The Real Thing

Our original plan was to to keep as much of the old house as possible. The main tatami room--eight mats plus a four-mat sized engawa--has everything that makes the perfect Japanese room. All the colors are variations on earth tones, from the tatami to the wood to the paper shoji doors that absorb the light and pass it on, slightly softened, to the opposite side (which side depends upon the time of day and where the light is coming from). All the walls are shoji or the wooden fusuma, so the room changes its configuration as people open doors or close them. We sleep in the far room on futon and feel spacious in the summer with all the doors open, or cozy in the winter wrapped in a closed door cocoon.

Unfortunately, three different contractors and carpenters told us that the foundation was too weak to build on. We could raise the whole house and put in a new foundation, but the wood columns and walls weren't strong enough to hold a second floor, and reinforcing them would cost a small fortune. We're trying to stay small, under 1500 square feet, and without adding a second floor we'd have to use all the garden space, and having a garden was one reason for moving in the first place. So, after much soul searching, we decided to build new, with the one absolute being that the main tatami room would be copied so carefully that we'd feel just as if nothing had changed. All the architectural plans began around that.