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!

  

   

Garden Plans, Lighting, Parking and Furniture

Another week has passed which means we are another week closer to completion! Time is passing at a snail's pace, a problem exacerbated by the fact that all decisions have pretty much been made now. We are very much at the i-dotting and t-crossing stage and, frankly, we are both so, so ready to move in. We have been to site but the majority of changes were pretty small and I don't want this to be a boring blog post so I've decided to focus on two things, discussions for this week and the garden.

This week's discussions have focused mainly on the pendant lights in the kitchen, the concrete floor of the parking area and various bits and pieces of furniture. 

As far as the pendant lights are concerned, we weren't sure about the ones in the original quote and made a mental note to look around at some other options at a later stage. Fast-forward a few months and (having completely forgotten about it) we decided to start looking, although we may have now missed the deadline to change them. A lot of frantic searching has resulted in us deciding that we do in fact really like the original lights and so we are planning to keep them. They are called Pakhus and you can find them here. 

There are a multitude of options for the floor of the parking area including tile, gravel, asphalt and concrete. We decided a while ago that concrete was probably best since it is simple, cheap and easy to maintain and will match the large concrete walls. What we hadn't realised was how many variations of concrete there are. You can have simple flat concrete or a pattern with gaps in between large squares. These gaps can be wide or narrow, horizontal or vertical and can be filled with grass, stones, wood, asphalt or nothing at all. We have a meeting to discuss on Saturday but I expect we will choose something very simple.

We have also started furniture shopping since our sofa is in its final death throes and it's almost certainly not worth bringing with us. Our living room area is a bit tricky since we want to have a big sofa which also keeps the area nice and open and allows plenty of space on either side to pass to the balcony or the Japanese room. This means that we can't go much beyond 195cm wide, although length along the room is much less of an issue. We have found that a lot of western sofas are too high and break up the room too much. As a result, we couldn't find anything we liked in IKEA which would probably have been our first choice. All the sofas at Costco are much too big.

There are millions of of sofas online but the Japanese-made ones are all really expensive and the cheaper foreign options look like they will break easily (and do, from our experience with our current sofa). We have, however, found a Japanese maker, NoYes, who we really like. They have absolutely brilliant reviews and produce a sofa that is the perfect size and shape for our space. We've been to the showroom a couple of times and they seem like a really great company (which only makes sofas!) with very knowledgeable staff and excellent customer service. Unfortunately, the sofa we like costs about 220,000 yen (1500GBP) which, although not expensive for a Japanese sofa, seems like a lot of money to me. We will mull it over for a while longer but that's the direction I think we are heading in. You can see the sofa here.

Now, onto the main event. The garden! We have finalised our plans with the landscaper and work is due to start on February 1st, taking 2 weeks to complete. This means that the landscaping will be completed by the time we move in, which is one less thing for us to have to think about after moving. Since a 3rd party contractor is doing the work, it can happen at the same time as house-building so we should have lots of things to think and write about during that period!

Our garden!

As you can see from the picture, we have reduced the number of trees from the previous version that we talked about on here. There were two main reasons for this. The first is cost. Good trees are expensive and we needed to bring the quote down by about 25% to get within our budget. The second is that we wanted to leave room in the future to plant trees of our own once we have lived there for a bit. Whilst it's nice to have a "finished package", we want to make changes and update things as we go. As a result, all the trees along the wall on the right hand side have gone, as well as the tree at the bottom of the garden area on the left side, next to the staircase.

Another big change is the removal of the large fence at the bottom of the slope. I was quite a big fan of this fence as it marked off the edge of the garden well and gave some privacy from the road. Yuko wasn't especially keen and thought it was unnecessary and made the garden less open. Ultimately, it was reasonably expensive and I was quite happy to see it taken out of the quote. We have opted for a 40cm high mini fence at the top of the slope to act as both a demarcation and a safety feature so kids or drunk adults are less likely to roll down the slope from the garden.

As far as trees are concerned, we have opted for mainly decorative specimens with a fruit-bearing lemon tree as well. For colour, we will have a Momiji (Japanese Maple) and Mitsuba Tsutsuji (a type of Azealea) and a couple of green trees. We haven't exactly decided these yet but very likely a Hainoki (Japanese Sapphireberry) and Aodamo (Japanese Ash).

A mix of ground cover with various wild flowers and grasses and local stones will make up the other areas of both the main slope and the sloped area next to the staircase. The landscaper plans to build texture both with these stones and by using small bushes throughout, especially around the borders. The bushes at the bottom of the slope will hide the concrete breeze blocks embedded into the ground that will enable us to add a fence at some point in the future if we wish.

The main feature of the garden is a functional one. The S-shaped path is made up of large stones, fixed into the slope acting not only as a pathway but also as a strengthening element in the land. A cursory look at the slope as it currently stands reveals various water channels and loose earth, so one of the main reasons for doing this landscaping now is that we want to be doubly sure that the site is safe, especially in the event of major rainfall. Having this heavy-duty path should hopefully also enable us to begin to treat this area as a useful and positive part of the land rather than a worrisome thorn in our side.

