Pictures, Pictures, Pictures!

3 weeks and counting! This week, rather surprisingly, has absolutely flown by and we are now only 2 visits to site away from moving in. I say we when actually I mean Yuko. Sunday marked my last visit to site before we have the keys in hand as I will be off to Cambodia on Thursday to present at a conference before heading to the UK for a week to see family. Not the greatest timing but that's where weeks of delays will get you! 

All this means that Yuko will have to head over without me and take some pictures between now and moving day. Hardly ideal but we both want to make sure this blog gets finished properly, so we will do what we can. Expect a couple more posts after this one between now and moving in but don't be surprised if we fail miserably. We'll do our best!

As I mentioned, we went over on Sunday in the morning and the changes were apparent as soon as we arrived. We took a lot of pictures so probably the best way to explain the changes is for me to just put a selection of them below and caption each with an explanation. Here goes...

Grey stones we have added to the apron of the house. To the left is the concrete on which the outside tiles will sit. To the right is the border with the lawn which will go around the other side of the house. 

The same stones, viewed from the opposite angle. Walking down here is still a little dicey. Will feel much safer when the roof is over the car parking area. We really like the color contrast though.

The other side of the house. View to the east. The concrete slab is the area for drying clothes. On the right will be flower beds. They are horribly overgrown at the moment. Not sure what the pile of wood under the blue tarp will be used for.

Looking back the other way to the west. The trees next door are actually quite nice to look at. Again, the border at the end of the stones will be lawn.

The east side of the house. Soon the be filled up with all sorts of air conditioning units and other equipment. Actually feels very spacious and easy to walk down. I remember when the scaffolding was up and we were really squeezing down here.

Something else has been connected. Not sure what yet!

The garden has been partly leveled. Landscaping starts today and the lawn, which will cover the whole area here, is the last thing that they will do.

The temporary ladder that adorned the slope has finally been removed, ready for landscaping. Given how steep and dangerous this slope was to go up and down, we are really looking forward to being able to do so safely.

Concrete has been laid ready for outside tiling. We went for quite a big area of tiles to fit the proportions of this part of the house.

The tiles for the outside entrance. Piled up and left in boxes outside. It's nice to live in such a safe country. Can't imagine them lasting long in London!

Wiring for the name plate and intercom. After a lot of back and forth, we ended up sticking with the original grey intercom system though we did change the light and name plate to black. Should look good I think.

A new connection. Not sure what this is yet either!

Shoes box in the genkan. The window gives loads of light without compromising privacy. Cupboard is pretty deep too so we should be able to put flowers and ornaments on top without too much trouble.

The coat closet in the genkan. This was the builders' idea and it's a really good one I think. It's always difficult to figure out where to store bulky outdoor coats and bags. I haven't seen this before in a Japanese house.

The study, now with white walls! The room looks much bigger and is absolutely filled with light. This should be a very pleasant place to work. The walls are not completely finished yet but this room is getting pretty close.

Walk in closet. We are relatively tight (<1cm) on the RHS for the furniture we want to put in here so we have sent a message to the builders asking them to install very minimal skirting boards along the right hand wall. The PAX closets should look really good in here.

Master Bedroom. Love the wooden beam. Difficult to believe we were considering covering it with white at one point. Very glad that we didn't. In the corner is a box of new 6A network cable, which you may recall from last week's post. Loads of natural light in this room too.

The master bedroom from a different angle. I think we made the right choice to not have a door on the Walk in Closet. I think the two spaces flow together better. We will have curtains across the big doors to the deck outside.

First look at the storage cupboard opposite the toilet. We had thought the vertical divide would only go up as far as the horizontal shelf height but floor to ceiling is much better in fact. This is a pretty big space, surprisingly so in fact. Will be home to skis and my ancient set of hand-me-down golf clubs.

Laundry room. The white wall is the splashback for the washing machine (LHS) and the sink (RHS).

Here you can see the shape of the counters we have had built into this room. The height is great. The LHS counter has the same depth as the cabinets above it, whereas the RHS counter comes up further than the cabinets and can be used for ironing, sewing and sorting clothes.

The RHS counter. Depth is really good I think. We will put a stool underneath for sewing or lazy laundry.

Breakfast Bar counter. It is surprising how well this seems to function as an actual bar counter. I can imagine enjoying a pint or a cocktail sitting here as well as a bacon sandwich (perhaps together?) The wood on top is wonderfully smooth and solid feeling. The vertical wooden poles are temporary and for support. 

Viewed from the living room. You can see that the breakfast bar is quite wide. It should accommodate either 2 or 3 bar stools. We haven't ordered them yet as we want to check the height using our battered IKEA low stools as a guide.

Breakfast bar in relation to the kitchen (RHS) and living room (LHS). Connected to the breakfast bar will be a 65cm island unit. The dining table will be on the side closest to the camera (Photo taken from next to the window that overlooks the garden)

Japanese room. Now raised and enclosed. You can see the two holes at the bottom which will house the sliding drawers. It is a very satisfying step up from the living room. Feels very cosy, as a Japanese room should.

Flooring for the Tokonoma part of the room. This will be wood as opposed to tatami straw mats. We had originally planned to put low shelving here but couldn't figure out what style and size so we opted to go without until we have lived in the house for a while.

