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

Oops. The wall fell down!

We've been to the land a few times recently to check on progress and things are moving on at a pretty fast pace. Unfortunately, it's a bit tricky to get there with work schedules being what they are and the fact that it takes around an hour on public transport from our current apartment. We are looking at buying a car in the next couple of months, assuming we can find some local parking, as this will help us to go to site more often and to the various showrooms and furniture shops that invariably are situated in the middle of nowhere.

The most recent trip was at the request of the builders. We have a shared private Facebook group through which we can communicate, share documents and photos and keep a log of progress. It's a really effective (and surprisingly modern for Japan) approach to doing things and has been working really well. We received a message on the group to ask if we could come to site as there were a couple of things to discuss.

Invariably, this leads to a certain element of worry and uncertainty as past experience has shown us that "things to discuss" have a tendency to be "things which will cost more money" and so again we left for the meeting with some trepidation about what exactly we were in for. I'm sure the builders don't mean to make us worry and it's difficult to adequately explain what's happened on an internet forum but I do wish there was some way that we could alleviate the fear of not knowing a bit!

Anyway, we got to the meeting to discover that in removing the steps on the eastern edge of the plot, the wall separating our plot from next door had collapsed! It transpires that the ground in that area of the plot is somewhat less solid than had been predicted and this caused the wall to give way. Thankfully, our neighbours have been very understanding and the builders have done a very good job of smoothly over any potential tensions, quickly offering a solution which was deemed cosmetically and practically acceptable.

The downside is that we will need to install six or seven additional steel pilings and, if I understood correctly, a kind of metal retaining barrier to shore up the ground before installing the new steps and the concrete walls for the parking space. Obviously this is likely to be a reasonably hefty expense and, since it's not a mistake but rather a discovered feature of our quirky plot of land, it's on us to foot the bill. Marvelous.

I think in these situations, it's always healthy to try and mitigate with a bit of positivity as far as one possibly can. In this instance, one such comfort is that we did get the land for a steal on account of it being rather difficult, and thus we do have a contingency for dealing with such problems (and indeed we expected a few). The other is that we at least know now that the land will be safe and stable and will have documentation to that effect. Aside from giving peace of mind, it's likely to be appealing to a buyer should we ever decide to sell and move on in the future.

The work is likely to delay progress by a couple of weeks which is unfortunate but not the end of the world. There was also some promising news this week that the government has extended the eco-subsidy that we have applied for from February to August and so there is a chance that, if the builders work quickly, we'll have a chance of having our application accepted. It's worth 800,000 yen so we're really hopeful of a positive outcome!

Here's some pictures of current progress:

Looking south. On the LHS, you can see where the wall fell down!

A view across the car parking space to the south west

The new slope where the old stepped wall was situated. Slope will be the part under the tarp. Gradient will be a little shallower than this and will feature flowers and trees (probably)

Looking down from the top of the plots at the parking space. The pole on the tarp is actually about where the north wall of the house will be.

View across the plot to the north west. As you can see, a lot more digging has been done in the last two weeks!

Large mound of earth under a tarp on top of the plot. Not sure what will happen to it.