Preparing to Move, Furniture and Tiles

26 days to go until handover day. So near and yet so far! It seems that one moment time is flying past and the next it is a slow and relentless slog to the finish. We will get there.

Firstly, moving plans. Yuko and I got quotes from a number of companies to move our things from our small flat in Central Osaka over to the house about 15km away. We had originally planned to get quotes to move just a few big items (the fridge, mattress, TV board and TV), taking the rest in several trips by car. Nevertheless, we decided to get a couple of quotes to transport all of our stuff just in case.

Fortunately, we got really lucky with an eager salesman from one of the major moving companies who reluctantly decided to match a quote from a much smaller company we had found online. After a tense negotiation, we ended up agreeing to just under 40,000 yen to move everything, including all the boxes and packing materials on a fixed day within a 4-hour window. Our initial research and canvassing of friends, a couple of whom work as estate agents, suggested that twice this amount would have been normal. Good work us, I guess.

We've been to site a couple of times in the last week, the first at nighttime during the week because we were bored and fancied a walk. It was great fun clambering around the house using our phone lights as torches before something unexpected happened. It was about 8pm (and so the workers had all gone home) when we heard a noise outside. I looked out the window to see that our site manager had returned in a truck to drop off some materials.

Wondering what he would think to find the dark house illuminated by smartphone lights, I quickly leaped into action and ran outside. "It's us. Don't worry", I said in Japanese rather frantically. I'm not sure whether he was more shocked or amused but we managed to avoid an unfortunate incident with the local police at least. He even put the electricity on for us so we could have a proper look around.

In doing so, we found that the tiling for the toilets, laundry room and bathroom had all been laid and was waiting to be grouted. We are especially happy with the rectangular pattern of the toilet tiles which matches the shape of the room perfectly.

We were also able to see that the first pieces of built in furniture have begun to take shape in the bathroom and the toilets. Although these are covered up with protective covering, it is at least now possible to see what the shape of the inside of the room is going to look like. The bathroom, in particular, feels bigger than we had expected, a nice thing to discover in a room that we worried was too small.

The process of raising the floor of the Japanese room has also been started and we are both really happy with the height. It is high enough that the two pull out drawers underneath should have some function but not so high that it separates the space off from the rest of the living room. I'm sure it will have a different feel entirely once the tatami goes in but we like how this room is shaping up.

The rest of the last week has involved spending lots of money on various appliances and having to re-specify some items that have become discontinued in this never-ending process. The new stair lights are more expensive but the new kitchen and porch light are cheaper so we should come out about even.

Now, I don't often complain on here because in general we absolutely love the company we are working with and they really do go out of their way to be helpful. However, it wouldn't be a very informative blog if we only talked about the good things so a bit of a rare grumble - we were pretty annoyed to find out that the electrician had installed Category 5e 1Gbps LAN cabling in the walls, despite this not being anywhere close to the latest standard. There are 9-year old articles online that suggest not installing it and using Category 6 instead. Category 6 cable is now only about 20% more expensive and can allow speeds of up to 10Gbps over distances of up to 55m and newer Category 6A cable can facilitate this over 100m (again at a price of not much more). 

Yes we should have thought to specify this in the first place but it blows my mind that an electrician would install this old technology without asking first. Japan already has 5Gbps and 10 Gbps Internet services (although they are not yet the norm) so we would have been starting with something that is already becoming obsolete. Hardly fits with the idea of future-proofing the house. We have re-specified with the 6A cable. Sigh.

That minor annoyance aside, we are really happy with how things overall are progressing. It's clear there is a lot of work to go but everything is set for us to move in under four weeks! We will head to site as usual on Sunday and hopefully there will be a lot of new things to take pictures of. Next week I am heading overseas for a conference and a quick trip back home so I will be away for about 2 weeks. Yuko has promised to head to site and take some photos for me so I'm hopeful that I can put up one or two posts. The landscaping will be starting next week so there should be even more to write about!

The countdown continues...

