OMG thats way worse as i expected the whole logs are soft and fall apart
if i push against it.
So the next few days i spend to get some phone number of construction workers in
the area and phoned a few of them. made an apointment with 1 and had to call 1
back a week later. The one i called back had no time he said after 1 week and
the other guy came around to give me a price wich was 3800 euros labor costs +
costs of materials i told him that was nice but that was way to expensive for
me.
Instead i will have to do it myself since the people there have no time or want
to get rich in 1 day just like girls i suppose keep you waiting for nothing and
then want all you rmoney at once.
Anyway it should not be that hard, getting the materials there will be the
hardest part and ofcourse if i do it myself it will not look as nice and
traditional anymore unfortunatly.
Start with chucking everything i can not use and makes me thing about the
prvious owners to much in plastic bags and make some nice piles of them to throw
away. 2 bags of clothes including dirty paint clothes from 1970s??? 1 bag shoes
and stuff.
Burn all the boxes of wc and kichen papers
so that was a good start now i can
put my own bags somewhere. Put some chairs in 1 room i dont need now anyway nice
and cosy 6 chairs in every room but i would rather be able ta walk from 1 side
of the room to the other without doing a chairdance.
Good that was all i could do before that guy came over to see the wall and give
me aprice wich i had to wait a week for. Now i can check out the national
park where my property is laying next to. quick chuck some food-from-the-bag in
my backpack and sleeping/rain gear and get in my car. Drive 1 KM to the start of
the trail and start hiking for the next 5 hours or so. Very nice trail was
getting dark soon and had some trouble with finding a good spot for my tent.
Just in time found a place just big enough for my atumnbreeze tent and had the
most beautifull sunset in front of me i seen in a decade.
Next day hiked the same way back even got sunburned cause of the sun. Wich was
totaly unexpected since it had been raining all week.
So the guy came on monday and said he would give me a price on friday so i
couldnt realy do anything that week, called the other numbers for constructors
but they didnt pick up the phone. So ive wasted to much time already on this and
will have to do it myself. I was told by the realtor that it may be difficult to
find a constructor because there is only a 4 month period in wich they can build
so all the builders are booked full. Thats why it can be realy expensive to
build anew building since you have to bring in your own workforce.
Even tho it should be a 1 day job for a experienced dude anyway.
Now i had some time for gold panning in the creek wich didnt find me any gold
unsurprisingly since i havent found any info that there was gold on the
internet. Then start with inspecting the shed wich was sacked in the swampy
ground and started rotting on the bottom.
The inside was a mess hadent been
cleaned in 50 years or so. Found the most crazy things inside and a lot of
garbage as well. 50+ jars of paint, tar thinner etc, everything from full to
empty to half full. 70+ paint brushes 50+ jars bags of squire nails and stuff
like that. All bought in the 60s to 80s i think. A paper beneath a home made
candle holder indicated it was bought in 1975. Spend some time sorting out most
garbage to bring to the recycling plant 65 KM further. Tried to not throw
anything away wich may be worth something or would be nice to keep, but still
wanted to chuck a much away as soon as possible.
Finaly had a big load wich would be a full hanger. Now i had to bring it first
to the road 400 meters away, in backpack 30+ kilos at the time. Then in the
morning drive 65KM to the shell to rent a hanger 65KM back to my place load in
the stuff and drive the same 65KM to the recycling plant, and finaly 65KM back.
full day work just to bring it to the receycling plant.
Wich i had to do twice, and 1 time without a hanger to bring 60 kilos of china
and cutlery to a second handshop, yes i know i am too good for this world, some
one else would have chucked it all in the forest or let it rott away on the
property.
Even gave the china to a second hand shop and didnt reuest money for it the lady
was amazed i could see the dollar signs in her eyes when i told her i dont want
money for it and that i was glad i could make someone happy with it, instead of
chucking it away in the receycling plant.
