I would like to invite you to a tour of my home in Oslo, Norway.
As the title suggests, I want to share a tour with steemit,of my Home. Its not exactly the "Norm" that your used to I guess so check it out!
I am living here with a mate and and 3 dogs between us, staying here since the beginning days of August 2017. I thought Id do first a blog post about where im living and how I got to live here.
There are 1000s of un-occupied bulidings, ranging from factory's, to houses, train stations and old farms, in literally every county. People like myself, have realised that these empty places should be used, providing people with a place to live, or to be used as community centers etc. If your ever travelling and are doing the hostel way,but want to travel for free instead, then you can see this symbol on buildings, or stickers on lampposts etc, and then you can ask people (punks, hippies, street musicians) where the squat is, and then go see firstly if they are friendly, and secondly if they have a "guest room" to sleep in.
The symbol for an occupied property.....
The guy who gave me the tattoo said it
symbolised and empty circle, now occupied
with the lines in the empty space.
The people that live in occupied places, all have the same thing in common. We have Anarchist views on society and hate Authority.. This definitely doesnt mean that we share the same views on everything else in life, but just these two things we do mutually always agree upon.
Ill do another post in the future, purely about Squatting (English term) Occupying for Europeans, but for now a tour of my home.
back to the tour!
I actually got shown the place from an old rock and roll couple, whilst selling magazines at the local shopping complex. I asked them if they had a cabin that they didnt use but they hadnt.
After chatting to them for a while, the husband said out of the blue " Oh but wait- theres a cabin that we used to live in 5 years ago but we left because theres no electric and its falling down. " - "its our friends place, she hasnt been in Oslo for 15 years"- my face must have been shining.
These guys were also old freaks, and after I told them where we was living at the time, it turns out we knew the same people and so I knew I was on to a winner and that the chances of eviction would be near non-existent.
They offered to take me to it at once so I packed up and they drove me just 5 mins away, and up a steep hill. We sat in the car and they pointed it out to me, I could barely see it because of the trees. They said the owners name was Alix, and nobody wants to live there because it needs repair and cant have electric. I had some really nice hash and so I asked them if they smoked , and they were happy when I gave them something I had. We said goodbye, they were happy , I was happy and with nothing left to say, I got out the truck.
They drove off and I put my heavy rucksack down on the stone track to go investigate. It was perched on the side of a hill, half way up quite a big hillside across a small stream which created a miniture valley. (In England I would call it a mountain , but its not really in Norway!)
When I got up there I was shocked, it was quite big. The old couple had said that it was broken into a while back and sure enough the kitchen window at the back was smashed with a trash bag once covering it.
The roof was good, the most important thing to look at first on a property.
I jumped up into the kitchen through the high smashed window and went and opened the front door.
You can see the kitchen is the small room on the left
It was all open space
It was good. Well to most people they would say it was fucked.
But for us it was perfect. I know how to repair buildings since over 10 years so I saw it as no big issue.
We decided to instead of just putting out tents up in here (which was exactly what we would have done) that we could at least insulate it.
This ended up of course becoming a full renovation over the next month due to my Egoic proud Carpenter part "No point in doing half a job!".
It was the first choice to just buy insulation (we have no car or any friend with a car, if so I would spent 2 days taking from building site containers and recycle insulation) and then to take off the wood on the walls , put insulation in and use the same wood to put back on, covering the walls again.
This though, would have been alot of work, and produced alot more waste. I decided that we just make a new shell inside of the cabin, giving it 10 cm insulation and finished with plasterboard.
When the weather was bad we would work on the inside and when the sun was shining we would be on the outside repairs. First was the ceiling to do. Sadly the pictures from the build are lost, every project ive done I take stage photos of the progress,but there are some pics still remaining.
Once we had made a new ceiling, insulated it and finished with plasterboard. I could start with the Studwork. (Thats the Carcass of the walls). We had no working electric, and started with hammer and nails to do the ceiling, after a few hours of struggling way too much, I went a got a nice Dewalt drill and 1000x 110mm screws, as it would be used to do the whole place. Everything was cut by hand, I got through 3 handsaws!
The First stage of constructing new walls
The second Stage
Heres some more pics of the progress inside.
Took the Front door out, and replaced the huge window that was next to the front door with a smaller one, the front door was replaced by a huge long thin window- that was actually taken also on a bus mission!
I put the Front door as a replacement kitchen door - because the original kitchen door and a third of the floor was rotten from a blocked guttering above it. Water had been dripping for years onto the step and splashing onto the door.
We got second hand replacement windows and I am mentally scarred from windows after this somewhat EPIC project.
I spent so much time and energy, going with public transport to collect a window, then taking it back on a bus , or train then another bus and then the bloody steps up to the cabin were much worse than the steep stone track before all that! Replacing all 4 windows with double glazing, killed me, but it was worth it in the end, like all difficult things in life. One window, the small kitchen, ill never forget , i took a bus from the city, we drove for 2 hours, then i go get the window, walk the long way back to the busstop to see that the next bus is in 4 hours! that window, took in total 8 hours to go and get and come back with it. Oh and the women said, "oh you came with the bus? Im driving to Oslo later , I could have taken it there." Dam i had told here the missions on buses before even going there.
Heres how the kitchen door- now our main entrance- looked after the kitchen walls were finished and the kitchen started to take shape.
After completing the initial main walls of the cabin, it was time to measure out and plan the positions of 2 bedrooms and a lounge.
The wall seperating the new lounge from a bedroom.
After kind of knowing that the owner wont show up and kick us out, we decided to do a proper job on it. We spent around 3000 euro each on the material. 333m linea of 4x2 wood, 700kg of plasterboard. all carried up by hand. And we had just a drill that we charged at the shop down at the road, no lights or anychance of electric. We did set it all up for electric, but we are against Smart meters so for now we have no mains electric.
There are many cabins and houses, not just around here , but all over the whole of Scandinavia, that are empty for years. Many Norwegian family's if not all (and Swedish people also i guess) have a cabin that once apon-a-time would have been the grandparents place, but then everyone moved to the city leaving the old farmer way of life for something more modern.
For me since around 9 years, I havent really paid to stay in a room. I did some years back rent an appartment in Bern Switzerland for 2 months, still not sure why really. Oh and one time I paid happily 5 euro a week for electric in Germany whilst living in a wagon.
Anyway heres how it turned out inside, ill do a part 2 of the outside in the next days! And ill take fresh pics of how it all looks now. ** HOPE YOU ENJOYED SOMETHING ORIGINAL!! **
The lounge
My Room
My Mates Room