Raising the Japanese room. RH 2/3 will be the two sliding drawers

Beautiful handmade runners for the sliding fusuma doors

Shelves and cabinets being made (and then covered up)

Tiles on the floor of the toilet and tiles behind where the sink will be

Rectangular tiles in the toilet downstairs

Upstairs toilet tiles

Kitchen tiles on the wall

A (still smelly) bathroom full of boxes

Tiles and Tatami

Greetings from (a rather cold) Osaka. The end of the semester at university is almost upon us and things are beginning to wind down. In just two weeks, I will be heading off to Cambodia to present at a conference and then onto the UK for a week. When I come back, we should be moving in!

Yuko and I had a meeting with the builders on Saturday morning, a week after the previous visit to site. When we arrived, we were pleased to see a number of vehicles parked out front. Vehicles equals builders and builders equals progress!

The first task was to work out where to put our name plate, the intercom and the light so that they can be seen in the dark. Thinking about it, it is rather peculiar that Japanese people put their names on the outside of their houses but that is the done thing here so there we go. Our building manager had helpfully set up a template on the concrete wall with various pieces of paper. 

Although the positioning was good, the name plate wasn't the same size as the one we have picked out. This was quickly solved with a bit of re-folding but then we hit on another, admittedly minor, problem. The planned intercom and light were silver but we wanted to get a black name plate since we think this will look better against the grey concrete and we thought that the other parts should match. The neighbours have a similar setup and it looks great. Changing the light frame colour is easy but a black intercom may necessitate a slightly different model. They are going to look into this for us.

We also had to choose where to put the tiles from the top of the outside staircase through the porch and into the genkan. We opted for a slightly wider area of tiles outside to try and tie the inside and the outside together a little more. We also elected to surround the East side of the house (i.e. the side not being landscaped) with dark grey shingle. This should be easy to maintain, avoids mud getting traipsed around in the event of rain and finally, as a very astute colleague pointed out to me, provides a satisfying crunching sound underfoot, warning of any potential intruders!

Another big decision, which I stupidly forgot to take a photo of, was how to finish the staircase outside. Our quote included a finishing and brushing of the concrete but we felt that this was still a bit stark, especially when combined with the large concrete parking area. Another option was to finish with embedded small stones which would provide a nice colour and textural contrast, softening the staircase and differentiating it from the parking area. It was not a particularly expensive option so we opted to do it.

The car parking area on the other hand is going to be plain concrete. We had talked briefly about adding some lines or pattern into this but the quote for this was a lot more expensive than we had expected or budgeted for. We quickly declined in favour of the simplest, cheapest option. No big deal.

Inside, our main task was choosing the grouting for the various tiles that we had chosen. In all, there are 6 tiled areas. The genkan, the laundry room, the bathroom (except the wet room), both toilets and the kitchen wall. For the terracotta-ish coloured tiles we went with as close a match as possible for the grout, whereas for the darker tiles we went with a light grout and the white kitchen tiles are having a light grey grout.

I also asked the builders whether we would be able to choose the colour of the heri, the fabric borders of the straw tatami mats which comprise the floor in the Japanese room. Most people don't care too much about this but they confirmed that we could choose if we wanted to.

Having gone through the process of choosing colours yesterday, I can now understand why people don't bother. Choosing is very, very difficult! I ended up devising a strategy where Yuko and I would each choose our top three (of the 24 colours) and send them to each other as soon as our phone clocks hit, say, 11:47. Here are the results:

First Round

Tom: 2 / 11 / 12

Yuko: 7 / 15 / 22

No match. We then decided to remove these from the pool and choose again. Second time

Second Round

Tom: 1 / 4 / 17

Yuko: 13 / 16 / 21

Oh dear. This is not going well. Remove and try again with 2 more.

Third Round

Tom: 3 / 5 

Yuko: 6 / 14 

Right. Why did I decide to do this again? And why did I create this stupid choosing system? What do we do now? Choose the bright red one that neither of us like? What do you do when your tastes are fundamentally different? 

Being the superb husband that I am, there was only one thing for it. I revisited Yuko's first choices and reassigned number 7 as my personal favourite colour in the whole world. We are having number 7. 

(Jokes aside, I actually really like number 7 and it didn't help that I was looking at the colours on my smartphone and the colours on a desktop are completely different!)  

