Revisiting the House 1

 

I apologise for the gap in posts. You must have thought I had given up on this blog, and maybe I had. Maybe having sold the house and been confined to the UK by Covid, bad knees and back it hurt too much to look at what I had lost/been forced to give up. It did and does hurt. 

In November 2022 I did return to my little Czech village, staying in the house of my puppetmaker friend directly opposite my old home. It felt very strange to cross the bridge across her drainage moat and look at the bright lights shining out from my old home. In the November gloom the house was a beacon on the lower slopes of the Lisci Dira hill. I saw it as I crowned the hill on the track I took on my walk home from the bus, calling me down to the village and yet not calling me, because it was nolonger mine. 

In the house someone else was stoking the stove, someone else was chopping onions and making goulash, someone else was talking to her friends. Someone else but not me.     

In Praise of Czech Windows

It has been freezing lately - see photographs of frost in my previous post - but my room is as they say in Britain 'toasty'.

One reason for this warmth is the wonder that is my wood-burning stove, of which I have blogged in the past. But another reason is Czech windows. In a Czech winter you need serious windows with serious double-glazing. The traditional windows in an old house like mine are made up of effectively two windows, each with its own handles, about four inches apart.

This arrangement has various advantages apart from keeping out the cold. One is that you can open the outer windows should you wish and leave the inner closed (or vice versa) which is useful for getting rid of condensation and cooling the place down a bit without having a breeze. Another is that you can put flowers in there - useful for deterring flies. And the last is that the space makes a brilliant fridge, allowing you to avoid having to go downstairs for the milk (see photograph above).

Restoring An Old Farmhouse, Making A Home

Across the village from our house stands an old farmhouse. The village is built at the upper end of a valley and sits in a semi-circle, as a result I look out of my lounge window and see the old farmhouse directly opposite my home. For a long time it was semi-derelict and a bit of a blot on the landscape. But now things are changing.

A local man has taken it on as a project. He needs a family home and is prepared to put in the hard work to turn this ruin into one. I wish him all the best in his endeavour. It was bad enough transforming our place, but he really has taken on a monster. Over the last few months the old roof has been removed and replaced. It looks to me as though he is doing much of it himself - work on the roof seemed to happen at weekends, the scaffolding was made not of the normal metal poles but of silver birch trunks nailed in place.

But making the house waterproof is the first step, every time I walk past I look at the windows and through them to the derelict interior. The new owner is a brave man, but for many Czechs the rise in house prices has made being brave the only option if you want a home.

Getting Ready for the Czech Winter

I've been spending my last few days ensuring we are ready for the Czech winter. It gave the north of the country quite a shock in October by arriving two months early and bringing transport to a standstill as cars and lorries, still on summer tyres, slithered to a stop on snowbound roads. But here in the south we have avoided it, so far, but not for much longer.

I gave up on a load of old roof timbers which I had been keeping under tarpaulin for a time when I might need them. They were showing signs of woodworm and some had a bloom of fungus. So I got two nice guys to appear with their chainsaw and cut them up along with the sycamore trees we cut down in the summer. That was three weeks ago and I have been splitting and stacking logs ever since, helped by the purchase of a heavy splitting axe from an ironmongers in Trebon. There is a huge pile of logs outside the front door, as I know from experience that I will not want to be fetching firewood from the snowheaps when they arrive in the yard.

The patio outside the front door was rebuilt this summer. The previous structure was a typical product of the previous owners - an awful lot of rather badly laid concrete (which probably fell off the back of a lorry). During last winter the concrete steps up to it were lethal, as they sloped in the wrong direction taking water into the foundations of the house where it turned to ice and then broke up the concrete. Result? I slipped on the ice and hurt my ankle. My lovely Czech builders found large granite sets beneath the surface of the patio, with which they rebuilt the steps and partly surfaced the patio. Everything now slopes in the right direction (I have been checking with jugs of water). And today the builders came to measure up the loft for insulation.

So are we ready for whatever the Czech winter will throw at us? We shall see; it has a habit of producing a few surprises.

