The unplanned pool house

When Per and Anna welcomed a little girl into the world, the couple began to consider whether it might be time to invest in a holiday home. Finding a place where their daughter could grow up close to nature was important to them, preferably within a reasonable distance from Stockholms innerstad where the family otherwise lives. The search for a vacation home began in 2020, just like for many other Swedes during the pandemic.

– A house came up on Vindö that we bought in the summer of 2020. It was built in 1985 and needed some work, but what we fell for was the area itself. It is a beautiful archipelago setting while also being close to Stockholm and easy to reach by car, says Per.

The secluded plot with a glimpse of the lake between the trees offered the couple exactly the peace they had been looking for, where horses from the nearby stable often welcome the family along the country road. But Per and Anna were well aware that the Falu-red house needed some love – they had not, however, expected the project to grow into a complete renovation:

– The idea was that we would just settle in for the first six months, but after a while we felt it would be fun to create something of our own from scratch. My wife and I are absolutely no designers, but we put a lot of energy into the renovation together with architects and craftsmen.

We wanted something turnkey to avoid all decisions at the detail level

On the plot there was also a small guest cottage that the couple eventually wanted to replace, something Per explains they had not planned from the start:

– After renovating the main house we wanted something turnkey to avoid all the detail-level decisions that a house project entails. It was, of course, a fun experience, but now we needed a spacious attefallshuset that could quickly offer space for our friends and family.

It was important that the attefallshuset would blend in with the archipelago setting and the newly renovated main house, where the couple fell for Sommarnöjens design and execution while searching among different suppliers.

A guest house and an extra kitchen

With the model Komplett Attefallshus 30 and interior style Lugn there was not only room for overnight guests, but also a kitchen with extra space for, for example, crayfish parties and midsummer celebrations. It was also a practical backup plan if the kitchen in the main house would act up, reasoned Per and Anna.

To maximize space, a bedroom was left out in favor of a loft, a particularly popular nook among the family's younger guests. Otherwise the couple made no individual selections or adjustments to their attefallshus, where Per describes the process of both planning and delivery as “incredibly smooth”. Read more about the house model here.

A delayed deck turned into a pool

When the attefallshuset was finally in place in late summer 2022, the couple contacted an architect to get help with a custom-built deck around the two houses, a process that was put on hold when the construction company was booked elsewhere. In hindsight the delay would turn out to be a real stroke of luck – it opened up the possibility of building a pool:

– When the deck was to be built we met a couple of friends who asked us if we wouldn't have a pool on the plot. Initially we thought it sounded quite troublesome, but two weeks later we were completely convinced that we wanted to build a pool since the deck construction was delayed anyway, Per says.

Guest cottage became a popular pool house

In spring 2023 the pool construction next to attefallshuset was finally completed, which has transformed the attefallaren into something completely different from what Per and Anna had imagined:

– Thanks to the pool we use the attefallshuset much more today than we thought we would when we bought it. It is primarily for our guests, but for us it has become a pool house where we can pop in to fetch chilled drinks and snacks or shower off. It is a really lovely feeling to stand in the living room and look out over the pool and the flowering beds.

When things don't turn out as you expected – but even better

Now the couple just want to enjoy their little holiday paradise, almost as amazed as the visitors by the final result:

– If you look at our plot you might think that everything is incredibly well thought out, but in reality we were very lucky with how everything turned out because we didn't plan either attefallshuset or the pool, says Per.

Whether you renovate yourself or buy turnkey, Per recommends consulting several different contractors to get tips and inspiration:

– It's always good to meet several contractors, not only to compare different quotes but also because you get so many different tips and ideas about the execution itself. When we had met four or five contractors we had collected a bunch of ideas that we could then combine and make something of our own.