Shimoda House

I've just managed to delete all the photo's and comments off the site!  Not sure what to do at the moment.  I can restore the pics without comments no issue, or do I restore from backup?

Timing would have it that Di was able to be onsite for the pour of the concrete. The photos of which are now available here.

Its all starting to look amazing, and our one major mistake is totally not obvious anymore, it looks just like part of the house. Wait, we will reveal the secret, later!, so you will have to just keep reading.

As timing was I couldn't be there for this crucial stage of the build so don't know all the details of it. Overall it went really well and the photo start to show the look we are after. There is still so much to do, but it really is coming together now and hopefully after all this work and given the summary photo's you can start to see just how much effort has gone into make this place work.

Okay, thats probably go you thinking, what does that title mean! Well Wafu, mean traditional Japan style. Its something that seems to be a little lost now in the fast paced life that is Japan (Nihon). The culture here is fast paced and modern (well at least in the major cities), but this culture has deep roots in its past, and when you have the oportuntity to dig around in that past a whole new perspective opens up.

I'lll address those perspective in my own personal blog. For the house it means we want to totally preserve the 150 year old building. When it was originally built it was well before the transition the world wars made, and the American make over of the country (the an point of history, not a comment). This building was just built after the isolation period of Japan from the world and is still standing 10,000 earthquakes later and 100 years of change.

We gave a tour to one of the Village elders last weekend and she was stunned that the old house was still that same as she rememeber as a child and could not quite beleive that actually we wanted to keep it what way. The style is called, or rather the word is 'wafu' translation lit 'Traditional'.

It was always our intention to keep the old house as it stood in the same style as it was built. It really is a wonderful old house and all we want to do with it is give alot of love and care, and some modern (inconsipuos) improvements to it. The annex as was constructed by the previous famly was bad and need replacement badly. We have taken a very adventous course of action, and hell I hope we can pull if off!

We have learnt from watching conversions of old builings in the UK that you must respect the old and align the new with it. Using this advise, we have so far ripped out the low annex level and go moden with it. Very modern to be truthful. BUT, and that a big but, we have tried really really hard to make sure we tie the old building in the new via colour and texture. We have also been detemermined that the new is the new and old is the old.

The wish if we can pull it off is that the modern lower annex will 'float' along side the traditional tatami rooms and old beams. We have never excluded them from the building and updated them as we can for insulation and effect. The modern side will feature a modern Kitchen and Bathrooom that we hope from other peoples views respects the old house and illustrates that it is possible to have the two combined.

We have found during this excercise of total madness that it could be possible to combine the two in a really way that respects both the modern and the new.  Can we pull it off, well the final pictures will tell, but we both feel that we are very close to it and I hope you the reader as our full audience think that same.  (leave a comment if you want, the guest book is now online!)

It's been a journey for both of us and any comments you can tell us are appreciatied. 

Okay, can't say it was an easy night for either of us. I know I snore! which could be why I always sleep on my side, and I'm not that used to sleeping on futons which are really nice, but arent' a full mattress and take some getting used to. The painting we had done also didnt help so in the middle of the night Di very nicely asked me to roll over!!

Pictures are all here

During this long conversation I got on with moving some of the construction rubble to build a vegetable garden. This ended up being a very satisfying exercise and the first square of the garden took form. It has basil, parsley, rosemary, tomatoes, peppers and ambergine.

After the first stage went in Di wanted to plant edamane (soybean) so we extened the garden out again and it was loads of fun and real honest work. Moving the huge stones was an effort but we got it done. The dirt pile we had actually ended up being great soil. All the community is so impressed that we have planted food crops!.

We moved onto checking the colour swatches we had painted and found that there are way two many whites for someone to deal with.

This entry is very behind as last week after posting the pictures etc from our weekend down there I found that the website was not working. I found it odd but didn't pay much attention to it. On coming back from the latest trip to check progress I investigated further and found that there were files with updated dates which leads me to believe the site was hacked. Anyway more of that on the main site.

Back to the build. Well this time we had to actually camp out in the house as the other house was booked. The usual trick of train, bento and Onsen. Then inspection of the construction. First view was quite a shock. my god we have a swedish sauna (you need to see the photos to understand this, and there is one of the Sweeediiisshhh kitchen cabinet door outside the Sweeedddiiishh sauna!)

Wow and wow. This process of building has been so amazing. I know fully well this is not my build and Di is the project manager and owner of it. So its her build! I'm just, well not really sure. But its been a great collaboration. With so many things to deal with its hard not to introduce my idea's of things and I'm now really conscious of trying not to put forward what I would do personally against what the design concept is.

This can be difficult as so many of our idea's work along the same lines and I'm really trying not to intefere with her design process. We do seem to have come to a very nice arrangement where Di has nearly all of the idea's and I work with them on the practical side and how to implement them. We spend alot of time working through each idea and then go back to the 'Style Statement' to see if it fits. Di has so many great ideas that are amazing. We discuss them alot and work out how each will or will not work.

