Bugs and the work that bugs us most.

Being the season for bugs, we've had some interesting and sometimes scary little buggers visit. This big guy had very interesting eyes & seemed to like coming inside so much we had to evict him several times!



We had a Hornet's nest inside an inner wall behind the toilet. At first I just ignored it since they're beneficial insects (They eat other bugs as part of a natural cycle of life!), but unfortunately they become nastier in late summer and I've been stung twice and other friends visiting last weekend both got stung as they walked by.
As we didn't know how they might react, we took them to the hospital nearby, which made me decide enough was enough.

I searched the net for advice & got a pressure sprayer. I first tried a solution of ant powder (Blocked up the nozzles!) and fairly soapy water, spraying at night when they're unable to see and are mostly in their nest.
The soapy water seems to have done the trick.

There's still a larger hive further out in the garden, but I figure as long as they don't nest on the house I'll let them get on with their business. They'll be gone end of October anyway, with the queen hibernating until next year. If they try to nest on the house next year I'll be ready early with the sprayer before they make a hive that's too scary large!

This week Shinobu & I did the nastiest work of all: In the dining room there's an Irori traditional fireplace. This is essentially an insulated hole in the floor for burning wood.
Originally this would have been used for cooking and heating, with all the smoke going through a hole in the ceiling to coat the thatched roof with sooty dust. This would protect the thatch against insects.
Of course after over 2 centuries of use the build up of soot together with dust is considerable and frankly disgusting. If it gets in your eyes it stings and it gets everywhere. I needed to have several showers whilst we cleared this through a day and a half.



Initially when demolishing, to clean the roof beams Arnie & Shinobu opened all the doors and sprayed with compressed air whilst wearing masks and goggles, but it made a helluva mess as well as some 24 bag-fulls of soot! They did try a vacuum cleaner which broke within the hour.

So my solution was to buy a used Dyson vacuum cleaner.



The poor machine barely copes with having to swallow so much and the filter frequently blocks up, but since it's washable I've been able to coax it back to life each time. I've been sold on Dyson cleaners since we bought one some 5 years ago.
Yahoo! auctions are the place to look, they're a fraction of the new price used!

The dust is literally caked on and usually requires scraping with a spatula, as there's also been crystalised charcoal on the surface. After removing most of the dust we wiped each beam down with a wet microfibre cloth. One more day's work will involve final cleaning with a wire brush and finishing with a plastic sheet canopy, similar to the space above the children's room. This will give us two isolated areas in the loft for storage free of ancient dust. All rooms will be completely protected, meaning the house should be much easier to keep clean than would be traditionally. No pain, no gain as they say!



As Friday came to an end, 75% of the loft area above the dining room was cleaned, so we'll need to endure a few more hours of cleaning next week, before putting up plastic sheeting.

Kindly donated by Arnie's son Abe once again. Thanks Abe, even though we've never met you're a true star! I hope the beers went down well.

Once the loft area's cleaned the beams & slats can be stained and sealed with sellac and the ceiling completed the same as the children's bedroom.

There are only small wall sections, since the entire room is enclosed by sliding doors on all sides. Floor will be oak, leaving the original central kotatsu fireplace in. Walls are as simple as cleaning and lemon oiling wooden doors and re-fitting.

I'm anticipating long hours into the night to complete this room, but I'm hoping the fast pace of change will keep me motivated! Once Arnie and Shinobu have finished their work in the dining room the second lounge will begin to quickly take shape.

Stairs very close to completion, at last!

Much of my spare time the last two weeks has been spent on the stairs. In fact, this project despite looking small has been the most time consuming of all so far for Arnie. There's a lot of detail in making a spiral staircase like this from scratch especially bearing in mind the exterior walls were never meant to be load bearing and it's the first time he's made a spiral staircase (A lot of angles to work out and engineer, etc).

For those of you that have followed the build from the beginning you might remember replacement of not just the exterior wall's wood, but also ripping out and rebuilding of the totally bug-eaten pantry area. Before, for 200+ years there was a steep ladder to get up & down stairs. There were some nasty old wooden doors that barely slid any more and plywood covering worn out old exterior walls.

This is the finished product, which certainly feels like luxury by comparison!



For the last few weeks Arnie had been varnishing and sanding down the components of the stairs.



At the beginning of September Carlos, my designer friend kindly gave up one of his days off from Toshiba to come over and help me clean up the stairwell beams and stain. He also taught me the basics of wall-papering. I'd thought it was easy to do, but with so many irregularly shaped spaces to fill, working late at night mostly on my own and not having done this before it was easy to make mistakes.

Fortunately the textured nature of the wallpaper makes it quite easy to hide joins completely and there's colour matched caulking to blend corners & edges together.
But about half way through I decided I really don't like wall-papering at all and so the children's bedroom's going to be eco-walled too.

