entry papers, please

The paper in the shoji doors has been attached by the tategu-ya, and though there's a difference between our old doors and the new ones they made to the old specifications, it's not that noticable. You can see we've used the shoji doors from the genkan entrance of the old house. They are about 177cm, (5'10" or so), and are a big contrast with the tall main door. You can see the high step next to M's feet, which we're hoping people will be making without too much head cracking. But I love the design of these old doors, with the horizontal rectangles and the inserted central windows.

This is the entryway from the interior. Almost everything here is from the old house: the shoji, the wooden closet door on the left, and the ranma lattices at the upper left.

The genkan is the one place where the insulation properties are pretty much the same as one hundred years ago. Both the main door and the shoji doors are sliding, so there will always be gaps--miniscule ones, but gaps--between the doors and the frames. Hopefully the two layers will minimize the effects, so when it came down to aesthetics vs. modern insulation in this case, it was aesthetics, hands down. Ask me again on a windy, gray, bitter January morning, and I hope I have the same conviction.