Fingers crossed and thumbs held

The exterminators were here a week ago. We are a couple of thousand zloty poorer and our house smells like chemicals, but fingers crossed and thumbs held*, let’s hope that it works. To recap, our house in the village has woodworm. The woodworm is eating away at the beams which support the whole structure. I cannot use past tense yet.
The most effective treatment would have been gassing the whole house. This is the solution that I pushed for, but the exterminators were worried about the proximity of the next door neighbors. Strictly according to the law, their house is far enough away but our neighbors are old and like to wander into our garden in our absence, so the exterminator was worried about their overall safety.
The next best method is to drill holes into all the wooden beams, inject them with a poisonous resin, and re-impregnate all wood in the house. It looks like this:

Luckily for us, our beams are exposed. If not, the ceilings would have had to be removed. This process isn’t an instant kill of the woodworm. Any worms die upon reaching the resin and if any make their way out, they will most likely not re-infect due to the impregnation. In one particular beam that showed no signs of infestation, the worms were clearly crunching away. Now all sounds in that beam have stopped. In other places, I can still hear them. It’s quite unsettling.
Additionally, the extermination team gave the barn a spray. The chemicals are available over-the-counter, so to speak, but I am not comfortable using toxic substances myself. They had all the protective clothing and masks and a power sprayer thingy so it was much better that they did it and we just paid for it.
I hope that'll be the end of the woodworm story.
Do you feel itchy?

*Polish equivalent to crossing your fingers for good luck.

Exposed Beams and other stuff

Here are some pictures for Olivia who is a fan of exposed beams. She and her family are also planning a move from Texas to Poland next year. Olivia, these beams are for you :)

Sorry about the crookedness. I was lounging on the coach just right and couldn’t be bothered to adjust ;)

We’ve kept the original doors so far, neither stripped nor re-painted. The pine beams are not stained. We only cleaned them and sprayed them with some anti-insect treatment.

This picture is upstairs where I was thrilled to find recently that the beams have numbers etched into them from when the house was built. Misiu noticed those etchings about 5 years ago. I’m very observant.

Everything is painted white until we figure out what we want to do with this house.

A little attic at the very top.

Our still empty bedroom.

Current view from our still empty bedroom. Yeah, that’s our land. Respect!

No beams, just bathtub. Crazy-expensive bathtub. Crazy-expensive, heavy, heat-sucking bathtub that I insisted on.

A view to the barn. Did I mention that it is hard to find sober workers in the Village?

Our glorious barn.

We have a door in the fence between our house and our neighbor’s. Isn’t that quaint? We hardly ever use the door because the last time we did, the neighbor’s dog bit Misiu and now the kids are afraid to even go near the door.

It also might have something to do with the neighbor’s annual baby scarecrow hanging. Here is this year’s presentation.

Here’s our house. Just stop at the local shop and ask where “Lucy” lives.

A pit-stop on the way from Babcia’s to our place.

We’ve picked the last apples from the tree. Time to prepare an apple crisp. Autumn is here.

Get the lead out!

Renovating an old farm house is something that sounds like fun when someone else describes it. Usually that someone else has an eye for style and deep pockets. We have neither.

Our house renovation is a never-ending story. We started from the roof, changing the original cement roof tiles circa 1935 to blachodachówka – brown sheet metal which mimics the look of tiles. Some people think that this is a blasphemy and if you are a renovation purist, you will not like my home. I have antique next to IKEA and I don’t give a shyte. When we did the roof, we also needed to replace and rebuild the top meter and a half of the chimney. The workers also cleaned out the chimney. Our next door neighbors got back an iron frying pan and a set of grocery weights that they had lost about 15 years before. They were in our chimney. Don’t ask. We also have a przybudówka (a porch addition) that needs to be torn down and rebuilt. For now, I’ve just decorated it (like lipstick on a pig) with a wind chime that my mother gave me. It is just like the ones my mother has at home so every time it chimes I think of her and home (sniff, sniff). We decided to install wooden windows but now I think plastic might have been a better idea. After that, we did rozpierducha totalna ;) (complete gutting) and removed all the plaster on the walls and removed the floor/ceiling exposing the beams. We put wooden planks upstairs and built an open space room, a bedroom, a bathroom and an open attic/loft. Downstairs, we put tiles in all rooms. The tiles are dirt colored which is quite handy with 2 kids. Each room has 2 doors so you can go around our downstairs in a circle from room to room. We have all the original doors except the bathroom door (here on the left) which we had made because there was not a bathroom before. We still have the original stairs and we are debating to keep them or change them. I wanted finished concrete stairs, kind of industrial looking but not one single ekipa (work crew) will make them for us. “People don’t make stairs like that. You’ll never sell your house.” I hate that kind of unsolicited advice. It was the same thing when we wanted to put the bathroom upstairs next to the bedroom. Everyone advised us to make a przybudówka downstairs. You can make one up to 20 square meters without a building permit if you are adding a bathroom (the first one) to your house. Our neighbor politely inquired if it wasn’t going to be burdensome traipsing upstairs and tracking in mud when I am working in the field in my Wellington boots. I wanted to ask when have I ever been known to work in the fields but instead I replied that in that case I would do my business behind the barn or take off my Wellies first.

Our house renovation is at a standstill. We are at the stage of just thinking about what to do next, not in any “designer’s” kind of a way, more in a “we’ve run out of money but when we get some what are we going to do next” kind of a way. We have to do something about our old doors. I really like that we have old doors. They make a nice contrast against the fresh walls and exposed beams.

kitchen doorliving room door

living room door (other side)

playroom door

playroom door frame after sanding

The one problem is that paint is in very bad condition. I even like that look but in some places it is peeling off. My plan was either to scrape off the worst places and paint a clear sealant over it or to sand down everything and then wax them. As I scoured the internet looking for info about paint removal, I noticed a lot of warnings about lead in old paint. I had some students in the US who were affected by lead poisoning as children so I really started to get scared. I found some information that lead paint was banned in Europe for home use in 1930 and my house was built in 1935 but that is no guarantee. I didn’t want to sand the doors and door frames down making potentially toxic dust. I also didn’t want to scrape off the paint and put it in the regular garbage. I began searching for a laboratory who could test the paint chips. Thanks to the recommendation of some fellow English teachers on the Gazeta Wyborcza forum, I was able to contact a laboratory to test the paint for 146 złoty. If you are one of those teachers, thank you again. We are waiting for the results.

pictures from upstairs