In terms of progress, there were more changes to be seen throughout the house. Downstairs, construction of the sink unit in the bathroom had begun, the sink itself sitting in the adjacent room waiting to be installed. The sliding door housing for the genkan has been partially completed and the toilet room is almost finished. We were also shown the addition of a removable wall in the study so that the air conditioner piping can be accessed and maintained. Very James Bond.

Upstairs, it was heartening to see that the Japanese room has finally been cleared ready for construction of the raised floor and finishing of the walls (the only place in the house where they have not yet been boarded over). Kitchen tiling has begun and fills a much larger portion of the wall than I had expected. Handrails have been started on the staircase and the area just before the roof balcony has been fully boarded over and now feels a lot more enclosed. Outside, the metal frame for the roof balcony is in place. It looks huge!

That's about it for this time. Photos below as per usual. We will head over to the house again on Sunday morning in the expectation of some major changes. Looking at the schedule, there is exciting stuff happening pretty much every day from now on. Landscaping starts in less than two weeks and in less than five weeks, we will be in! Speak soon!

Choosing grout. Terracotta coloured will have matching grout. Grey will have light grout.

Choosing grout

Kitchen tiles. Grout will be light grey

Choosing tatami borders. We opted for Number 7 (far left of second row)

Sliding door frame for the genkan

Sliding door frame for the genkan 2

Secret wall, currently housing a pipe and a carrier bag full of snacks, which will hopefully be removed

Sliding door housing for study

Bathroom disrobing area with the beginning of a sink unit

An upside-down sink bowl in the laundry room

Corridor on the ground floor

Staircase to top floor with beginning of a handrail

Handrail

Upstairs toilet. Almost finished, ready for cabinet and sink on LHS (and the toilet obviously)

Japanese room, now cleared. Will be raised. On LHS (just out of frame), we will have 44cm of wood floor for cabinets, vases or whatever we decide to put there (known as tokonoma)

Slightly wonky photo of the metal supports for the roof balcony. Was a very clear day!

  

   

Choosing Counter-tops

Hi all. Just a short update as I won't get a chance to see the house itself until Sunday. Sunday is the first Rugby World Cup game in Osaka (Italy v Namibia) and we have tickets for it, so the current plan is to head over to the house in the morning to take a look around before the match. The stadium is only about a 40-minute walk from the house so we'll probably go on foot if the weather is nice.

I did want to put up a quick post to keep the momentum going and also to show one of the changes we made this week, the counter-tops in the laundry room. Actually, we hadn't really thought much about them and had to ask in a recent meeting what they were made of. It turned out they had defaulted to melamine board. We didn't really mind in terms of looks and cost but we were a little worried about how it would fare over time, given the fact that it will probably get water on it pretty often. The room in general is likely to be quite humid as we will use it for drying clothes when it's raining outside.

We asked about other options and tile was suggested, which we thought would be good with water and also a nice textural contrast (the walls are all wooden in this room). I was a little concerned about not having too deep a grout between the tiles in order that the surface could be as smooth and flat as possible. In retrospect, I'm not sure this is such a big deal.

We were given a couple of choices. Larger plain white tiles (either 20cm x 20cm or 30cm x 30cm) or a smaller matte mosaic tile (2.5cm x 2.5cm). We initially chose the larger tiles as we had seen a physical sample, but we decided to look at the mosaics too. We were sent a couple of sample pictures which were quite interesting and also showed the physical structure of the mosaic tiles.

The mosaic tiles. They are clear but matte so you can't really see through them.

The tiles would link to form quite a flat surface due to their shape.

The builders helpfully also gave us some aerial mock-ups of how the counter would look in the room with each type of tile.

The top is the 20cm tile, the bottom is the larger 30cm tile.

The mosaic tile option

It was quite hard to decide so we decided to visit the Osaka showroom of the mosaic tile company and see them in person. The mosaics were really nice to look at, filling with light when exposed to the sunlight outside which created some attractive shadow effects inside the tiles. We realised as well that their small size would make them much stronger and less prone to cracking so we thought they would hold up better potentially than the larger tiles.

In the end, we both agreed that the mosaics were the right choice for us. Let us know what you think!