angles and demons

Doesn't that look simple? It isn't. It's hard to tell from this angle, but this is the spot I was talking about in the previous post, where the eaves meet from two directions and the slope is different. I remember the architect, T-san, gulping when we insisted on having it work out this way . . . Well, let me go back.

The problem was that the room at the end of the el wing is going to be M's massage therapy salon, and it was originally meant to be a straight 6-mat room (that's tatami-speak). When M gave me a trip to a massage therapy course as a birthday present--damn, that felt good--I was coherent enough to measure the room while the masseur was out getting me tea. I realized that a 6-mat room is not long enough to include a consultation table and the massage bed without a real squeeze.

So we shrunk the width and increased the length, and of course that changed the pitch of the roof and ruined the perfect 90-degree angle of the meeting of the two wings. T-san sighed and scratched his head and wondered how he'd make the two wings come together smoothly. And we saw how last week.

Along with the posts for the entrance, this angle was the one place where all the computers and machine tools used in preparing the house didn't help. It was the job of Suzuki-san, the master carpenter, and he spent quite a bit of the afternoon making sure this worked.
It did, as you can see in this photo. This is the strange angle that was the result, and it's what stumped the machine tool cutters. But Suzuki-san did a fantastic job, and when you walk in the entrance you won't be able to notice the different pitches of the eaves.

beam me up

Here's one of the beams with an intricately carved end that will fit into other beams and posts. Carpenters now use a combination of traditional joinery techniques like these and metal fittings and fastenings that have been dictated by the government in order to make buildings more earthquake resistant. The joinery cuts used to be all done by hand with saw and chisel. Now they're cut with machine tools to computer specifications. According to the carpenters, the pieces fit much more tightly now, since everything is much more uniform. Still, I remember watching some carpenters many years ago make these intricate cuts on site, and they seemed to fit just fine. I doubt whether the house would have gone up quite as quickly, though.


A few of the tools they used to lift the beams onto the posts.


Most of the lumber pieces have also been marked by computer with their placement location so all the carpenters instantly know where it goes. They've also been marked with my name on each piece.

the a-team

Suzuki-san (far left in the blue shirt) is the master carpenter for our house, and he'll do all the carpentry from now on with one assistant. For the mune-age (raising the frame) day, however, he had a crew of ten others helping out, plus the site foreman. Four of them were also master carpenters who work for the same contractor, the rest were experienced apprentices. Suzuki-san was responsible for the team for the day, and he had to feed them as well: he brought a huge pot of curry and a full rice cooker that he'd prepared himself.

He spent this day on the detail work that had to be done. First, doing the round wooden pillars that hold up the large eaves over the entrance. They had to be cut the right length, and then he had to cut pegs for both ends--the top to fit into a beam down the eave, and the bottom to fit into a cut stone.

Then he fretted over the spot where the eaves come together. The roof of the wing where m's salon is has a different pitch than the eave over the entrance so it has to be a longer slant. It drove the architect crazy but he finally got it worked out, and now it was Suzuki-san's job to bring it together. Which he did.

raising the beam over the study

clear, hot, but a cool breeze

It was still raining this morning when we got a call at 7:30 from the site foreman saying they were going ahead with raising the frame. He said it looked like it was going to stop raining, and though the forecast called for rain again later, he said the weather for the days ahead looked equally shakey, so they might as well go for it. By the time we got down there at 10:20 with some riceballs and tea for the crew, this is what we saw: most of the posts and cross beams for the first floor were in place.

Over the past few days, they'd been doing the preparations: laying a layer of plastic dividers over the concrete that lets air flow between the foundation and the house itself, and then laying the horizontal beams on top of that, bolting them to the concrete and burning them with a butane torch. This is supposed to ward off termites and prevent rot. I'll let you know how it works in 10 or 20 years or so.

By the time we left a little after four, most of the framing had been done, and they were getting ready to start on the roof, since once they get the rough roofing down and waterproofed, they don't have to worry about rain delays much. M, m and I were all sunburned, since it turned out to be a beauty of a day, with a nice breeze off the sea. I had a great day, climbing all over the scaffolding and watching this event take place. None of the carpenters talked much, but there's no loafing, no wasted moments, no overlapping of jobs. It's like watching a well-oiled machine in action. The foreman had to yell at them at three to stop working for the snack break. More than once, and he finally had to threaten a few of them.

We found out from the foreman that he had to unload all of this lumber yesterday with no forklift, no crane, nothing. He and another foreman from the same contractor (and a reluctant truck driver) had to carry all this from the truck to the site. It's not that far, but it is a huge amount of wood, and every time a car came down the one-way road, they'd have to re-attach the sides of the truck bed and drive it around the block. He was laughing about it. How it took six or seven hours. How he conned the other foreman into the job. How pissed the other foreman was.

rain turning to cloudy

The weather is clearing (as much as it does during rainy season), and the rain may stop in time tomorrow morning for the frame raising. Y called us and said that since next week is just as iffy--clouds and scattered rain--they're going to try to get it done tomorrow. We're meant to get a call by 7:00am, to tell us whether to head out for the site--or not. If it clears--or at least is not raining--they should get the frame of the first floor done by 10:30. The second floor and the roof cover, and all the various other things, should be done by the end of the day.

Above is the schematic for the horizontal framing of the ceiling level of the first floor. We have one of these pages for each level of the frame, as well as the side view. All of the joinery has been pre-cut, so it has to be put together like a giant puzzle--full-size tinker toys, only more precise.

Our driveway isn't large enough for a crane, so lifting the heavy hari horizontal beams to set them on top of the vertical hashira will have to be done by pure manpower. Not an easy task with high ceilings and large beams. One of the mothers at m's daycare center told me that she used to date a carpenter ("Totally stupid at figures when it came to paying a bill, but he could do all the wood measuring in his head," she said.) She said her ex-boyfriend told her the master carpenters were judged by how many people would come for the frame raising, and the good ones would have everyone dropping by to lend a hand: the plasterers, electricians, plumbers . . . everyone. If only a few people showed up, then it was accepted that the young apprentices would slowly drift away over time, looking for another mentor.

Ain't life a bitch.

and the living is easy

It's July and the swimming season is officially on, but you wouldn't know it by the cloudy, wet week that we've just been through. It's threatening to postpone the Saturday frame raising, so I thought I'd try to let some sunshine through by posting this magazine cover from 1907. It doesn't give the location, but I'll be damned if it couldn't pass for the view from the rocks at the end of our beach looking east.