More meetings and details

We had a typical meeting with the builder to go over some details. Now that many parts of the house, including plumbing, electrical, stairs and interior and exterior finishing are being worked on at the same time it's difficult to stay on top of everything.

We have many requests and ideas that Japanese builders seem to be perplexed by. For example, putting all of the outlets for the toilets and AC out of sight. Requesting for the stairs to be built without a lip on the tread...etc.. The builder has been patient so far, but we ran into some difficulty with the bathtub placement leaving us with only 3cm between the tub lip and the wall. Hopefully we can come up with a solution so it's not so tight...

So here we are in our house surrounded by: the builder, the gas guy, the stair guy, the plumbing guy, the architect and the carpenter...oh, man! They all needed input and guidance from us and the builder to get on with their work.

We got a happy surprise when the young carpenter wanted to confirm the layout of the floor boards in the studio. We planned to do a design which puts the boards overlapping in thirds. We decided that it looked very nice.

Here is an interesting detail. He cut a small notch on all of the posts to recess the flooring into the wall. I think this is because we have a 'floating wall' design, without any trim at the base of the wall where it meets the floor.

It will be fun to see the studio get the full treatment in the coming days.

Most of the exterior has been finished in preparation for the siding. The decorative buttresses have been clad in plasterboard. We're are very pleased with this design detail. The balance between the top and sides seems about right. 

The birthday girl looks happy with her new house. I kept promising her a house for her birthday, now it's finally coming to fruition.