So many of them I totally love and we expand on them and are making happen, others we work through and see were they fall into the plan. I find it amazing how well we can work them all out.

As the project progesses I am really aware of how much I don't want to interfere with the utlimate choice, but also have a strong inflence on the aspects of it. Nearly all of the time we find a great position on it that meets Diana's plan, and has my practical implemenation side of it.

This weekend seeing all the progress on the place is amazing, to see our idea's become form is stunning. To see all our idea's take physical form is something we don't enjoy working it the IT industry, and truth its very satisfying.

Our collaboration is amazing, we both have idea's on things and they are fully discussed and both of us are happy to see changes to the idea, or understanding when an idea doesn't work. Thats rare, and I love it. Ultimately this house will be Diana's dreams brought to physical reality. I play the part of helping those idea's find form and reality.

It's also a huge amount of fun, and thats the best thing!

The changes within 24 hours have been incredible. The main window in the kitchen has been raised by 20cm and wasn't actually that bigger job overall (I guess alot easier that sending them all back). The toilet window is in and the major feature of the bathroom the round window is in! One small unfortunate aspect is that the round window only comes in one colour 'Bronze' and the rest of the windows are now 'Shining Grey'. The new colour is actually really great, and while not the first choice its going to work really really well. But the round window will be a little different. But its not a public window and should be quite spectacular looking onto its private garden, and with a sharp rendered edge will be fine.

After we managed to scrounge together a great dinner (Tom Yum soup with left over Chicken from our lunch out) we all did our various home work and had each a long hot bath soak.

Then we started back on finalising the bathroom design. To be exact the hight of the tiles and glass wall. Our decision to the Glass man was 2 metres of 8ml glass. But how would that line up with the tiles, shower fittings and lights

We spent a good couple of hours working this out. For very excellant reasons Di wanted the top of the glass to match the top of the tiles, but with a 30cm tile you have a choice of either 180 cm with 6 tiles or 210 cm with 7 tiles. Then add into that the grouting difference and you have approx 182, versus 212. But add in the complicating factor that the shower light was to go above the shower rail and suddenly there is a physical issue of getting it all it.

We reverted to placing tags on the wall to see how it all mapped out. And also a physical demonstation of place a plate (to represent the light) into the shower at the company beach house. It became apparent that putting the glass at 212 to have 7 sets of tiles will not allow room for the light (as it can't sit on half tile or wall, (and we weren't going to cut a tile around it), and that the glass at 187 was just too low!

After my 15cm tile idea (which I had totally forgotten about the multi size tile affect), we went with the easy solution. But going with a 200cm glass wall and cutting the tiles to fit we removed aload of issues in alighnment, and it would have been a miralce if we could specifiy the glass to be cut to X hight and have the times with grouting match. I know with a full archtectual plan it might have worked and we would have had clean tiles match all the way, but this way we remove all the problems and keep it simple. It will still look great and no-one will really know.

It was also good that we spent so much time working it all out and can make an informed decision as to what could work.

Our 'Patron' in the area is now starting to see just how much attention to detail we are putting into this place and its not just a 'renovation' but rather a full on project for us both. When discussing the Extraction fan for the bathroom I was adament that it be on a separate switch from the bathroom lights. The electriction was fully on board and was going to do it, but my explanation made them laugh!

Many places have the extration fan tied to the lights so you always have the steam extracted, so okay. Yeah will what about in the middle of winter? It cold and you want a nice warm steamy shower, but all the hot air and steam is gone. You end up with a rather unpleasant shower! Nagatomo-san was giggling away with my explanation in mixed english and japanese. But point was well taken.

He also gave his blessing to the Bamboo planter at the end wall of the garden! It was the first time he said it would be a great idea. I guess he was waiting to see how we would do things and now that form is being taken he can start to see the direction we are going. His most interesting comment was that Gaijin think differently about reform (renovation) that Japanese, and no Japanese person would do what we have done with all the glass. Now note he didn't say it was good, just different, but then thats half that fun of this project.

We have the neighbours down all the time checking out what is going on! Picture of one of our 'observers' is in the gallery.
We are the most interesting event at the moment in the valley!

I have to write about our Denki-san.  I met him today and he was everything that Di described him to be.  If he was not obviously Japanese by birth he would be directly out of country France.  He is a real character and so far totally unfazable.  He is finding it a very unique experince working directly with the client as normally he is just told by the master builder where to put things.  

We have given him a full lighting plan of what we want were (and yes, we missed something!  The outside power socket for the gas boiler!).  He has taken our change in the kitchen lighting in stride and was only onsite Saturday afternoon but has already wired it all up.  He was rather slyly delighted to talk to use about the missing outside socket and its great we have a relationship that he was comfortable to bring this to our attention!!!  We were both so apologetic we had forgotten it that it made everything we good! 