Glad the entrance / genkan & stairs are nearly finished now, at last. Just the wall next to the entrance doors to finish next week. A few hour's work at most. Well, that and flagstone flooring in the lower entrance level, but that's a job for after we move in. The current compressed earth floor's been there a very long time, so a bit longer will be fine.

Below are pictures of the newly papered paneling going up the stairs:







I wallpapered everything first, then Arnie fitted the stairs during Thursday and Friday. It's all very strongly bonded together and screwed into place. No way these would ever come out without ripping away the corner of the house. The glue's stronger than the wood!



There's still some faux beams to be made either side of the entrance to the stairs (Which will help protect corners), plus a wooden panel with a vertical hand rail (For children!) half way up the stairs - stained black of course.

The grey rectangular area on the floor is nothing more than a pile of plaster-board, by the way.

We figured under the stairs will be a place kids will want to play so I wall-papered there too and fitted two recessed flourescent lights.





There will be some heavy cast-iron double coat hooks close to the door frame (Sourced from Lee Valley in the States) and also mounted on the back of the door (Which will be made of Cedar & pine, stained red & black to match with the stairs).
In this cupboard we'll store things like vacuum cleaner, baby push chair, etc. We've already received 3 Suffolk type cast-iron thumb latches from the UK to go on the two doors on the stairs (Cupboard and door to guest room upstairs). Period-ish, although not really Japanese - but I always liked these latches on old houses in UK. As they can be opened from both sides of the door, hopefully it won't make it too scary for kids to hide & seek in...





From above it's not possible to see the red paneling (Cardboard was to avoid scratching the varnish whilst assembling).



Lighting here is an important consideration too. This stained glass sconce was bought from the States via Amazon:



It will provide a dim but ambient light.



There are also 5 x 12v stair lights and we may add two more to the upper level of the stair well.

I'll try to get better pictures when it's all finished. Unfortunately it's impossible to show the complete staircase without a crazy wide-angle lens of some sort!

Children's room is nearing completion - to be finished around end of September.

Originally the wall between the master & children's bedroom was wattle & daub with bamboo re-inforcement. We didn't want to keep such walls as replacement is a major mess if they break and pictures can't be hung on them (Consequently almost all wattle & daub walls have been or will be replaced with framing and 12mm thick plaster board)



And below is now:

About 6 of the ceiling beams were replaced due to having had varying degrees of old wood worm damage. Fortunately we had spares from the low ceiling that used to be in the 2nd lounge. There were some damaged slats too and new ones were cut and fitted before Shinobu stained all and applied a coat of sellac. The 11mm plywood ceiling was first cut so joints would always be concealed, then once all sized correctly, removed and covered with textured wallpaper before being carefully laid and screwed into place.

Arnie & Shinobu then installed all new wiring in conduit, closed up walls and filled imperfections caused by screw heads, etc.

As it's quite a dark room without any direct sunlight at all, only shade through the day we've installed wiring for 4 types of light to give a choice of moods: 8 x LED dimable spotlights, 1 x dimmable pendant light, 3 corner wall receptacles to control a choice of dimmable table or floor light(s) and picture frame light(s).

Last week Arnie glued 3 lengths of pine together side by side before routing them to make a replacement upper channel for one of the garden facing sliding doors. This week he's going to replace a couple of the floor guides.



This coming week I expect to spend a late evening or two applying Eco-Wall cream coloured plaster, before getting on with the time consuming job of laying oak flooring during several evenings and some daytime as work allows me time out.



We decided not to keep the God-box, as mentioned before for lack of space and the fact it would block too much light. Instead as it's a square space Arnie will be making a round shoji window similar to this:



Behind it can be a place for a small study. This way the children can be working on whatever project they're concentrating on whilst being able to gaze through the glass doors to the garden and it also allows a passage for heat from the intended centralised wood burning stove fitted in front of the adjacent wall.

At the corner of the 2nd lounge and dining room there will be an L-shaped fitted wardrobe where part of it will be hidden recesses for the house's centralised audio equipment and CD collection. For now we'll leave this as there are other rooms to be finished in time for our planned move at the end of October.

First lounge, nearly finished. At last!

Sometimes I can't help thinking progress has been slow, but it's interesting to look back the last 2 weeks and see how far we've come, or even further back to how the house was when Shinobu & Arnie began demolishing interior walls, or replacing exterior wood paneling and where we are now.

There are so many pieces to each puzzle it's difficult not to miss all the tasks that go hand in hand with finishing each area properly. I tend to under estimate, being inexperienced & sometimes need to remind myself this is an old house so it's not all square and symmetrical as a modern building would be.
Arnie often has to engineer solutions on the go and in turn I've been learning various techniques from him.

It's encouraging to look back just the last 2 weeks and review how many things have changed!



