Furniture

Not much to report on the house front since last week was the Obon holidays and work stopped on site. Yuko and I made the trip down to Hiroshima to see family but unfortunately had to cut it short due to a massive typhoon that hit Japan on Thursday and Friday. Thankfully, Osaka was spared the worst of it so, as far as we are aware, everything at the house is intact and building has resumed. I'm hoping to get over there on Sunday to see any changes that have happened this week.

I do, however, have a post for you. Last time, I mentioned that we were having a number of pieces of furniture made by our builders. Some other pieces didn't make it through an early version of the budget as we would be able to source equivalents (or hang onto old but functional things we own) and save some money. Nevertheless, in some places we have decided to have furniture made, the chief advantage of which being we get exactly what we want and can make best use of the available space. Based on the completed houses we have seen, there is little doubt that furniture made by the builders themselves really does fit well into the house. Here's what we are having made:

Genkan

In the entrance hall, we are having a long shoe box and tall coat cupboard. The shoe box has been designed to accommodate our biggest pair of shoes and the shelves are adjustable up and down. The coat cupboard has been designed to accommodate our largest coat, a North Face extreme winter jacket that I bought in Seoul, Korea for 90% off MSRP in the middle of July. Slightly bizarre buying such a coat when it was 38C outside.

Left to Right: Shoebox, Coat Cupboard, Toilet Cabinets (same sheet but not in genkan obviously!)

Kitchen

The builders are also making our kitchen for us. It consists of a long wall unit with cabinets above and a separate island which will house the oven, a full-size AEG that we bought in a clearance sale last December and that our builders have been kindly storing for us ever since. On both the wall and the island unit, we are having granite counters from a local stone-merchant. We've opted for dark grey to contrast against the wooden cupboard doors and we are planning to use iron handles to match the counter top and give a sense of solidity. The raised breakfast bar on the island will either be wood or stone depending on how much is left from the stone slab they are using.

LHS: Wall unit with cabinets above, RHS: island unit

Laundry

Pretty simple here. Cabinets below and above with a 60cm gap in between and a 35cm deep counter. Although not perhaps immediately obvious in the drawings, the counter will actually be L-shaped around the west and north wall, with the north wall counter being 60cm deep. This space can be used for ironing, sewing or folding clothes. The original counter was going to be wood but we decided to switch it for white tiles for a bit of colour and textural contrast as well as better water protection from wet clothes etc.

LHS: West wall, RHS: North wall. (The counter will actually connect and make an L-shape around the corner)

Shokkidana and Bar

To recap, the shokkidana is a kind of welsh-dresser which is used to store plates and mugs and other kitchenware. It also typically houses the rice cooker, which is used pretty much every day in a Japanese house. Yuko basically designed this and it's looking really good I think. We made a few tweaks in the last meeting to make it a little deeper to more easily accommodate our microwave oven. As a result, we had to shift the kitchen island unit about 10cm further into the kitchen to maintain the walkway between them. No big deal. The shelves on the left hand side will be rounded to better display the nice copper pans we bought that are sitting at the bottom of our walk-in-closet, ready for the move.

LHS: Shokkidana, RHS: Bar version 1 (nice but a bit impractical)

The bar in the above picture was my original design with a kind of tiered set of steps. Though it looks pretty cool, it only really allowed for bottles to be stored one deep, which seemed kind of a waste of space. The counter space on the RHS also seemed a bit superfluous so has been reduced in favour of a deeper cabinet on that end. I've also removed a drawer to create a bigger fridge space to future-proof it a bit. I may still put in a small fridge with a shelf underneath or above it but the extra space gives us a few more options. My friend who is a 3D model maker was kind enough to make a 3D model of the bar for me. The builders were seriously impressed. Thanks Ed!

The new bar design. The RHS cabinet now comes all the way to the front

Ed's model!

House Walkthrough 7 - The Kitchen and Living Room

Back in the spring of this year, we went to see a house that our builders had recently completed and were pleased to find that the owners had reversed the usual layout, putting the main living area upstairs and the bedrooms on the ground floor. Although this is quite rare in Japan, it was something that we had been considering. People had told us that doing so is very expensive but we were relieved to hear that this was not in fact the case, especially if the bathroom (which can require structural reinforcement underneath) remains on the ground floor.

The additional light and feeling of spaciousness from having the house configured this way was enough to convince us to go ahead with this plan ourselves. As such, we are having an open-plan living room and kitchen on the upper floor. It will feature a sofa and TV area, an island kitchen with connected dining table, a corner “bar and wine-cellar” space and, finally an enclosed pantry room next to the kitchen. There will also be a toilet near the top of the staircase.

The upstairs living and dining area. North is to the top of the paper.