When discussing the power socket outlets in kitchen he was fascianated by the proces between us, and how we worked out from the plan the slight change we had to make to accomdate the tiling (um our mistake), and he very politey asked 'What the hell number of devices where we going to run to need 4 power outlets at each location!).  Valid question, but then experience is that you never have enough power outlets.

Pictures are here for this trip.

After and incredibily long soak in the hot water of Kanaiya Onsen we arrive at Soto Ura and just had to have an inspection of the work done as they started construction 4 days earlier.

Well at first impression it looked amazing, then the details settled in and we realised that somethings were not right. Of first concern to look at was the bathroom window as Carpenter had raised some issues over the placement (cleveage hight was the core requirement here - Di's story here).

We found that he had done and amazing job of installing it as high as he could and after a few tests it was deemed quite satisfactory. What was out of place was the colour of the windows.

Then we investigated the main 2.5 metre long kitchen windows, which is totally stunning and has the whole valley talking!! We were worried that the hight would not allow room for the tiles we wanted to use, or tiles at all, and much concern was how could we tell Carpenter that basically it was in the wrong place, (or rather two low), then the colour issue really came to light. Now remember this was done with touch light so it was not immediately evident, but some closer looking with touches and later the indoor work lights showed that the colour was most certainly not 'Autumn Brown' as should have been ordered!

We spent the night working out variuos things from what we had seen. One thing that totally impressed us was the construction techniques which are very Japanese and totally awsume to see. Take a close look at how the joints are put together. In western construction joints and made by just whacking to pieces of wood together. Here in Japan they are made but cutting a little bit into the joining board and then screwed in (no nails here!), so each joint is actually about 7 ml into each other. It wonder to watch them do it and so different!

The next morning in full daylight we knew the windows colour was wrong and that led to alot of head scratching by Carpenter and Di, as she had been very clear the colour was 'Autumn Brown' not the colour we currently had installed!. After alot of discussion we came to the conclustion that the 'new' colour was actually really nice. (Di and I talked about it more and it was originally our first 'like' in the showroom, but was dismissed as too modern, so we went darker to reflect the traditional. But now that the annex is very modern its worked out great.

This entry should have been written last Sunday but i was so tired I didn't get around to it. We have spent the entire weekend looking at various Materials. Okay not quite the entire weekend, as we had the mornings off and a great lunch at the Park Side Cafe.

First stop was Yoyogi-urehara where Di lives for lunch and then onto the burbs! Like way out in the burbs. After a couple of train changes and a wrong stop we found ourselves at the DYI Store of Tokyo. Cains Home I think its called. Two huge warehouses on either side of the road right next to Cost-co. Which was interesting as I always wondered where cost-co was.

Primed and ready the plan was to start at one end and work out way back to the station. Hindsight, small mistake we should have started with the paint first, cos let me tell you after a few hours of looking at all the different options which we may or maynot want we crossed the road to materials and paint. And I'm sure I've mentioned just how many colors of white there are!

Luckily we both focused on the same sets of colours and then just worked out from there. Its actually working out really well as we both seem to have the same vision in mind for the place so I can act as a very good bouncing board for the idea's. To hear us talking you would have thought we were full time designers doing on about the various warm and cold tones of the different colours and light they will be seen in, how much yellow, red etc.

Well progress is fast moving now. This weekend Di went down early to meet with the workman and go over all the plans and I had the mission of checking out the lighting at IKEA. Her mission went really well and the photos are available on at the gallery above. All the workman are onside with us!

Whenever someone takes on a new house in Japan there are certain things that should be done by tradition.  Bascially a priests blessing, salt and Saki.

Well that did happen.  No pics as it was requested  none be taken.

We did that weekend on first arrival to the new house do our own version.  Di had aquired the Saki from a good friend and we got the salt from our Futon Lady, or rather the futon lady told the shop to open the doors and sell us the salt as a cleansing was underway!

So we had salt and Saki, so what do you do.  Well basically sprinkly salt around all entrances and exits to the building and spray alot of saki around.  Why?  Well the salt it to keep bad spirit out of the house.  (don't knock, you really dont' know) and the Saki?  Well its to say goodbye to the previous spirit.  We drank and sprinkled to say goodbye to the old boy who lived there so he could leave knowing we respected him and were taking over. 

The new extention is on the way!  Di is down there now checking to make sure the foundations go into right place.  Photos to come.  We have also been lent some amazing books on interior colour.  Did you think that was easy!  No way.

One thing we have noticed, our plans so far are going well!

Do you have any idea about placing light switches and power points, not easy! 

Okay this is an entry that should have been entered last summer.   I can't recall the exact date at the moment, but it was the during the summer of 2007 and just after the transfer of ownership.

We headed down to the beach knowing that we could stay in the 'company' house and had to live the weekend in the new house, aka the property!  We did know this and thought the place was empty.  All worked out fine arriving and then we started to really explore the house, it still had all the outhouse extenstions and we figure there were futons in the main outhouse so we could sleep there.