Finishing date: July 2021.
I
Before the weather turned cold, in the end of summer 2021, Natalia and I went to my dad’s summer house and rebuilt an old wooden kitchen bench to fit in my kitchen. It was my little summer break, in the middle of thesis writing: sawing and sanding and swim breaks in the lake to get rid of the wood dust that stuck to our arms and faces in the summer heat.
It was fun. Making things for your home is so satisfying. And the list of home fixing that Natalia has helped me with keeps on getting longer: building a wall, putting in doors, painting walls, putting up bookshelves, rebuilding a bench … The look of my Bagarmossen home, it is by now just as much on her as it is on me. But it is such a nice way to spend time with friends, making things together.
II
The kitchen bench was installed in its corner, and it fit perfectly. With the William Morris wall-paper, the botanical drawing by Maria Sibylla Merian, grandma Lilian’s orange chairs and how the light fell in through the chili plants in the afternoons, it created a perfect tableau.
(And that wall! Let’s just take a moment to appreciate the wall! Constructed by me, under the supervision of my uncle Kalle the carpenter, to re-establish the original floor plan of separated kitchen and living room, when I first moved in to the Bagarmossen apartment in August 2019. With an original 1950s door from when the house was built, re-fitted into the new door-frame by Natalia and my cousin Jonatan. Have you EVER seen a more perfect wall!? With secret messages inside and everything!)
Finally, two years into living in the apartment, this corner of the kitchen was complete. I could move on to the next, completing the apartment one corner at a time. (However, half a year later, I moved to Norway, leaving my brother to care for the corners as he saw fit while I was away trying to make it as an academic.)
It quickly became my favorite spot to sit in. The depth of the bench made it wonderfully versatile, allowing me to sit cross-legged, sideways or simply by the table, leaning my back against a pillow. I wrote, while stealing glances of the summer rain falling outside the window. Moments of reading and drinking ice tea. Knitting, while the sun set behind the pine trees and the Globe arena in the distance.
Katja Malmborg 