Housebuilding in Finland

[Ace Pace]

I have a picture that looks suspiciously like that, at around that age.

How did you flatten all the soil? You intend to fill it with grass or flowers?

[His Divine Shadow]

Shovels, wheel barrow, rakes, all hand power and several days of sweaty work. Grass has been sown and is starting to poke up now.

[Borgholio]

What do you do if you fear your child is a sith lord?

Encourage it and feel a sense of pride as he strikes you down to take your place and begin the conquest of the galaxy?

[His Divine Shadow]

It's been a busy summer. Summer is high season at work, and my fiance is working a lot of nights and weekends too, so a lot of my days after the workday are spent containing the two runaway nuclear reactions that are the twins.

I did get the base of the outdoor kitchen mostly cast... ran out of cement before I got done, miscalculation.... Off by a single bag or so...

We took this sunday off, visited my parents with the kids, they're greenhouse farmers, the tomatoes in the photo below are are light red are ready for picking and shipping.

To start a little rant on tomatoes and the production thereof I want to say that by this time they don't actually get any more nutrients from the plant and ripen the rest of the way on their own. There's no difference between a tomato picked at this stage and left to ripe on the counter than one picked much redder. I should know, I've eaten truckloads of tomatoes in my life picked from the vine and counter. If you pick them green then I can see why there'd be a difference, but the only time green tomatoes are picked here is in the autumn for the last pick of the season when the plants are picked clean and then thrown out. You get paid less for green tomatoes so there's little incentive to pick them as such.

Mostly though the taste of tomatoes are determined by the cultivar of the plant and that's why people think their own homegrown tomatoes taste more (they do), but it's not because you let them ripen on the vine, but because you got a plant that is aimed less at commercial production and more towards taste. Unfortunately most small farmers like my parents don't have a choice from year to year, what is grown is determined by the big boys, usually in the Netherlands, and we get to buy the same stuff. Growing from personal seeds is not really doable either as the buyers want standardized produce.

Season also affects how tomatoes taste, in summertime in the Nordics we got insane sunlight hours, this makes for tasteful produce grown that time. The bigger producers that bother with winter production use lights, doesn't taste the same.



We also use part of the greenhouses to grow stuff for ourselves:

Chiles:


Cherry tomatoes (also bell peppers out of frame)


Watermelons, should be ready by august:


Also got some grapes growing elsewhere, new plants so don't expect anything of them this year.

Kids are watering the weeds:


Kitty, count the toes:

[LadyTevar]

I see those tomatoes and start wanting Fried Green Tomatoes.
Weird thing: I can't eat raw tomatoes, they have to be cooked and processed enough that the seeds are gone and the acid's muted. But Fried Green Tomatoes I can eat without worrying about the seeds and acid tearing up my stomach.

So... take a few good-sized green tomatoes, cut into 1cm slices, dredge the slices in flour, then milk, then cornmeal/flour mix, and fry those babies in olive oil or bacon grease til golden. Pat the oil off them, serve with a nice remoulade, and it's heavenly. *sigh*

[His Divine Shadow]

I've never had fried green tomatoes, but I realize I am in a rare position to be able to try the dish out. Most people couldn't even if they wanted since you can't buy green tomatoes in stores here, something you apparently can in the south in the US. Something I should try out I...

[His Divine Shadow]

Made a kentucky stick chair:


And some netting to protect the strawberry patch from birds

[Sea Skimmer]

I did get the base of the outdoor kitchen mostly cast... ran out of cement before I got done, miscalculation.... Off by a single bag or so...

I know that problem.... the thing is its really hard to eyeball how much a bag shrinks when you add water unless you do that kind of thing every day. I solved it by shoving several decent sized rocks into the mixture when it happened, but it was just a footing for a replacement step that needed to fill in a void for stability, so no harm done if it cracks later. And the people who do it every day just bring a shitload of cement in the first place.

[LadyTevar]

Very nice chair! I love those, they're so easy to pack and carry.

[His Divine Shadow]

Thanks, my fiance also made pillows for this and several future chairs too, I used a homebrew pinetar/blo finish for the chair:



Storage chest from surplus lumber


Nice hinges, almost a shame they're hidden:


Most of the lumber was used to extend the back stairs for the deck so it goes the whole way. Considering doing the same on the other side too.

[LadyTevar]

Extending the stairs sounds like a great idea

[His Divine Shadow]

Previously I had thought of doing a rail, though a single huge step going around the terrace (or deck? I dunno the terminology) would be more useful.

[His Divine Shadow]

Also some stuff I forgot about, painting the floor in my workshop


And I started bricklaying but I keep getting interrupted by rain all the time

[Elheru Aran]

That's a nice floor, is that one of those fancy epoxy coatings?

