Floor materials

The carpenters is putting piece of lumber on the floor. The material is a solid material of Cherry blossoms. Our customers, recently many people in Japan as well, prefer to the natural materials, for instant, oak, chestnut, cypress, pine, cedar and you name it.






You can see white pieces of tape which is a spacer that stands between the floor board that the carpenter prepared. It is a string basically used for packing. The solid material shrinks and expands because wood absorbs and desorbs moisture. This causes creaking sound of the floor. To reduce the sound, the spacer gives space that solid wood can move and reduces creaking.




The carpenters know the character of wood and make good use of their wisdom like the above mentioned matter. I can learn lots of things from them.

Insulator

This is the site of installation of insulation. I took the photo from inside of our home which we are building at present. Between the pillars and braces, we fill the glass wool up. This glass wool is made of fiber glass, reusing waste glass. In Japan, we usually use glass wool, in other way, rock wool, real wool, urethane form can be used. Its performance must meet the specification of evergy saving standard.

In other part, we install the 50mm foamed polystyrene board underneath the roof. The part of white sheet has water-proof and moisture-penetration capability.




These insulators keep our home cool and warm through the year. Privately, I prefer nature materials to artificial items. What do we have? Wool, cellulose, hemp ..... I want to find something else.

Spirit of a carpenter.

Here comes our carpenter. He has got justice, courage, courtesy and sincerity like Bushido. He is not talkative of the old school of craftsmen, he is still young though.






He is a capable carpenter, always tidy up a construction site and gives us many ideas.



He gave me a Belgian chocolate as my birthday present today. I am really proud of you, not because of the chocolate. We are so proud of your spirit, skills and attitude.

Construction site of prefabricated bath

This is a construction site of a prefabricated bath. We, Japanese call it as "Unit bath", it should be Japanese English.

Its design is quite simple, but little boring. Privately, I prefer the traditional wooden bath to this one, but most of the Japanese bath is prefabricated bath due to its cost.

The bath is almost assembled.