2023-11 Winter Arrival
November sees real snow that settles and stays, with the occasional snowploughs on the main road. All our activity shifts to indoors or to winter orientated outdoor activities.
Making Planned Wood
We setup the basement workshop to process rough-cut timber into planed wood, and planed our first planks. To do this we used the circlesaw with an adaptor to fix the circle saw to the rails as if it were a tracksaw. We then used the circlesaw to cut two parallel sides. We then setup and used the thickness planer for the first time to create a flat surface on each face. This is not perfect and there are faster ways but this works for now. I ordered a cheap workshop chip/collector because we quickly found that the thicknesser becomes clogged and misbehaves.
Ideally for processing wood we’d also have a jointer, mitre saw, and table saw. But these all takeup room, cost money, are quite noisy for a basement. They are also the types of machine that quickly remove fingers of anyone who is inattentive. For now we’ll make a jig for the planer so that it can create parallel sides. We don’t need more than that at the moment but maybe that will change. I’ve worked out the maximum width, height and lengths of wood we can process in the workshop. I’ll try to match any future machines to these limits.
Old Jointer
I have an boat-makers old jointer in the garage in bits. Sadly it would take up too much space in the basement once assembled. The jointer uses a separate motor with a long belt drive, requiring both units to be bolted to the floor to work together, or be on a combined platform. The machine also has none of the safety features of a modern machine. Examples being an automatic blade guard and an enclosed motor with dedicated stop button. I can spend time adding these safety features, but it could be the same cost to buy a cheap jointer that already had the features. It’s a bit of a shame but I think I have to be realistic and pass the jointer on to someone that has the space for it.
Repairing Cabinet
The project to restore a large wooden apothecary cabinet met the limit of the original battery tools. All the “Home and Garden” budget tools I purchased when we first moved in are a few years old now. Sanding for hours uses all the batteries and the batteries themselves have lost some capacity with age and lots of use. Therefore I invested a lot of this months budget in corded tools for longer-term use.
We got a square finish sander in order to be able to sand inside the draws of the cabinet. Later in the month we ordered a belt sander and a corded oscillating sander but these haven’t arrived at the time of writing. We are getting to the point where we have enough tools for typical tasks but there are still some gaps. I try to only buy tools for immediate projects but the method causes delays when we discover we are missing a capability we need or some specific adaptor.
Anyway, on the cabinet we’ve removed the last of the metalwork and drawer-handles. This means we can now sand all the drawers. We also glued the planks that we machined, so as to create an eventual new top surface of the cabinet. We’ve also repaired a couple of drawers that had split wood.
Renovating the Old Heating Room
The old heating room in the basement is quite rough and not currently useful. It is about 2mx3m which is a good area, but the rough floor and oil-soot stained walls are problematic. Ideally I’d like to make the room more hygienic. The ongoing project is to remove the old concrete floor and lay a new one. After the floor is done I’ll renovate the rest of the room. This will involve the walls, ceiling, plumbing and electrics.
The work removing the old floor hit a bit of a snag. The building waste removal local contact has stopped responding. From experience, this probably means my query about building bag removal was too strange. Possibly there is something obvious that everyone else knows that is unspoken. Perhaps no collections are done in the snow. For now I will fill the three rubble bags I have. I will leave them outside until the snow melts in late April.
I can only remove part of the floor in the room anyway as the house heating unit stands in one corner. The plumber has said it is too risky to move it in winter and best left until May. I have been able to explore via a hole in half the room. There seems to be two layers of bricks with a layer of concrete on top, repeated multiple times. I haven’t found any sign of the wall footer yet. Sadly the ready-mix bags I had stacked up for the project have likely began to set by now. I cant do anything about that and so that is a problem for May.
Tool supply
Family gifted us a wall sander which is going to be a lot of help in sanding the basement walls. Currently I was going up and down a ladder with a handheld sander and then vacuuming dust off everything afterwards. With the wall sander it takes a vacuum attachment and you have a long handle allowing you to reach all over the wall without balancing on a ladder.
We also had a big sort out of all the tools as everything had become haphazard during the autumn projects. We’ve started to think about how we can do more permanent tool storage in the basement workshop. The trick is to do it in a way that is in keeping with the character of the house and the room. I’m still thinking this through.
Government Changes for Immigrants
Sweden has a more right-wing government than in previous years. As a result of this and some historic issues, there are various proposals for tougher requirements for immigrants. This isn’t just new applications but also existing immigrants with permanent resident status.
Reapplying
Permanent residents may need to reapply each year, which creates a risk of being deported from your life in Sweden if you fail an evidence requirement. An example would be a postal demand for evidence being lost in the post or delayed. As an example, during the Brexit re-evaluation of British residents we had evidence demands stating 10 days to reply, which would arrive on day 8 of when the letter was dated. Ultimately there is nothing I can do about for now so I’m not giving it headspace.
Income Requirements
An income requirement of 27000SEK per month is also being put forward, which is perhaps low for the southern cities such as Stockholm but quite high for the rural north of the country. It’s not clear how that will be implemented for unmarried couples.
