Sunrise/sunset: 03:05/22:31 Daylength: 19hr31min

It feels like a long time since I wrote my last post. Events are whizzing by and I’m just trying to keep up.

Firstly then, the house. The estate agents have been helpful. After weeks of trying (unsuccessfully) to get hold of a plumber, the recommendation from them came up trumps and the plumbing is now (mostly) fixed. There’s an unpleasant aroma in the utility room, but the surveyor, who came on Thursday, located the problem. The drain in the floor should have some kind of cap on it and doesn’t. The plumber had already fitted a new u-bend and now will have to come back to fix the drain, but hopefully that will be it.

Fortunately, the process for selling the house seems to be coming in bite-sized chunks. We cleaned everything inside for the estate agent visit and she gave me various tips for making the house look good when the photographer comes. When I mentioned painting the garage, she said to paint the front first, as that would be in the photographs. The rest could be done later, she pointed out, so it’s now half done and looks a lot better than before. I need to retouch the white paint, but I’m pleased with it.

The surveyor came out on Thursday, so I had to fill in loads more paperwork. Norway brought in a lot of rules a couple of years ago about houseowners having to declare everything they know about faults and problems, as well as about all work that’s been done over time. Fortunately, I knew about the requirement to provide receipts and proof of work done, so I was more or less prepared for that aspect, but it was still a tortuous process.

Before he came, I wanted to get the mouse-brushes in place. I thought it would be a very minor job, but it was a little more complicated than I had expected. Houses in Norway are (mostly) constructed quite differently from the houses I grew up with in the UK. Mine has a small “creep cellar” underneath, walled with breeze blocks, which are covered with a thin layer of cement at the front, but are just painted at the back. There are wooden plugs in the low walls of the creep cellar which are more enough big enough to crawl through. You can’t access it at all from the house, but only from the garden, so when it’s decked with snow, that’s it for the winter. Above the creep cellar, the main walls are made of wood. I’d say the majority of the houses in Norway have the planks laid horizontally, but mine are vertical. There is an overhang with a gap between the wood and the breeze block wall and the mouse brushes, each of which is about a metre long, are usually inserted into that overhang.

Most of the instructions I’ve seen have been for houses with horizontal planks. The mouse brushes are just pushed lengthways up into the gap and that’s the job done. But when I tried to do that, it turned out the overhang on my house was too small, so that the bristles of the brush stuck out the bottom. On inspection, it turned out that, because of the upright planks, there were actually smaller holes that could each be blocked individually, but that meant we would have to cut the brushes into shorter lengths. None of the tools we had were working to cut the wire along the centre of the brushes, so we had to buy a new cutter. Anyway, in case that’s all as clear as mud, or you can’t visualise the brushes or the planks, I took some photos. Cutting the brush first, then looking up under the wall at the hole to be filled, then finally the brush being pushed into the hole.

We also had to pull out lots of furniture and all the white goods so that the surveyor could look behind them. I’m hoping he didn’t find anything too awful, other than the things I already knew about. He and the estate agent will decide between them how much they think I should ask for the house in the first instance.

Early next week, the photographer is coming out. Before she comes, we will need to clean again and there is a bit of “dressing” that I need to do. We have to take down the curtains in the living room and rearrange the furniture, both of which seem rather odd to me. The curtains are cosy and suit the room well, but we have to maximise the light, she told me. The furniture is perhaps more problematic. I forgot, when she said that we had to pull the sofas out into the middle of the room, that the backs of both of them are somewhat damaged. They’re leather sofas, generously given to me by a colleague, and I like them a lot, but having them close to the wall is covering a multitude of sins! I’ll have to pull them out today and have a look. A black marker pen might be my best friend!

One of John’s friends, Bowen, has been coming to cut our lawns once a week. My original plan was to buy the equipment to cut it myself – probably some kind of ride-on mower as it’s big. However, by the time summer came, I knew I was thinking of moving, so I didn’t want to invest in any more equipment. Bowen has been doing a great job and better still, he has now given our lovely guinea pigs a new home. That was one of my biggest concerns as I didn’t want to hand little Brownie and Millie over to strangers, but I know Bowen will take good care of them and he has children, who hopefully will love them lots.

Beyond the photographer, still seemingly a while away, will be the “visning”, when the house is opened up for an hour or two for people to come and look around it. By then, I will have to have the garage finished. In addition, I want to stain the doorsteps and the veranda. I started outside the front door last night, where there are some steps and a raised wooden area beside the driveway. Norwegian weather is hard on wooden verandas, as you can imagine, so I want to do it right. Before you stain the wood, you have to remove any old stain so the new can sink in. This involves spraying on some special cleaning fluid, then removing the stain. I wasn’t sure if there was any stain left at all on the platform. To me, it looked like old wood that had long been bleached, but after the cleaning fluid had been on for fifteen minutes, I noticed there were areas of wood that suddenly appeared to have stain on them.

I started to scrub, thinking I would remove that small area, only to find that my brush was revealing more and more of the original, honey-coloured wood. I don’t know how long it was since it was done, but I feel like I removed about ten years worth of ingrained dirt, revealing some much nicer wood underneath. I sent photos to Wivek, as I was worried that I would have to start again, now the dirt was gone, but she assured me it now looks as it ought to after the cleaning process. Buying my own house in Norway, even for only a year, has been an enormous learning curve. Anyway, front doorstep cleaned, much larger veranda still to go. I know I could just sell the house as it is, but it seems stupid not to have it looking as good as I can manage, before going ahead.

Anyway, with all the work on the house ongoing, it’s been hard to relax, so when Andrew asked me if we could go away for a night camping, I almost turned him down. I like camping, but it can be quite a faff, getting everything into the car and putting up the tent and so on. However, it’s his holiday and the last one before he leaves home and I wanted to spend some quality time with him, so on Friday night, we headed out onto Senja to find somewhere to spend the night.

We had hoped to have a spectacular dinner at Senja Roasters. I’ve often posted about them before but, to our disappointment, they seem to have stopped cooking and now have turned into a glorified coffee and cake cafe. The only savoury food on offer was quiche, which didn’t even come with salad. We were a bit sad, having driven all the way to Stonglandseidet in anticipation, but fortunately, I had spotted a cafe attached to a cabin and camp site along the way. We drove back, fully expecting a fairly typical Norwegian roadside food menu, with burgers and hot dogs, so we were very pleasantly surprised when we saw the menu board.

Andrew suggested we could share a reindeer pizza, so that is what we did. It was delicious!

We drove back down to Songlandseidet to camp. A good while back, I spent a whole day exploring that part of southern Senja with Thomas, looking for reindeer and I had noticed this place when I was there. It was windy and so camping in a field with plenty of shelter from trees was a good plan.

Though I had been unsure about setting out, once we were there, in beautiful, peaceful surroundings, I felt more relaxed than I have for weeks. When I’m in the house, I am constantly aware that there are lots of things that I need to get done.

Lying in the tent, with Triar snuggling beside me, I felt free of all that. We are now planning another trip for next weekend, so there might be another late blog.

On the way home yesterday, we decided to stop for breakfast at the same café to try the toasties. It was a lovely end to our night away. Anyway, bye for now. Hope you all have a good week.