[His Divine Shadow]

Just a single component polyurethane oil based paint. It was what I was recommended at the store I went. We'll see how it holds up I have to be careful the next 3-4 weeks while the paint hardens fully.

[Sea Skimmer]

Those epoxy coatings are really only relevant if your going to have chemicals and oil dumped on the floor, such as in the auto shop setting. They are also better if you have a reason to add grit for traction, say a surface that would have a lot of water on it. A good floor paint should be fine for a wood shop.

[His Divine Shadow]

The stuff has really hardened up with time, the 1st week I could make a line in the floor with my fingernail, no longer.




Picked up an old Husqvarna skillet at a booth fair. I've gone at it with angle grinder and bristle brush attachments, I find they give the nicest results and don't hurt the metal. On the bottom I flattened it using a disc sander because why not, got tools, gotta use them, made a nice circular pattern that followed the factory look. Also used a randon orbital sander on the inside and smoothed it down. Contrary to opinion I really think it helps alot.

Then oil and into the oven. It came out looking kinda rusty / yellowish. That's how it goes for me and I usually find it works better to continue seasoning by cooking after this step. So I started frying eggs, perhaps not the best but i had no bacon. The first one was sticky but the 2nd one was basically like a teflon pan. The secret I find is the spatula. God I love this spatula, I could not cook without it. I fried the 1st egg and I scraped off the pieces that got stuck, metal is the key here, with soft edges, keep scraping and scraping until it's gone, you'll feel how the spatula just glides really easily on the surface. I cleaned out the pan, more oil & salt, then another egg and yes, near perfect non-stickage.



As you can see, I like my eggs fried to a crisp as well, no runny yolks for me. More like chips.

Anyway now I just gotta keep on using it and it'll turn all black. I really like this small one, will be great for pancakes and eggs and smaller stuff. No need to haul out the big one every time.

[LadyTevar]

I have a cast-iron skillet like the one in the picture. It belonged to my grandma, and it is also damn-near teflon. Never goes into water, just wipe clean with a dry paper towel. I like my eggs sunny-side up or lightly over-easy, and they glide around my skillet like floating on air.

Is the Husqvarna skillet aluminum?

[His Divine Shadow]

No it's cast iron too, just hasn't been completely seasoned yet, it'll turn black soon.

[Borgholio]

Cast Iron is the best. We bought some Lodge-brand cast iron cookware and we make sure to keep it nicely seasoned. Food cooked on these things comes out so much better than even a modern nonstick frying pan.

[His Divine Shadow]

I do wash my pans now and then usually only hot water suffices but I might use dish soap too. I usually need to wash if I made gravy or something like that which just needs a cleaning out. The seasoning is too hard to be affected by it so it's not really the world ending thing some people make it out to be. It stands up to me scraping the pan all the time with my spatula after all, just oil it up after washing and it'll be fine.

Another iron thing I got from the 2nd hand fair this weekend:


Some handle making in the future.

[Elheru Aran]

Strangely enough you *can* use soap on a cast iron pan... just a small amount mind you, mostly for anti-bacterial properties and to remove any excess grease. You certainly shouldn't leave the pan immersed in soapy water or use a LOT of soap, and for heavens' sake NEVER put one in the dishwasher. My step-mother-in-law did that a few years ago. The horror.

My usual method of cleaning them is to boil water in the pan and scrub with a coarse pad or steel wool, rinse, dry well, oil and put away. That is a very nice spatula by the way, I've been wanting something like that for awhile now. But your eggs... dude. It looks like you cook them harder than my wife, and she can barely boil water

That is a beautiful axe. I've wanted one of those Nordic axes for a long time now. Too damn expensive here in the States.

[His Divine Shadow]

I picked that one up for 10€, it's an all-round type of axe.

Historical image:

[Borgholio]

That kid has the look of "You've stolen my soul with that infernal contraption!"

[His Divine Shadow]

Dragged home some junk, an old compressor that the seller said didn't work. The motor works however and it's a 2.2kw 920RPM motor. I figured for that alone it was worth 30 euros he wanted.

Took three people to lift it into the little Yaris that could. To get it out I had to remove the motor:


It's modern enough that it has a pressure switch, older machines would just run constantly in "park" mode, but when the pressure dropped below a set level it'd would switch into gear and start feeding pressure. This one just stops and starts because it's only a 2.2kw model. The older models that run constantly were usually 7.5kw monsters and could cause blown fuses or dimmed lights every time they started up.



Instructions on usage:






United States Of America:


Now to figure out what's wrong with it. If I can't f ix it, I think maybe the motor can go on my bandsaw, since the current motor is too fast for it. And the tank can be hooked to my current compressor in a serial fashion. If it's not rusted inside.