The above picture shows the old ceilings, raw wood planks that sat beneath tatami and below - no wall to separate the bedroom, back in April:



During the last two weeks, having routed all our wiring, inclusive of wall mounted speaker terminals with 12 gauge speaker cable hard wired in, Phone, LAN and digital TV, we sealed up the wall with plaster board. If I've worked it out right, we should have no visible cables anywhere running alongside the walls once we've furnished the place.

There are two spot light (dimmable) circuits, plus switched wall receptables for floor or table lamps and wiring in place for picture lights to be located on the wall.

During late nights into the last two weeks I spent time painstakingly laying oak flooring, carefully glueing and nail gunning each strip into place after spacing correctly.



Sanding followed, with a darker (Mahogany) stain:



This afternoon before finishing up for the weekend, I applied a 50% thinned first coat of Eurethane varnish after having vacuumed & wiped the floor clean with a damp microfibre cloth thoroughly. Note there's a lot of reflection on freshly varnished wood, it's not texture.





It'll get at least 4 coats of Eurethane with more sanding in between. Should have a classic look when done, similar to the stairs (See other post today).

Sanding (With our trusty Dyson vacuum cleaner attached to suck away dust) and varnishing don't take long to do, so I'll finish these in between others stuff I'll be doing over this month. Where the original ceiling slats used to fit, we'll be putting a facade over and slightly above, to hide the wiring for the spots and speaker by the corner.
I'm looking forward to re-fitting the beautiful wooden lattice panels that seperates this lounge & bedroom and allows ventilation! The green plastic sheeted temporary windows will soon be gone at last. Once it's finished, I can paper the shoji doors too but before I get onto that, there's some panels in the corridor that need painting and wood re-staining. Rome wasn't built in a week, as the saying goes...

Everything You HAVE TO KNOW about Dangerous Genetically Modified Foods.

There's a huge amount of overwhelming evidence of the dangers of GMO's and the lack of action that's being taken to protect our environment of irreversible damage and resultant difficulties, suffering & even farmer suicides that continue to develop as results. These are some of the reasons we feel it's of essential importance to develop a permaculture food solution in this home project, which we plan to share learning and produce with friends and like minded people.

Here's an important lecture by Jeffrey M Smith author of Seeds of Deception & Genetic Roulette on the dangers we need to know about in GMO's.

Everything You HAVE TO KNOW about Dangerous Genetically Modified Foods from Jeffrey Smith on Vimeo.

Another week's work & more progress.

Another week of heat, humidity and quite a lot of rain has just passed - but finally the sweatyness of our work seems to be relenting to cooler and more comfortable levels. It's made me decide we will have to instal 3 air conditioners. Not as green as I'd hoped, but I figure there's no point in sweltering and being uncomfortable for the few months of heat each year after doing all this work. The house needs to be comfortable in all seasons.

Arnie spent some of the last week working out the wiring for the entrance hall (Genkan), as well as finishing the wiring for the 1st lounge. I routed through cables for internet, phone, digital TV & speakers (12 gauge) to the lounge too. Hopefully my planning will work out so we don't have wires trailing on the floor, but have all connections neatly concealed around the house.





Arnie took the stairs apart again, so he could re-finish the wood with a 2-tone colour scheme echoing the ceiling's beams and Sugi ceilings. Starting with oiling, this helped the stain not to become too concentrated in some areas. After drying he coated with a well thinned Semi-gloss (Satin) Eurethane varnish. About 3 layers will complete before the stairs can be re-assembled.





Whilst Arnie was working on the stairs, Shinobu wheel-barrowed rubble to the gulley adjascent to the drive before the Kabuki gate, which we're landfilling as we go.
He then stained the wood frame, ready for wallpapering the stairwell and under-stair storage area this week.

It took all three of us to manouvere and push the original god box out of the house. It weighs about 400+ kg! Will see if we can sell it to recoup some costs. Might be an antique, but it takes up far too much space & light inside the house. Thankfully I was able persuade my wife to let it go. God doesn't live in a box, but all around us!

Shinobu had also lifted out all the plywood ceilings and wallpapered those, so Thursday afternoon he & I relaid the floors, leaving the trap door still opened, since it would have to be lifted up to allow them to work upstairs soon anyway.




Yuko had bought these pretty lights from Turkey during a visit to explore belly dancing further some 5 years ago. We'd been hoarding these away. Now finally, having bought the correct fittings in Akihabara last week, I was able to make them work.
They'll give a better ambience with a dimmer I think.



Arnie & Shinobu plasterboarded the lounge wall on Friday (Pictures don't show it, but inside these walls is insulation too).
I spent that night putting the finishing touches to the beams in the roof (Staining the lighter wood, filling small holes in the wall and painting minor imperfections I'd created from carelessness with the black stain falling on white walls, staining the old shutter doors, followed by Eco-Walling the finished wall and cleaning up the floor.