Ladder for the loft area above the Japanese room. I was surprised to learn that this too is made of wood and far more stylish than I had expected. I thought we would be getting a lightweight metal ladder but this is really nice!

Stairwell staircase now with white walls. The yellow thing is a foam protector, not some funky new handrail design.

Staircase up to the roof balcony. Looks great with white walls and blue sky. The roof balcony is still just a few steel struts. Construction on that is due to start in about a week and a half.

Wooden doors delivered and ready to be installed. They are beautiful, very heavy sliding doors. The woodwork is exceptional.

That's a lot of photos! If you are still reading, I hope you enjoyed the latest installment. I will do my best to get the next update up as soon as I have the photos from Yuko, so in about a week's time. Thanks again for reading and talk to you in a few days!

Changing Colour

As promised, here's the second installation this week, focusing on changes to the house itself. Thanks to all those so far who have commented on Facebook and messaged us about the garden. So many great ideas! Hopefully we can address some of them and show the changes were are thinking about incorporating in the next update.

Having said goodbye to the man from the landscaping company, we were then free to explore the house. On the outside, about half the grey mortar had been covered over with the outside, coloured layer. Finally we could see what colour our house is going to be!

Well, not exactly. Unfortunately, the coloured mortar was not yet dry which means that what we were seeing was a shade darker than the final colour. We actually liked the darker shade quite a lot! I guess it's lucky in a way that we didn't have the option to "pause" there and take the darker colour - whether to do so or to stick with our original choice and go lighter and brighter would have been a difficult choice. Thankfully, that's all hypothetical due to the laws of chemistry and physics so we will have to cross our fingers and hope we like the light mortar as much (I'm sure we will!)

Inside, there were quite a few changes, the major ones I will describe briefly below before the usual photodump at the bottom.

So here is the colour of the mortar as it was on Saturday afternoon. As mentioned above, it is going to get a fair bit lighter than this as it dries. This area was getting a reasonable amount of light though, so any shaded aspects of the house are likely to have a similar hue. I think it works quite well with the shine grey window frames.

Here, one of the workmen is putting up the kind of "false wall skirting" which will go around the top of the room. This will be used for cabling and ventilation as well as the ducting which will cycle heat from the upstairs back downstairs using a fan system. This allows the house to re-use warm air in a cycle. 

The skirting extends about 60cm out from the wall, partly at about 195cm height (in the far RH corner) but mainly at about 230cm. It will just look like wall when it's finished. It's a shame to lose some of the sense of space in the upstairs area but, then again, we wouldn't have even thought about this if we weren't building the house from scratch. These major details just dissolve into a completed house. I guess we are lucky that we get to experience both the before and the after and it will be interesting to see how this changes the feel of the room.

Finally the other side of the doorway is framed up for the pantry. The doorway is not as narrow as feared and just the simple addition of this framed part makes it feel more like an enclosed space.

The walk in closet that separates the study and the master bedroom is finally being built. This will house the sliding door on the study side. It will be very different once these three spaces are finally separated. The study and master bedroom can be swapped around at a later stage if we want to (since the Walk In Closet has two entry points). In hindsight, this was actually a very clever idea! Well done us!

At last! A completed ceiling. This is what the study looks like. The sloped roof is very noticeable and may take some getting used to. I wonder if it will be as obvious when the room is full of stuff and fully functional. That said, I am currently sitting in a room I sit in every day and can't imagine what the ceiling looks like without looking up so maybe we won't notice it as much as we think.

Here's the new access they have built to the upstairs toilet. Previously the bit on the left was missing so it looked like all one big toilet space without the "corridor". I quite liked the "big toilet" but Yuko said it was weird to have a toilet door right at the top of the stairs, even a sliding one. The toilet corridor is growing on me. We can put a nice picture on the wall at the end.

Right, that's the major bits taken care of. Below are a few more captioned photos. We'll be at the house again this weekend so will take some more photos. Speak soon!

Inside the new, smaller upstairs toilet

Walk in closet space (far end), large storage cupboard (near end)

Corridor alongside kids bedroom (RHS)

As above but from study (soon to be closed off)

Other corridor towards back door

Laundry room

Bathroom prep area (脱衣所)

House Walkthrough 4 - The Study

The study on the ground floor is also connected to the wood deck, ideal for working whilst supervising children playing outside. Again this should allow for easy ventilation in the hot summer months and reduce reliance on air conditioners. The original plans featured a door and window although we recently opted to replace these with a French door. Aside from being slightly cheaper, this will allow for more air-flow and more light although we will probably need to put a curtain across it to regulate any glare hitting the computers.

By the French doors will be a small sofa and coffee table and a large desk will run along the northern wall. The fitted desk offered by the building company have been removed from the plans to bring the cost down, although we may end up reinstating this at a later stage if we can’t find anything we like in the stores. The desk will need to accommodate two desktop computers and we will also need a place to store paperwork and files, both of which are beginning to overwhelm our small apartment. Around the remaining walls of the study, we intend to use IKEA’s famous BILLY bookcases. These are highly customizable, practical, sturdy and, most importantly, extremely cheap.

The study. French doors on the LHS. Access from the corridor (RHS) and Walk-In-Closet (the space below WD8)