whose siding are you on?

Got down to the site last weekend and was caught by surprise to find that they'd finished putting in the walls and ceiling of the bath. It's all hinoki, Japanese cypress, and it has a scent that seems to enter every pore of your body. We didn't have the means to make a really nice Japanese bath with stone floors, but it's two tatami mats in size--or one ken by one ken--and it is made in the 3300 year-old measurement system that our carpenters are using.

A lot of baths are available from the tub makers in units, which are basically an entire room in molded plastic that allows you to take a real Japanese bath--including the splashing and pouring of water outside the tub--without worrying about leaks and mold. But we were able to find what they call a "half unit," which is a molded room from the top of the bathtub level down, and it allowed us to build the rest of the walls and ceiling in hinoki.

Hinoki is an awesome wood. When I first moved into the old house on the premises, it had an oval bathtub made all of hinoki, and when you filled it with hot water the aroma would invade the entire house (if you left the bathroom door open). Unfortunately, the bath disintegrated after many years of use, as they tend to do in spite of great care, and a new one runs in the many hundreds of thousands of yen. This hinoki enclosure over a deep tub is now the best we can do. When m opened the door to the bath, the hinoki DNA seeped out in an explosion of head-spinning scent, so I think we probably made the right compromise--though my dream is to someday have a hikoki tub again.

The carpenters removed the boards over the atrium, so it was the first time we got a peek at what it's going to be like. Straight ahead is the opening that will hold the windows to m's room; to the left are the windows to the master bedroom.The carpenters also started on the shitami ita, the traditional clapboard siding that covers the mountain side of the house. We decided not to stain it for now--or any of the other exterior wood--until we get a feel for how it ages. My image is of the old houses that I've seen in Niigata prefecture--and it's a mixture of a deep red of aged wood with a creosote stain that protects those old houses from several meters of snow. I know it's kind of ridiculous to base a house design in such a mild climate as ours on the bitter winters of Niigata, but that's life. I've got to find a way to get this wood to match that image.

On the way home, m and I passed a stable that had always been empty, but for some reason had been rejuvenated and had a few horses to ride. She hopped up, and didn't look back at me.
I hope she made the distinction between that live one, whose name was Klaus, and her Disneyland mount of a few days earlier.