Czech House Pixies

The other day I was carrying some rubbish out to the bin, when I slipped on an icy step and fell badly. Fortunately I had my walking boots on which protected my ankle against serious damage, but I am limping and yesterday spent the day resting my leg. This is the third time I have hurt my leg here as regular readers of my blog will know. My friend commented that the house must have a malicious spirit which is tripping me up, not a particularly powerful one, a pixie perhaps. This response may seem strange to my British readers but to a Czech it is a perfectly natural one. The Czechs may be according to surveys the most atheist nation in Europe, but when it comes to pixies, water sprites and fairies they are believers. Let me give you some examples:

A fellow Krumlov Brit was restoring a ruined small cottage as a holiday home when a series of unexplained accidents took place, nothing serious things falling over and the like. The builder looked at him and suggested that they put a saucer of milk for the fairies under the threshold to appease them. My friend Salamander had a cleaner who was constantly talking about the house gnomes, who were playing tricks on her. You know the ones – they are the ones that magic up balls of old hair and fluff and leave them under your bed, that hide your nail scissors in the last place you would look, and turn the milk sour when the shop has just closed. We Brits have forgotten them, but we once had them too. What can I say? Other than Puck is alive and well and living somewhere near Cesky Krumlov.

It strikes me that my house pixie has a clear purpose in what he is doing. He is not trying to force me from the house, not at all. My injuries are just enough to ensure that I cannot walk very from it. Tomorrow I will be leaving my lovely Czech home and taking the early train to Prague, I don't think he wants me to go.

A New Stove

Having survived for three years using the old stoves we inherited from the previous owners of our Czech house, we have finally succumbed to the allure of a new one. Actually as the lock mechanism had fallen off the old one in our upstairs living room, we had very little option but to replace it. On the advice of our friend and a builder we know who has a certificate (recognised in Germany, we were informed) in stoves and their installation we have bought what is called a Canadian-type stove. Well with two people, whose opinion we trust, both coming up with the same recommendation, it was pretty obvious this was the stove for us.

Thus it was that yesterday our builder took us in his car to a store in Ceske Budejovice in a supermarket arcade. There was our stove to be. We were delighted to see that unlike some in the range our stove has a window through which we can gaze into the flames, thus appealing to some primeval urge in us. We were very grateful when our builder carried the stove, which is made of cast iron and fire bricks and so horribly heavy, through the yard, up the yard steps and then straight up the stairs to the living room. He passed off our admiration saying it's what he does for a living, but even he had to take some time out to recover afterwards. We then lit the stove and stood back to admire both the flames and the heat as it poured into the room. The stove has a ring of upright tubes set around it - these gather the heat from the burning wood and pump it into the air, so efficiently that within minutes of lighting you begin to feel the effect.

Last night everything was toasty, the fire roared, the logs crackled and we watched imagined dragons in the flames.

Decorating a Bohemian Farmhouse

Our Czech home is in no way like our UK one - it is a bohemian farmhouse, the other a Cotswold town cottage. My approach to furnishing and decorating the Czech house is totally different. When first we came the house was furnished in a combination of Czech kitsch and bizarre. The stairwell shown above was decorated with several stuffed birds and animal skulls. I think the most bizarre was a set of coat hooks made from real deer feet! The rural Czechs seem to like to shoot their decorations first!


It will not surprise you that we decided not to go for Bohemian farmhouse décor if that was an example. Instead I have chosen to pursue a more eclectic rustic almost naïve style, with embroideries from Mexico and Nepal on the whitewashed walls. Hand-crafted stoneware pottery is more in keeping with the place than porcelain and is similar to the German-style stoneware we found here.


The large dining table and benches in the main room are made from solid pieces of local wood. And there is also a collection of found objects – fossils, shells, pine cones and a small nest found in the wood whilst mushrooming. Many decisions have been born of necessity – all the money was going on the fabric of the house so there was little available for furniture. The simple beds we inherited from the previous owners and from some British friends who were replacing theirs. The wardrobes were bought secondhand in a local town and are functional and not out of keeping. My sister designed the lampshades which were based on those in the Laibon Restaurant in Cesky Krumlov- they are quite simply made out of crumpled baking paper and card.

Over time we will replace many of these with better versions, but I do not believe that the house will ever be decorated luxuriously. It would be like taking an old farmer's wife and decking her out as a princess. But then I sometimes think that the British royal family never look so at home as when they are dressed as farmers, but that says more about the British royal family than it does about my simile. No, let the old house feel comfortable with her garb. Large velvet curtains will only hide the lovely arches of the windows. Smooth plaster will hide the wonderful lack of symmetry of the walls and ceilings.