So the shed was getting a litle bit more spacious and i could even open 2 more
doors wich brought in some licht as well. WTF is that there hidden in the back
of the shed below all wood........
Looks like a coffin fast get al the wood away and see whats in there kinda
creepy maybe some body or something.g.
Unfortunatly nothing scarys just and empty solid box wich seemed to be from the
1800s. Just like the rifle from 1871 i found there on the wall.
found a jack to jack up cars in the shed as well up to 5 ton wich seemd to be
enough to jack up the shed if i could make it work in the swampy earth. First
had to dig out the shed and make a big hole deep enough to place the jack in.
Was a hard job but it worked after a few times trying i did get the shed up
about 7 inches just enough to place beams and rocks below the shed to keep it
off the wett ground.
Just high enough for now will have to see if i jack it up any further next year
the inside of the shed was kind bad especialy the floor so maybe this is enough
to not break the inner floor boards.
Coming to the realization tht no one would help me with this freaking wall for a
price in my budget i started to make more holes in the wall to see what the
state and dimensions were.
Went to the hardware shop to see what windows they
had.... none they had to order them 6 weeks waiting time. So me thinking to be
smart driving to the biggest place 200 KM down the road to look for windows as
well as matrasses wich they did not have anywere. as naive as i am i was
thinking to find windows and nice matrasses in the "city". But got the same book
to order the windows and here they had a7 week waiting time for the same
windows and i left the "city" with a camping matrass 5 cm thick and slept worse
as my hiking sleeping pad.
Also bought a lot more things wich were missing or had to be replaced like a few
buckets for water from the creek and stuff. Where i found a litle mouse stuck in
the bucket lol, kind as i am i released it to live an other day.
This wall had to wait till next year that was becoming clear the windows seemd
to be nice and they have every size in 10 cmm wide and 10 cm height. if i take
out the old windows and the wall in between i will be best off with 2 windows
150cm wide and 80 cm height. Shouldnt be too difficult to place those myself.
The biggest challenge of this wall will be the upper log wich is rotten thru and
thru and the roof is leaning on it partly. Will be too difficult to place a log
of 6.5 meters myself or even with someone else. Instead i will replace it with 2
smaller logs will look kinda weird but the 2 new bigger windows will be
abig improvement. Assholes make windows wich can go open twice as expensive and
even 3 times as expensive if they can go open all the way.
Anyway this seems to be the plan and a big job for next spring.
All in all i am very happy with my first ever property and it looks so
much beter already after 2 weeks of hard labour cleaning out a lot of
trash and cute 70s stuff.
1 of the last days i made a dayhike in the National park next to my cabin, nice
cute tourist trail.
That looks a lot better as before.
View from the cabin.
Chopping wood in the nude.
Since many years Frank21 has had a dream to own a small vacation cabin in
a nice remote area to escape the crazy busy life of overpopulated holland once
in a while.e.
In 2005 Frank21 was quite famous and successfull and made the first trip to
Scandinavia to look for a nice one but did not find any. This time it was Winter
and i didnt expect it to be sooo cold and snowy in the winter.
Unortunatly the big depression hit in 2007 and most of Frank21 was wiped
out like many websites.
The urge to own something still remains tho and is almost unbeareble, so in 2011
i went to scandinavia again i saw a real cute cheap cabin close to a nice big
fishing lake. But after visiting this place i did not buy cause it wasnt as nice
in the pictures.
There are still some nice cheap cabins out there but currently they are too
expensive for me since my truckers education cost 10 times more as expected.
Anyway my dream is to own a small cabin as a base to make nice healthy hikes and
fishing trips. So thats what i need YOUR HELP for.
Any donations and sugestions are very very welcome.
Donations can be made by
Alertpay.com userid:
cursistfrank@hotmail.com
Paypal.com userid:
Verkoop@franktique.com
or contact me on
MSN-email: cursistfrank@hotmail.com
yahoo: azzcams
