My Vibrant Yellow House Turned Into a Homeschool Lesson

As a homeschool mom, I think there can be a lesson in everything. Much like a writer finds a story everywhere! I'm going to share a lesson and a story from one of my photographs.

I LOVE this picture. But my love is very biased because it is the house that we used to own in Sweden. I LOVE this picture. But my love is very biased because it is the house that we used to own in Sweden. 

This is a question that can be tied into Geography: People and Culture and Architecture: Roof Types. Different types of houses are common in different parts of the world. And there are often reasons behind some of the choices.

Why might a roof shaped like this be more popular in a northern country like Sweden? Is it the only shape of roof common there? (No, A frame houses and steep roofs are also common.) Where else do you see roof shapes like this?

What about the color of the house? Is that a common color where you live?

We bought the house while living on the Island of Gotland. That is the largest island in the Baltic Sea. (Map from worldatlas.com) The house is found pretty close to the center of the island in a town called Roma. 

Unfortunately, mail intended for Roma, Sweden kept ending up in Rome, ITALY!!! So the Swedes learned to address their mail to Romakloster, Sweden. This worked since there were ruins for an old kloster in the towns jurisdiction. 

The house itself is rural and mostly surrounded by fields. The crops in those fields are rotated. Sometimes they are filled with grain, like barley, and other times it might be fields of bright yellow raps flowers (the flower that canola oil is harvested from). Not far there are cattle farms and if you wind through the small roads between town you can find our friends' sheep farm.

If you look at the picture closely, you might notice some details missing. That is because we hadn't finished all the detail work after putting on the new facade and painting it. Part of the rain gutter isn't up and none of the window seals or trim fittings are there yet. But I love how the color of the house stands out against the gorgeous Swedish blue sky!

The first time I visited Sweden, I was going to marry a Swede. We were already planning to move to Sweden after we finished college. So I started looking at all the house styles. I quickly fell in love with their wood houses. 

I decided that while the famous Swedish red was cool, I loved the yellow houses best. I told my husband I wanted a yellow house. That was in 2003! I also decided that I liked the Mansard roofs best.

When it came time to buy a house in 2010, we needed to buy a house we could afford. And we ended up with a project house built in the 1930s. It did have a mansard roof. At the time it was an old red tin roof, that needed to be replaced. The cap for the ridge was missing. Not surprisingly, some of the roof trusses were rotting from the moisture that got in through the gap, so we had to replace them as well. We put on a shingle roof. They are not as common in Sweden, but were making inroads. I loved the tile roofs but to put on a tile roof we would have had to add in a lot of structural support. Besides, my family visited us in Sweden and helped with labor. And they new shingles. So it was the most cost effective for us. The insulation in the attic had been wood shavings. We had to take all of that out and replace it with dry modern insulation. (Most of the old materials that we pulled off the house went to the junk yard, but I put all the wood shavings (untreated) down as a mulch and grew an amazing beet garden that year!)

The facade of the house, when we bought it, was a dirty, rotting white. In places where it had rotted away we could see that insulation underneath was styrofoam! I am not sure if that was a comon practice, but it surely wouldn't pass modern building codes. In someplaces hornets or some sort of bee had tunneled into the styrofoam. That was interesting to remove! Under the styrofoam was the original sage green wood facade. We had to rip off all those layers, and start over. We put in better, modern insulation and replaced the outer layer with a new wood.

I had fallen in love with the vertical wood paneling styles in Sweden.  

 

 

However, when we studied our house's structure and looked at our budget, we decided it was not cost effective or time effeciant to build or maintain that style. Instead, we opted for the still used horizontal wood facade.

Then I got to choose my color. For a while I took pictures of every yellow house we drove past. Then we looked at all of them and analyzed what we liked best against their surroundings and with their various roof styles and colors.

We got 10 different yellow samples and painted wood planks that we moved around the house to see which one we liked best in the natural lighting. I was amazed at how yellow can actually have a green or brown hue. I didn't like those variations.
We eventually settled on a bright yellow. Even though it was an option in the stores and there were plenty of yellow houses, I think it surprised our neighbors with its bold hue.

I still think of my yellow house with fondness. Every time we drove up to it I felt joy! It was the perfect color to add brightness to life in the dull winter and fit perfect with the vibrant colors of the nature on our property (trees, hedges, gardens, bushes etc.) and the surrounding fields. It is a cultural and architectural experience I am grateful I had. 

Here is a very Swedish looking house. It is Daniel's grandmother's home. If you look close you can see the vertical paneling. There are a few ways they set the wood. Sometimes the bigger planks are in front so there are indented stripes. Other times the larger planks are in the back with thin wood strips in front making the thin lines pop out instead of in. This house is the first style.