plastered

THIS IS THE INOUE family, sakan-ya (or plasterers) of the finest order. After finishing the outside mortar of our house a while ago, they're back to do the interior walls in keisodo, which--as I think I've explained several times--is a plaster made of clay rich in volcanic ash and fossilized plankton. It been used for centuries as a fire-resistant clay for making stoves and burners. Recently it's been increasingly used as a wall plaster.

It's not an easy application, at least for an amateur. This is one of the son's tool box, where he keeps his entire collection of trowels of all shapes and sizes, and next to it is the palette with the small, narrow size trowel that he let me try. I was able to do an area of a couple square feet, but the plaster is gritty and digs into the edge of the tool. So he stepped back in and took over and the three family members finished about half of the house in one day. (They end up doing two layers, although when finished, it is only 2 or 3 millimeters thick. 

The keisodo absorbs moisture when it is humid and expells it when it's dry. It cuts down on noise, smells, mites, is fire-resistant, and is full of holes 4 nano meters wide that let the walls breath. I'm sure there's something bad about it, but I haven't found any reports yet. 

It has a very rough texture, almost like adobe, and it looks great against wood. It's bright white, but when the late winter sun hit it this afternoon as everyone was cleaning up, it turned the walls into yellow gold.

 

day and not-so day

Above and below is why, as much as I love mountains, the shore never ceases to intrigue me, despite the fact that I don't surf or sail--though I do like to swim and body surf. But the way the view can change so dramatically in a matter of minutes is probably closer to my emotional makeup than the more stately change that takes place in mountainous areas. Though I'm sure that there are hordes of hill people that would disagree.

In the actual sequence, "below" came before "above."

whitewalls

The keisodo cloth has been applied to all the walls and ceilings upstairs, as well as the ceilings of the kitchen and M's studio. The rest of the house will be done in the keisodo plaster, starting on Saturday. It's applied with a trowel and leaves rough swirls in the texture of the wall, and I want to know how to do it, so that I can reapply it in places that suffer from accidents, cats running at high speed into walls, or even daily use. So I've convinced the plasterer to let us "help" in places that won't be too noticable. You can't tell from the photo above, but the cloth also has a pattern that looks as if it's applied as plaster (but it comes at a much lower price). As I've written before, though, both the cloth and the plaster is supposed to prevent sick house syndrome, absorb humidity, and let walls breathe.

chilling

It's finally gotten chilly, with hints of winter. The wind was picking up the other day, blowing the stones off the tarp and exposing my stash of materials for living with a wood stove. On top was the log slice that we carried down from Nagano, after M's dad insisted we select one from the shop that is doing the arrangements for putting in our stove. I haven't even got a splitting axe yet, but I've got this great slab to do it on.

Underneath are some posts from the old house that I'll use to build a frame to stack the wood fuel. M's dad has already cut and aged a pile of apple wood that we'll pick up later this month when we go up to help pick the apples from their tree, and that should help us get our stove life up and running.

they're baaaaaack

A bare two weeks after typhoon Melor, the kanna have proved me wrong once again (yes, I'm getting used to it), and have poked their heads out of the sand and are reaching upward to grace the sea wall separating us from the beach. Their hardiness is inspiring; I need to inject some of their DNA to help survive the long daily commute to work after our move.

look ma, no scaffold

The ashiba scaffolding is gone--at least most of it. There's still a corner left, which they'll use to put in the chimney for the wood stove. But other than that, the exterior is at the mercy of the public view, and--just as we suspected--it's a bit of a schizophrenic exhibition. On the mountain side we have what I think of as much of the goodness of Japanese architecture: sloping gentle roofs, large eaves supported by posts and beams, an entrance way that is welcoming without being pretentious.
On the sea side is what I consider to be the less appealing side of modern Japanese architecture: a slab of wall with little to distinguish it, and I have no one to blame but me. But I beg any passersby on the beach to be forgiving. This was done with very little thought of its appearance from outside, despite the fact that more people will stare up at us from the sea side than from the road. As opposed to the other side of the house, almost all of the aethetic selections were made purely through the effect they would have on those in the house's interior.
And judging from our first house guest (and I'm not including former inhabitants such as the ubiquitous spiders and wasps), the view from the inside--think wall over the atrium--was of great value. Despite the open windows and my urging, he was the first of what we hope to be not too many guests who refuse to leave.

women at work

I got an e-mail message from the site foreman, saying that if we were planning to stain the front door, we should do it soon, since the glass strips are ready to be inserted . So we decided to run down today--on a Halloween hangover--to finish it. (We don't want to be the excuse for any delays.) Even in the natural untouched state (above), it looked elegant, but the inside of the genkan entranceway is stained, and we're planning to do the clapboard siding as well. The stain has surprised us with the way it matches the old houses color, so we're going full speed ahead.

M brought her brand of concentration to the job . . .
. . . as did m, who as you can see takes after her mom.

Between the three of us, we were done in no time with was what was a more difficult job than expected--well, not difficult but rather painstaking in having to do all the places where the glass panels will slide into place. But it was great fun working together. There is still plenty of staining to do, but the only part that has to be done before we move in are the new shoji doors, three full-size doors and two window panels, which have to be done before the paper is attached.

But anyway, the front door is done, and it looks great, and the glass can go in with no time wasted.