Small Changes

Afternoon, everyone. I hope you are all well and enjoying the onset of winter (if indeed you have winter where you are). It's getting seriously cold down here in Osaka as we wind down for the end of the year. To be honest, it's hard not to see our advent calendar for 2019 (IKEA - 390 yen) as a countdown to the house move. We are expecting to get a more fixed move-in date this Saturday but, for now, we are banking on "the end of January". Fingers crossed.

We went to the house last week, early on Sunday morning in order to meet our friend who also wanted to look around. The outside was still grey mortar, although this had lightened as it dried and looked a lot less Soviet (nice even?) this week. The orange cladding is now all finished and looks great. No work on the outside wood deck yet and the scaffolding is still in place.

Inside there weren't any big noticeable changes unfortunately but upon closer inspection it was evident that work is continuing at a steady pace. The bundles of electrical wiring were noticeably bigger and more complex, the walls were boarded over in more areas and the area above the loft has been partially covered up. The interior housing for part of the big sliding doors in the living room was also under construction. Small changes everywhere.

Small changes don't really lend themselves to exciting photos though so I didn't take many since you will have basically seen it all before. Below I have attached a couple but that's about all there is to say this week!

Our next meeting on Saturday will also involve talking to the landscaper about what we are going to do outside. Hopefully the quote is not too expensive, especially given we are trying to keep things as simple as possible. I do know another landscaper who has previously expressed an interest in helping us so we will be able to get additional quotes and compare when the time comes. More updates to follow soon.

Boarding over the loft 

More and more cables

The housing for the sliding door covers / screens

Quick update - handles and wiring

Afternoon all! Not much to report this week. Most of the changes have been pretty small and relatively boring so it's a short post with a few pictures.

We had a meeting on site on Saturday where we talked a bit about landscaping for the garden. The builders have spoken with a landscaper that they work with and the suggestion is pretty simple as it stands. Low maintenance grass/moss with a few strategically positioned stones for the slope and some nice flowers to run alongside the steps up to the front door. They also suggested a tree for the corner of the garden at the top of the slope on the west side. The rest they will leave to us. We have another meeting in 2 weeks to go over the initial ideas in more detail so stay tuned for that.

At the meeting, we also finalized the furniture and got to see the handles that we had picked out (the suppliers had sent samples). We absolutely love the iron handles for the kitchen cabinets (although perhaps not as much as our architect does!) and the brass items for the bar look really good too. It certainly feels like we are in the fine-detail stage now.

We did head up to site to see what's new. Outside, the roof is on everywhere now but there's still no sign of the mortaring or the 'orange' cladding downstairs. Inside, it seems as if not much has happened until you look up and see the ever growing mass of electrical cables. It seems the electrician has been very busy!

So, all in all, things are soldiering on despite the lack of any "wow" changes this week. We'll head over again on Sunday to see what's new. Speak soon!

Brass handle, knob, rail and iron handle

Brackets for railings on the balcony

Balcony on the 2F taken from the scaffolding (photo not by us!)

Wiring going in everywhere

And coming out the walls