I’ll start with the sofa and TV area. This sits at the north end of the space, adjacent to the Japanese room (the next blog entry) and the balcony (the blog entry after that). In the corner will be a (British!) wood burning stove capable of heating the whole of the upstairs area and, due to some very clever air recycling, some of the downstairs too, all being well. Wood stoves are not usually the most cost effective way of heating houses but, in this case, we have been rather lucky (or clever, depending on how you see it).

By going with a building company based a minute down the road from us, we have access to free wood for burning whenever we require it, as long as we are prepared to cut it and transport it ourselves. This is a mutually beneficial perk in that they can keep us happy and supplied with winter fuel and we can help to relieve them of the offcuts from their building projects that they would otherwise have disposed of. Symbiosis in all its finery. The one problem is that our tentative move-in date is in the middle of the hot summer next year so it’s unlikely we’ll get a chance to test out the new stove for a few months!

The TV will be placed against the North wall with a long horizontal window above it. We will be bringing our cheapo TV board from the current apartment as we’ve grown rather fond of it and it’s pretty inoffensive to look at. We’ll probably have an L-shaped sofa and coffee table with perhaps an additional armchair added at some stage. It’s odd that, despite thinking about the house almost constantly, it’s still really hard for me to visualize the size of this space. Time to get the tape measure out again.

To the south, we have a large island counter unit with raised breakfast bar which should accommodate a couple of stools. We have been back and forth so many times about what to put on the island. Essentially there are three choices. 1) a sink 2) the hob 3) nothing. The downside of the sink is that it means you have to look at either dirty items waiting to be washed up or clean items that are drying. The hob looks nice and you can talk to people while you are cooking but it makes extractor fans more difficult (or much more expensive in the case of downdraft extractors). Cooking oil has a habit of getting everywhere too.

We have therefore opted for nothing on the island. This is a little boring but should enable us to make great pizzas and dump all the shopping down when we get home. If we really want to cook on the island we can use a cheap portable gas stove, which we already own. Also on the island will be a western-sized oven (which is being delivered today!) and a few cabinets. Connected to it will be a dining table (likely our current, horribly stained, bottom-of-the-IKEA-range version for the time-being) and 4 chairs.

On the south wall will be a long counter with sink and hob and various cabinets and a drying rack. I believe this is called a Swedish something-or-other. Although we will not install a dishwasher immediately (the quote from the fitter the builder uses was really high), they will prepare the cabling and piping for us to add one at a later stage. I anticipate we’d be able to save a few hundred dollars doing it this way but we’re not entirely sure if we will get one at all. The countertop (both the wall unit and the island) are going to be granite. We have found a supplier that is not too expensive and we both think it will make the kitchen really special. It’s such an important part of he house to us that we’ve decided this is an area to spend a bit more on.

Adjacent to our fridge in the south-west corner will be the bar and the wine fridge. When the plans were almost finalized and our existing appliances accounted for, I was left with just over 2 meters of space in which to accommodate both items. Since the wine fridge we have chosen is about 60cm wide, this left about 150cm for the bar – not too shabby! This is the only part of the house I can truly say I have designed myself. I took a pencil and some paper and drew up a scale-ish drawing of the bar and gave it to the architect. He seemed quite impressed!

The bar. Original plan was three 'steps' but final design will likely have 3 rows of bottles above each other.

The bar will have 3 rows of bottles, each one a bottle deep and holding 12-15 depending on dimension. The top row is intended to be Japanese whisky, the middle Scotch and the bottom for others. There will be brass runners running horizontally to stop bottles falling during earthquakes and angled earthquake-proof rails above for us to hang glasses. On the right-hand side will be doored cabinet with more space for glassware and accessories. The counter-top below the bottles will provide space for preparing drinks and underneath will be drawers for (more) bottles, cutlery and a fridge. It’s one of the parts of the house I am most excited about since I’ve never really designed anything before and it will be really cool to see the idea actually comes to life.

To the East of the kitchen is a pantry room for storing our dry foods and a few appliances. We were both quite keen on having a lot of storage space for food as we do a lot of our shopping at Costco. For those of you unfamiliar with Costco, it’s an American wholesaler which sells really good products (but in bulk) and is a great source of ingredients and items that can otherwise be really expensive here in Japan. The pantry will have a window for overall ventilation and simple shelves on both sides.

Just outside the pantry is a shokkidana which is a kind of Japanese welsh dresser and is used for holding all sorts of plates and mugs and other items. My wife has designed it (after some not inconsiderable consultation with her mother) to feature plenty of storage, a space for the rice cooker and a place to display our copper pans. We looked at a few store-bought options but the quotation from our builders to make one for us was pretty reasonable and so we went with Yuko’s design. A happy wife is a happy life right?

I should probably end the tour of the living room and kitchen there. I expected to take about 20 minutes writing this entry but it’s ended up taking about 5 times that. Oh well - I suppose it’s the biggest and most important area in the house so perhaps it does warrant a bit of verbosity. I’ll try to get the final two entries on our walkthrough up this week as...did I mention that...we have started building!!!