death with brush (3)

Since m's daycare center had shut down from the pig flu epidemic, we decided I'd take the day off on Friday and we'd all go down and finish off the staining. M's sister Y came with us. (Thanks for the photos, Y, and for spending all that time with m.) When we got there, the tategu-ya--the door craftsman--was working on the main entrance door. Unlike the old interior doors, these doors are rather tall, so my brother-in-law Jim, who is six-nine and has sworn he won't come and visit unless I provide him with a hard-hat, would approve. (Although since to get into the house proper, he'd have to duck through a shoji door that's about five-ten, he'd probably whack me with his hard-hat.)
The tategu-ya is responsible for all the doors, including shoji, sliding doors, hinged doors, and all the doors to the various cabinets and closets around the house. It's a narrow specialty, since the carpenters have already built all the cabinet structures except for the doors, for example. He was working pretty much the entire day fitting these large doors, working with both a sander and a traditional plane. He'd put them up, take them down, take a few millimeters off here and there and put them back up and eyeball them again. He's going to be doing that for a few days, so we won't be able to stain them until next week.
The kitchen tiles had been laid down, though the grout had yet to been put in. This will definitely be the most Western-style of all the rooms.
And, while M did all the hard stuff, like the frames around the windows and doors, I applied myself to the big beams that cross the ceiling of the main bedroom. It was easy compared to the ceilings downstairs, but there was more area than I'd expected. We are now officially ready for the application of the keisodo plaster walls (downstairs) and keisodo cloth walls (upstairs) that will wrap up the interior finish.
I climbed out on the scaffolding to find this beautifully shaped piece connecting the gutter to the down spout. Yamada-san had told me they had found a gutter series that had been designed by an architect that they could get cheaply, but . . . damn, this is nice. Yes, a fine gutter that could change the reputations of gutters in general.
m had found a way to spruce up her eyebrows with the wood stain. She told me she looks just like a popular TV star that has huge eyebrows.
I guess it's the last time I'll be viewing the sun set into the Izu peninsula horizon through the scaffolding. It goes down on Monday--the scaffolding as well as the sun--so next week we'll be looking at a fairly complete exterior, naked to the world. It will be a birth of sorts, and I wonder if it will look anything like what we'd imagined. Though come to think of it, that's what I was wondering at the last birth I attended, and that turned out okay.