We brought a couple of items to the attention of our architect. The first was the shape of the roof for the front part of the house. It was executed exactly as planned but somehow we had envisaged it differently. This is why planning a house on paper is tricky. We had failed to see how the shape of the roof of the front part of the house would blend in with the shape of the roof in the back of the house. A bit hard to explain.
At this point in the construction, any change in our plans to rectify this would put us at risk of a lengthy delay and additional costs. Our architect suggested we think about placing an addition to the roof that could be held with a pillar on the second floor balcony. This part can be added after the construction is finished, so we will take the time to consider it.
The second item we started fussing over was the windows in the Master Bedroom. We had hoped to have two small windows above the bed, but instead, our plans called for two windows joined together in a single frame.
We had not noticed this on our paper plans - and I supposed we had failed to express our wish clearly to our architect. After consulting with our Builder, Yakushiji-san explained that at this point in the construction, any changes in the windows would throw our schedule off by at least one month. Not a good idea!
In short, YKKap would need about that much time to produce and deliver our new windows, and this would also translate into additional costs for us as we could not return the current twin windows. Plus, the insulation is supposed to be installed this week, and after that the dry walls will be done. Everything else also has an assigned schedule, so there is no way we are going to disturb that since our priority is finishing on time. So we will try to make the best of this window. We're now looking for a good drape solution...
All of this is showing us again and again that the whole process of planning and building a house is not smooth sailing. Sure many aspects of the house will be exactly as we had hoped, but others, that we were unable to foresee, may remain to haunt us... But we will just have to adapt and find creative solutions: if you can't change something, learn to live with it!
2 comments:
Stumbled across your blog about building your house. Having sold imported material for 2x4 kouhou (mostly from PNW suppliers) back in the '90s, I was curious if you are using modified 2x4 kouhou and, if so, did you incorporate the seismic anchoring and shear strapping now required on the West Coast of the U.S., Alaska and Hawaii?
I’m so sorry to hear that there were quite a few bumps during the construction of your home! Think of the bright side of your bedroom windows though. It can get pretty cold in Tokyo during the winter months, so having just one window in there would have presented quite the dilemma; you’d like to have it closed to prevent the room from getting too cold, but at the same time, you can’t keep it closed for very long because the room might start to feel stuffy and stifling. Having two windows eliminates that problem because you can keep one open and the other closed, therefore regulating the temperature inside.
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