Although there are no pictures (I wanted to wait for the scaffolding to come out and the beautiful wooden lattices to be refitted & so have more to show...) the 1st lounge is finally ready for me to work on laying the oak floors. I'll do it this week and if I make good time - stain and put on the first coat of varnish too.
Hopefully I'll have pictures to upload at the end of this week of another (nearly!) finished room...

Saturday morning I also worked out why the Lutron dimmers we ordered from the States aren't working so well. Something that's baffled us a bit. Turns out they're the wrong ones for the jobs at hand. I resigned myself to ordering some more, which should be on their way soon. Still - the stuff from the States is of nicer design and (hopefully!) function than what's available in Japan...

Finished the week by heading to Akihabara again to buy the connectors for the co-axial cables. Much cheaper than buying from the local electrical superstores and always fun to check out all the little electrical widgets for sale in the market there... pays to shop around though, the same bits can cost double in some places, especially closer to the main road!

Other Work in Progress: Second Lounge & Children's Bedroom

The second lounge will be a continuation very similar to the first lounge. Same high Sugi stained ceilings, lots of white walls with surrounding posts and beams (Useful for large pictures / paintings), sliding doors to adjourning rooms, oak hardwood floors and new aluminium framed windows (Next year).
Where there's a wall separating the children's bedroom we intend to fit a large wood burning stove imported from the States in the future. That's where they make the best ones. Of course we'll have to be very careful with flue design as we have thatched roofing that's dried for a couple of centuries. Lots of insulation and rain proofing & straight as possible flues, although by the time it goes through the roof it'll have cooled a fair bit, being roughly 25m high.

Wood will come from our own garden which should keep me fit cutting down & carrying lumber around to dry, then use for fires. The stove will provide centralised warmth There will be similar lighting as used for the other lounge. Mostly we plan to use table lights (Attached to a dimmer and centrally controlled) but can use others when there's a need for a mood change.

We plan to hold social events in future, so the two lounges will become one when the need arises for larger groups. Speaker wires will all be in the walls, so we don't have to have cables trailing around on the floor and the audio amplifier and other things will be located around the corner leading into the dining room, so sound can be centrally controllable.

This week I spent some time removing the ceiling beams from the children's bedroom and seperating the ones that are good from those that need to be replaced because of woodworm. Thankfully except for the beam between the lounges, there's no other structurally eaten wood. The buggers only ate through floor and ceiling boards and a few of the ceiling beams closest to the back walls.

As with everywhere else, there was a LOT of black soot, straw, soil and 200 years + of dust. Disgusting stuff! The poor Dyson got clogged several times, then beaten clean, filters washed and put back into service, but it's still going strong.

On Friday having removed numbered and cleaned the ceiling beams (They're all different sizes so numbering is crucial!), we re-fitted a few temporarily to make a floor to work from to clean & wash (With a damp cloth) the thick tree trunk beams above, get rid of all the dust, then used plastic sheeting, remaining wood from the shims Arnie had + lots of 13mm staples to attach to the upper beams. This way we can exclude most roof dust and the space above the children's room can be used for ample storage.
Next week we'll finish plastic sheeting the other half and I'll dark stain and sellac the wood, ready to go back in.


Arnie can begin completing that room once he's done the remaining electrical, staining and varnishing work on the stairs, or maybe I can do that so he can move on.


There's clearly lots to do here, but it should be faster than the master bedroom since there's only wallpapered Plywood ceilings to fit, rather than the more intricate Sugi ceilings and not many walls (Lots of sliding shoji doors).
We still need to figure out a few aspects of the design, but I reckon 2-3 weeks and it can be all done. Next will be the dining room, followed by the first lounge. The kitchen & pantry will be left till last.

The guest room upstairs can be finished after we've already moved in, but ideally before if possible. And I have to fix up the old bathroom too, but that's only temporary as we have big plans for that to do when funds allow, based on all glass walls and ceilings facing the edge of the forest with two bathtubs. One for hot, one for cold water, since it's so good for blood circulation.

For now we'll use the kitchen much as it is, so we have time to really consider the layout we want and tailor it to make a space where 1 or more people can cook together and friends can sip a drink, snack & relax when they visit. It could take about 3+ years to really complete the interior to the standards we want, but that's part of the enjoyment of seeing a project develop I think. It's a lot like building cars, only much larger.

Guess I'd better stop for now, before I get too over excited thinking about it all. These are dreams thankfully coming true after years of thinking, praying and working hard towards saving up to have our own place someday.

Time's ticking along quickly as ever and we still have a lot to get done before we can move in - end of October so we'll see.

All the time the baby inside my wife's belly's getting larger. Life has a habit of throwing challenges in everybody's path, but thankfully we're enjoying these despite the hard work. I'd also like to thank Arnie for his tireless dedication to the work at hand. In many ways this house is becoming a tribute to your amazing skills.