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

Mortar and Cladding 2.0

Hi everyone. I hope you all had a good weekend. It's been 4 days since the last update and here we are with another one! Never underestimate the power of an imminent Japanese test to inspire you to do literally anything other than study. The kanji can wait - let's write a blog instead!

Yuko and I went to the house yesterday. We tend to visit on Sundays since this is the workers' day off and we have the whole place to ourselves. Whilst it's nice not to feel like we are getting in other people's way and to have unlimited time to explore, we do miss out on the chance to chat with the workers onsite. Other blogs we have read have mentioned the value of talking with their construction workers and using it as an opportunity to learn and ask questions outside of any regular meetings.

Unfortunately, due to our work schedules it just hasn't been possible to get to site as often as we would have liked during the week and so we have missed out on the opportunity to get to know our contractors better. That said, we do have a private Facebook group shared with our builders and various others involved in the construction process that allows us to have discussions, share links and documents, ask questions and organize schedules. Perhaps not as good as talking face to face but nevertheless a convenient alternative.

This week, there has been a huge amount of progress on the outside of the house. Where last week there were hundreds of horizontal wooden planks on the wall, now almost the entire outside has been mortared in a dark grey base layer. This has fundamentally changed the look of the house. We have gone from a Swiss chalet to, at least from certain vantage-points, a Cold War era Soviet administration facility. The nice, colorful mortar we have chosen should be going on soon though!

In the areas not covered in submarine-grey mortar, there is more of the orange wood cladding that we began to see last week. We absolutely love it. Not only have they color-matched it with the front door very well, the contrast with the darker roof above and, dare I say it, the contentious black window frames on the northern aspect is brilliant.  What we had thought was a nice color and texture variation has become one of the most striking and beautiful elements of the house. We can't wait to see what it looks like when the colored mortar is applied alongside it.

Inside, there has been more general progress everywhere although it is again evident that the outside has been the focus this week. More and more cabling has been run through the ceilings. How they keep track of it I have no idea. There are also several patches of wall inside which have been boarded over with a kind of yellow-covered board. I'm not sure if the wallpaper (or wood in some rooms) will be directly applied to this but it is certainly a step forward from seeing insulation and moisture barrier everywhere.

We'll likely visit the house again this Sunday so I'll try and get an update written up here early next week. The week after that will be our next meeting with the builders and we will also meet their recommended landscaper for the first time, which should be fun. The builders are also trying to come up with a more concrete finishing date so that we can start to make plans to move out of our rental. More details to follow, I hope. Stay tuned!

Cladding around the wood deck. Love the contrast with the roof

Study doors to deck

Infamous black windows. Will match the front door handle on the same aspect

The almost completed wrap around the study. A few more panels to go

Grey mortar. Looks alright with the shine grey frames but a bit bleak overall

Mortar everywhere!

Walls being boarded over. This is the kitchen

North wall of the living room being boarded over

View over what will be the dining table into the living room.

View over what will be the kitchen island into the living room 

View back from living room into the kitchen

Ceiling construction with more and more wires going in

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

Cladding (Both temporary and permanent)

Yuko and I went over to the house on Sunday, still suffering the after-effects of England's terrible defeat to South Africa in the Rugby World Cup final. Despite the pain in my heart and my head, we soldiered on to check up on the week's progress.

First impressions were...wow! The entire house was covered in horizontal wooden boards on the outside, making the whole thing look like a kind of odd Swiss chalet. It took us a couple of moments to remember that we were not in fact building a mountain hut and that these outside walls will mostly be covered in mortar. Indeed, closer inspection of the wooden planks revealed the insulation and weather-proofing material still visible in between. The more we looked at it, the more we started to think that it was actually pretty neat and I wondered whether we should just keep it as it is, before thinking better of it. It's a shame it will soon be covered with mortar perhaps but I guess mortar is a lot more hard-wearing than planks of wood and visible insulation.

That is not to say that the entire house will be mortared though. Around the study and the master bedroom, we have a stained cypress wrap and this is repeated over the balcony on the upstairs floor in the area which houses the sliding doors. Though none of this was in place downstairs, some of it had been installed on the balcony and it looks great. It's very bright at the moment but will likely weather with age and become a bit more muted. Either way, it looks pretty awesome. Yuko said it was 'bold' and everyone knows that 'bold' is synonymous with 'brilliant'.

Inside, there weren't any radical changes (I imagine cladding the entire house took quite a while) although more construction has taken place in the ceilings and there are a whole host of new electrical wires and plug socket housings. We have a meeting at the house on Saturday to discuss various things so hopefully we will be able to see some more changes then.

It's pretty crazy to think that we are likely to be moving in less than 3 months. Although the house and preparing to move is now taking up pretty much all of our spare time, it's sad in a way that this process is soon going to come to an end. Although there has been a huge amount of stress at times, we have really enjoyed doing this and sharing it with you all. I'll try and keep the updates coming at least once a week as we get towards the final stages. 

Best wishes to all and speak soon!

Our cladding, ready to be transported to site

Cladding in place over the balcony

Wooden paneling by the door

Paneled walls - will be covered in mortar

Will also be covered in mortar

Study wall - will be clad in cypress. One piece is already in!

As above but from a different angle, showing the study doors

Wood deck - wall (currently white sheet) will be clad with cypress 

Electrical cables everywhere

Ceiling construction has begun

More ceiling construction

Plug socket housing

View up the stairway to the roof terrace area

View from about 2.5m up. You can see the loft space above the Japanese room on the RHS