It is concerning because it might mean that were I to lose my current job, a local job might not be enough to satisfy the authorities.
Language Requirements
Lastly a language requirement is quite likely. The level being proposed is “SFI C” which SFI states is approximately equal to CEFR A2. That is within the reach of anyone with 200-400 hours of study (more on that below). The language requirements are not too hard but the logistics of taking the tests to prove the language level might be troublesome. Roughly 5 years ago when we had to take the IELTS for the Canadian authorities we had to attend separate exams for speaking and listening for example. That could mean a lot of travel.
Learning Swedish
I’ve had some more time off work. As a result I’ve been able to put in 4 hours of uninterrupted Swedish study each day. It takes about 200 hours to go up a CEFR level, so 40 hours of additional study is quite significant progress towards the next level. After a week of 4 hours a day you also feel a significant improvement.
Days when I revise Swedish and meet my revision targets feel good. Days when I’m tired and rushed and have to skip Swedish learning feel disappointing. I’m quite behind where someone who has lived in Sweden 3 years should be but there were lots of other pressures for that time and I cant change the past.
My aim for December is to get at least another 50 hours done. If I can repeat that in January I should be firmly out of CEFR A1/A2 and into B1 revision.
The separate Swedex exam level A2/B1 would be the first exam I can take. The A2/B1 is currently only offered in two cities. One in the far southwest (Gotebörg) and one far south (Lund). It’s is about 1070km distant. Although I would like to take the exam as a milestone, I’d lose about half a months wages on the exam fee, travel, and stay. Under the current conditions I would therefore wait until B2/C1. Realistically C1 will be next December at best. It’s about another 400 hours revision on top of the current target.
Innebandy
A friend invited me to play indoor nordic floorball (innebandy). It haven’t learnt any Swedish from playing it other than “bra!” (good), English words of “shoot!”, and “goal”. I’m still unsure of the rules. The rules we play by dont seem to match what I read online, but it is a lot of fun. I’ve survived three games so far. I purchased shinpads recently after the bruises took two 2 weeks to heal from one game.
Outdoor Winter Sports
I managed to find a second hand snowboard and also some second hand boots. Helmets are more tricky and maybe best to avoid second hand. I found a helmet on a 25% off offer with another 15% sale on top. This should be enough for going up a hill and falling over a lot, ideally where noone can see me.
I haven’t managed to find the right skis yet. The range of types, bindings and boots is bewildering. I just wanted some for exploring.
House Registration Error
When you buy a house in Sweden, you are recorded by name, address, and unique “personnummer” as the owners of the house. When we purchased the house we didn’t yet have personnummers. Also our UK rented address was used for the registration. Lastly my name had a spelling error. The spelling mistake was minor to a human but enough to upset any computer match (e.g. imagine “Bob Tayler” instead of “Bob Taylor”).
Although we were correctly in the population register, as living at the address, the house ownership wasn’t correctly linked to us. This affected things like tax deductions for plumbing and electrical work which in Sweden is handled at the time of invoice (it’s more complicated than that, but this explanation works for now). The tax agency told the contractor that I did not own the house and that the tax agency were therefore going to refuse the tax refund. Due to the way this works at invoice time, the contractor would be out of pocket and the contractor then got a little stressed.
This was a nightmare to sort out. was able to fix each individual time this happened by calling the tax agency section that had denied the request but it caused friction that we could do without. It also meant we might not be receiving some official communications about the property. We knew the tax agency had sent letters about the property to the old address in the UK as we were forwarded the letter.
“Contact the other department”
When I queried fixing the record I ended up in a catch 22 situation. The land registry denied any involvement in addresses and said I must ask the tax agency. The tax agency in turn stated they had no involvement in addresses and would never send post to a UK address. But I had a letter where they had done that to our old UK rental address. Someone must have realised the UK address was now invalid as the UK address was then wiped from the online property record, but I didn’t know by which agency. After about 8 emails and a written letter I gave up. This was only one battle of many during immigration, it seemed unwinnable, and it didn’t need immediately fixing.
Fast forward a couple of years and I thought I would try again. The land registry website said that fixing the address when incorrect is a service they offer and to contact them. There might also be different staff on the helpdesk. I raised a query. I was careful to use the same wording as the website and I linked to the page that discussed the operation. It felt like a big breakthrough when I got a positive response.
Then it got weird. They said if I could show the original decision letter for the personnumer being granted then they would consider fixing the record. But the definitive proof that you are in the population register is that … you are in the (queryable, authoritative) population register. A scanned copy of a letter could be falsified. Also who would the property belong to if the land registry decided that we weren’t the owners? But sometimes it’s important to just do what is asked.
So late this month the house now shows up magically as being in our names when we log into the land registry. This removes a few different sources of stress that were all linked together.
Foodcellar
The foodcellar got below zero last year which we wanted to avoid as it can cause problems with food storage. This year there is a wooden door on the air vent which we close at the start of winter. The food cellar is holding a temperature of about 4.5C when it is between 10-16 below zero outside. This is ideal for our food storage. There are two metal grids acting as mouse guards for the air vent. If it weren’t for the metal grids, mice would follow the warm air and smells into the room.
