A couple of months ago, I found myself wandering around the shed, looking for something. Mattila’s shed is the large end of the newer cowshed, built in 1962, where hay used to be stored. The space has long served as a storage area—and it certainly has room for things. I bought Mattila with everything in it, and almost every day I come across objects and tools I’ve never seen before. And whose purpose, every now and then, I find myself puzzling over for quite some time.

In the midst of a jumble of timber in the shed, I came across a beautiful, white-painted hat rack. I brought it inside and cleaned it carefully, getting into every narrow gap between the slats. It’s lovely. The indoor sauna renovation had just been completed, and in my mind’s eye I saw this old beauty on the dressing room wall, serving as a coat rack. Except—that there were no hooks. Perhaps it had never been a hat rack at all. Perhaps a window shelf? No matter. Now it begins a new life.

‘Now’ is, clearly, quite a relative concept.

On my next trip to Rovaniemi, I stopped by the hardware store and bought some pretty, old-fashioned double hooks for hanging clothes or towels. I managed to screw them neatly into place on the shelf. At that point, the project slipped into a kind of dormancy. I hadn’t yet been trained in the use of wall plugs, and I didn’t dare hang anything on the dressing room walls—I hesitated to drill into that pristine, gleaming white surface without any prior experience.

So the shelf ended up lying stretched out on the floor in Pirtti, catching my eye several times a day. Every now and then I would carry it into the dressing room to try out different positions, but things didn’t really move forward. Then one Saturday, my old friend Kimmo from next door came by to guide me through the mysteries of drilling, and also offered expert advice on how to mount the old shelf. Load‑bearing had to be taken into account as well, so it turned out I needed to add a few angle brackets along the top edge as extra support.

I picked up the angle brackets and screws of various lengths from the Halpahalli in Ranua. But another problem presented itself as I took a closer look at the shelf. There was a small gap between the brackets and the top board—most likely meant for a window frame to fit into. And so the shelf was once again lying about in Pirtti. I would glance at it out of the corner of my eye as I passed by, letting my subconscious do the work.

And then today, on a rainy Sunday morning, the solution simply bubbled up. I marched straight across the yard to inspect the stacks of timber in the shed, hoping to find a suitable piece of strip wood to glue and nail into the gap as filler. I came across a small bundle of leftover wood left behind by the sauna renovator—and what did I find in it? White-painted moulding, in exactly the right size and shade.

I fetched the shelf and the rest of the bits and pieces, put the radio on quietly in the background in my workshop, and got to work. I sawed a piece of trim to the right length. Glued it into place and left it to dry in clamps for a few hours. Then a few nails to reinforce the joint. Finally, the angle brackets in place. Done.

If there is one thing I’ve learned during and after my move to Impiö, it is this: sometimes it’s worth letting things simmer somewhere at the back of your mind. I used to be quite impulsive and wanted everything to happen right away. It didn’t always work out that way—and at times I ended up abandoning my ideas altogether because of it. Now I’ve discovered how remarkably well my own mind works things through, when only given the time. Is this what the old saying ‘good things take time’ really means? Possibly.

All that’s left now is to mount the shelf on the dressing room wall. That, however, is best done sooner rather than later—lest I forget everything I’ve just learned about wall plugs…

What kind of person are you when it comes to getting things done? Do you plan and ponder at your own pace, or are you more like I used to be—straight from thought to action, wrapping up projects on the spot?

If the atmosphere of an old house and this kind of unhurried tinkering resonate somewhere deep within you, you can step into these same feelings at Mattilan talo. I always have some kind of project underway.

Tintti