Byggfabriken
Ten years on the shopping list, and finally the right door handles.
Byggfabriken is on Södermalm in Stockholm, with a second branch down in Malmö, and it deals in restoration fittings. Things made the way they were made when the houses they belong to were built. I like it more than is entirely reasonable.
I came home with 1930s-style interior door handles for upstairs. Those had been on the list for ten years, which tells you something about how quickly this house gets finished, and something about how long you will hunt for the right handle once you have decided the wrong one will not do.
What else is in there
The exact coat rack we already have at home, which was a slightly odd thing to walk past.
Period wallpaper. Period light switches. The round kind with a lever. House numbers and signs, in several styles depending on the age of the house they are going on.
A kitchen fitted out with a Formica-style worktop and matching knobs and handles, which was considerably better looking than that description suggests.
Replacement shades for basement and outdoor lights, which is genuinely useful and almost impossible to find elsewhere. And a set of hanging lights I have nowhere at all to put and would like three of.
Worth the visit
The staff know what they are talking about, which in this trade is not a given, and the place smells wonderful, old wood and paint and metal.
If you are anywhere near Södermalm or in Malmö it is worth going in even without a period house. We have a small 1930s cottage in the suburbs and that is exactly who Byggfabriken is for, but the pleasure of the place does not really depend on that.
I will show the handles properly once the last of the paint is done and the “wet paint” notes can come off the doors.
And no, Byggfabriken has not sponsored this. I wish.