Path foundations. Pretty neat I think!

Finally, from the top of the slope all along the west side of the house, we will have lawn - 40 square meters in total. Not the biggest lawn in the world but pretty sizable by Japanese standards. I had originally wanted to use Kentucky Bluegrass but the landscaper suggested that it would be very tricky to maintain in Osaka's climate since the summers are so hot. He suggested Japanese Korai grass which is better suited to hot summers and cold winters. Some people don't like this grass since it goes brown in winter but Yuko and I have made our peace with that - at least the lawn will reflect the seasons. We'll put together a simple timed sprinkler system, buy a lawnmower from the garden center and hope for the best.

That's about it for this week - we did take some photos on our last inspection but there's nothing interesting enough to put up so we can save the house updates for next time. Speaking of which, we are heading to the house on Saturday for a meeting and some discussion about the parking area, towel rails etc. There are a few exciting changes in the schedule over the next couple of weeks so I hope that we have some more interesting photos to share with you next time. Speak soon!

Final Push!

Happy New Year! 2020 is upon us and hopefully the beginning of the end for this project of ours. I hope that everyone had an enjoyable and relaxing break. We spent most of the time travelling around Japan and attending various family get togethers. To be honest, I think we are less rested than we were at the start of the 'break' but we will soldier on!

First, some bad news. Another delay :-( It was pretty evident back in December that we were not going to be done for the end of January and the builders confirmed with us that this was indeed the case. We have a new finish line of the 24th February, which actually works a little better for us given I will be outside Japan for a couple of weeks in February. This one had better be the final one since we have now given notice on our current apartment and parking rental. If they delay again, we are going to be homeless!

Onto more positive things - we managed to get over to the house three times over the winter break, once for a meeting, once with both the parents and the in-laws and once with just my Mum. Everyone absolutely loved the house and the addition of the stairs from the living room up to the roof balcony meant that they could see almost all of the space.

However, it is now not only those in our family who are aware of our house. Several locals walking by have stopped to talk to us about the house and our plans to move in. The staff at the wonderful little tsukemono shop all know about our pending arrival and it seems clear that word has spread of the new foreigner and his "orange house". It's always hard to know in Japan but, so far, commentary has been very positive and welcoming. 

What is abundantly clear though is that we are moving from a large, anonymous city community into a much smaller, close-knit one where news travels fast! As one of the only foreigners living there (and being twice the size of the average Japanese person), I am going to stick out like a sore thumb. Time to be on my best behaviour I think!

So what is new? Well, firstly, the stairs. Not only can we now get up and down from the ground floor to upstairs without crawling through a small hole, we can continue all the way up to to roof balcony! We were pretty worried about how steep the second flight of stairs was going to be but ascending and descending is pretty easy, even without the handrail which is yet to be installed. At the top, there's a nice flat area where we will likely store some cushions for any furniture we put up on the balcony.

Stairs to the roof balcony

Stairs to the roof balcony. Flat area on upper RHS

Elsewhere, pretty much all of the flooring is in. Stupidly, I didn't take any photos the first time we went over, figuring I could take them a week later, by which time most of the flooring had already been covered up with protective mats! Here's a photo of an unused board and a bit that escaped the covering.

Chestnut flooring

Almost all covered with protective mats

Living room flooring all done and covered up!

The study and walk in closet have now also been framed. Both are pretty huge, the latter more than making up for our small master bedroom. I was planning to use BILLY bookshelves from IKEA (see here) in the study but the problem is that they don't seem to offer right-angle corner units. Instead, for corners, they use a modular system that makes a right angle using two regular bookcases and a third narrow piece at 45 degrees to each of the regular ones. This wouldn't work in our corner as one of the walls isn't long enough to get all three pieces to fit. I will hunt for a more workable L-shaped option.

Walk in closet

Study corner now framed. Quite tight and difficult for bookcases

Sliding door frame for walk in closet and study

The pantry is now completely framed and is HUGE. Costco, we are ready for you!

Space for all the food!

Outside has been tidied up and we can now see the full extent of the garden again. On that note, we have signed off on a modified, cheaper landscaping plan and work for that will start at the beginning of February, to be finished by the time we move in. Expect a separate blog post on that in due course.

Our garden. Soon to be a lawn!

Laundry area and flowerbeds for vegetables and herbs on RHS (Still very overgrown)

Finally, a beautiful stone that we found in the garden is still there and we have asked the builders to look after it for us. The plan is to clean it up and get it engraved with something like the date the house was built and put it somewhere prominent near the entrance.

Beautiful stone!

That's all for now I think. We are excited to crack on with the final stage and to finally move on and move in. Next update should be some time next week as we will visit the house on Sunday. Wishing you all the very best for the New Year, whatever your plans may be!