The Office / Guest room.

The last room to be finished (Aside from the much smaller pantry!) is the upstairs guest room, which will be our office for the next couple of years, until we complete the renovation of the barn into a habitable building.



Over the last 2 weeks, Arnie & Shinobu have been beavering away, laying the ceilings, making a wardrobe, laying electrical cable (Shinobu fell through the ceiling when he slipped whilst walking on the framing to lay wiring at an early stage - which was a bit of a setback) and in the last few days - putting up the plasterboard walls.
It's looking like a room at last - and the house is now isolated from the sooty dust that had plagued us at the beginning!



The ceiling beams in this room are quite low, including the door frame at the top of the stairs, so we'll probably collect brass ducks and such, to put in dangerous places to warn people to stoop low in a humourous way (It's not funny when your head bangs on these stout pieces of wood...!)

The will probably be replaced with double glazed aluminium framed replacements, as in the main and 1st lounge - when we can afford it. Stuff like this is expensive in Japan as they're still using single pane glass for newly built homes!

Where there's green sheeting, this is covering up holes - which we've left open on purpose. These will allow some air flow in the summer and are amusing as they'll let light from upstairs be visible through the beams - and from upstairs, it's then possible to look down as well as admiring the structure of the beams.

I'd wanted to fit Tatami upstairs, but it would make the ceilings even lower, so we'll probably end up with foam underlay and some nice carpet - although I may leave that till we stop using it as an office, since carpet's expensive. Carpet tiles (Donated if I can scrounge some from friends in the carpet rental trade for exhibitions!) are what I'll probably use for now...

Will update more as this room's completed.