Casa Robino

Spring is here, bringing life back into blossom. And so it got time to bring the bikes out again and fix a couple more of them. In winter Zsuzsanna already took care of all of them with some help of Nimi (see bottom-photo), but the snow and cold brought new damage to most of them.

That's why today Ellen, Brian (patching an inner-tube for the first time in his life) and I took care of that and fixed Katherine, Black&Orange (which is now called Tripy), Mama, MyBike and Jaap's Bike. Bikes that remain are Hugo (we need to paint sunflowers on them, and give the chain an oil-bath) Pyjamas (replacing the butter) and Long-Distance (fixing a front-wheel and the lock). And when that's done, we are back to ten bikes, including Pirate and Dumpster Monster. Yah!

It's fully summer and we are enjoying many beautiful days, evenings and nights at the balcony. We take out pillows, set up tables and make it a real lounge. That's a really wonderful experience :)

One of the things we use to sit on is a chair that was made by using inner tubes from bikes-wheels. Last year in October Zsuzsanna made it, but 9 months later it snapped and the chair can't really be used anymore :/

So, if you're around, you can find instructions on how to fix it in last year's post. Enjoy!

You have a broken chair? Then take a look at this photo for some new inspiration! A chair fixed with inner tubes. It sits very comfortably and your but doesn't get hurt, even when you sit on it for long. You don't need pillows either. If you sit on it, you feel like you're in a water-bed, up and down you go, nice and bounchy.

Just the day I got back home from my trip about a month ago, Zsuzsanna was inspiring me and many others by some simple but very creative action, fixing the broken chair by making a new base with inner tubes. Way to go. And even kitten likes it!

We want to create postcards for the casa.
Anyone of you which come with an idea, post your creation right here in the website and we will print it.

Sometimes you have those days that things just brake. Sometimes that happens on this website when things just stop working. But this also happens in the house. When I woke up yesterday, the first thing that broke was my clothes-hanger in my room but later during the day more & more things got added to the list of things that broke.

today i installed MPD on laptopserver (which also got a fixed IP address now). on top of it, the web client phpMp was installed, so anybody can control what music is being played at the casa thru your web browser. connect to the network CasaOpen and point your rig to phpMp @ laptopserver to engage in a playlist war with your fellow hosts.

We had some nice progress on the rooftop gardening project this week. Derick has been gathering woods for over a week now, and started constructing three dirt-boxes on our rooftop. While Anu got some useful books from the library today about urban-gardening and wind-mills, Derick finished the third box today. They are looking very awesome, and it seems that we are again one next step further in this project! And as a nice surprise we rescued four smaller boxes from the trash. Soon we'll be eating our own food.

Ok, yesterday we went through the painful "sleeping place attribution" (with 10 ppl, it has to be) yesterday, that was made more painful than necessary by the fact that we had to describe the rooms we were talking about. Let's give them names.

We have:
The living room
The small room on the side of the kitchen
The 'bit bigger' room with the huge bed on the other side
The upstairs entrance room
The upstairs side room

The kitchen (need to name?)
The bathroom (need to name?)
The balcony (need to name?)
The hallway (need to name?)
The staircase (need to name?)

The pin board in the hallway is now reserved for tasks. Daily tasks, weekly tasks and monthly tasks. Check it out. There are also some one-time only tasks, such as creating a roof top garden.

While doing that I found 2 little notes:

• you can find pictures at Guillaume Huguenard's Facebook profile;
• send an email to [email protected] if you want to help translate SkillSurfers.eu.

Why not use the space we have in and around the house for a nice garden? Soil-less gardens apparently can be very nice to grow our own food. We can use the rooftop and the balcony. What about a beanpipe, a pvc-garden on the roof, a small portable greenhouse, and so many other techniques we can use? (Search)