Second Home Rebar Work

At our Second Home, the boys are hard at `er working on the rebar for the foundation. I have never, in a rather varied career in construction, seen such detailed rebar work. Our site supervisor actually busts out an electronic micrometer and measures the space between bars. I am not kidding, it blows my western mind. I was talking to a friend of mine about it, saying that rebar workers I know back home would be fired for doing such nice work since it takes a little bit longer. His response was these workers live with the work they have done everyday for the rest of their lives, and they wouldn`t be able to sleep knowing they performed any less than perfectly.
The floor of the second story will actually sit just a bit higher than the height of the columns in the first shot. That puts it just a tad higher than the existing retaining wall. After that, there is still two more stories to go, putting the fourth floor way up there. Have a look at the pictures from the First Homes roof, then add in the difference of elevation in the land plus one more story, and lets imagine the view from the fourth floor. I predict it should be nothing less than spectacular.
Furano, Hokkaido, Japan. Ski, snowboard, enjoy.
www.furanorealestate.jp

First Home Insulation/Windows

Up at our first home things have been moving right along since the last blog entry. Exterior insulation has been affixed, and all doors and windows (aside from front entrance door) have been installed. The electricians are also on the scene installing boxes and running wires. And, the roofers came out and applied the waterproof coating to the roof.
The lead carpenter on the job, Takada-san, makes a brief appearance as he works on the framing that will hold the actual floor that will be walked on, which ends up being above the concrete foundation. This style doesn`t make a whole lot of sense to me other than keeping the plumbing and electrical out of the concrete foundation. In the shot of the family room, you will see a pile of plastic tubing that kind of looks like a giant worm. The worm actually unravels across the whole floor and keeps the concrete and wood dry as the house is sided and roofed.
Drywall will be delivered to the jobs site tomorrow, and I promised the carpenters I would help them stock it in the various rooms. Uh oh, here comes that sore back again. I`d better go make my appointment with Abe-san (the local chiropractor) now!
I received requests to mix up the music a bit, so I went with a deep roots reggae vibe for this bit. I`m always open to requests, and if I don`t have something, I`m sure I can find it.
Furano, Hokkaido, Japan. Ski, snowboard, enjoy.
www.furanorealestate.jp

Second Home Start of Rebar Work

After a ridiculously long wait (by Japan standards anyway), we finally have all permitting in hand and are ready to begin full operations up at the site. The permit book ended up being 800 pages long and would probably take me the rest of my life to read in any detail. The boys poured about 15cm of concrete outlining where the foundation will sit, and have begun to erect scaffold and tie the rebar mats and columns. There is a whole lot of work to go, but it`s going to be nice to finally see steady progress.
Furano, Hokkaido, Japan. Ski, snowboard, enjoy.
www.furanorealestate.jp

First Home Top of Roof

I was just up at the home last night, and this is kind of a nice shot of sunset I thought. This is taken from the roof of the home. I didn`t have time to go one story down to the bedroom, but it doesn`t change much except for the power lines running right through the middle. What to do, what to do.
This is a shot of what the city (er, town) lights look like at night. Not nearly like Tokyo, but for a town of 25,000, still beautiful.
This is another shot from the roof, but shows a lot of crows heading south. I asked one of the carpenters I was with whether or not they actually were heading south, but he had no clue. He kind of thinks he sees them around all winter. I`m not 100% sure what they do either.
This is how we do it in Japan. 6:30, pitch black, minus 1 degree Celsius and still going for it.
Furano, Hokkaido, Japan. Ski, snowboard, enjoy.
www.furanorealestate.jp

First Home Second Floor Framing

First things first. The background noise in this footage was loud enough, so I didn`t add music to this one. The lovely highs of 2 stroke motors and diamond blades sawing through concrete combined with the mids and bass of pounding hammers was good enough.
This is an overall look at the interior of the building. The first shot is taken from where the fireplace will sit and moves across the family room to the lofted ceiling. The second shot looks back towards the dining area and out the back doors. Next, we move up stairs and stand in the study nook looking back down the vault and pan across the hallway ending at the door to the veranda. The next shots all move around the veranda.
Furano, Hokkaido, Japan. Ski, snowboard, enjoy.
www.furanorealestate.jp

First Home Framing

The first floor walls and second story floor framing are complete at Home One. After the prefabbed walls are dropped at the site, a portable crane drives to the job and lifts everything into place. This time around, the completed garage and overhead power lines provided a bit of a challenge for the crane driver. Yet, as always, the Japanese pulled for the team and good progress is being made. Nobody even got electrocuted!
Furano, Hokkaido, Japan. Ski, snowboard, enjoy.
www.furanorealestate.jp

First Home Garage Wall Pour

We had a little break in the weather today, and were finally able to pour the concrete walls that will make up the garage of the home today. Once the wooden forms are taken off, the concrete that is contained within them (with hopefully only a small amount of grinding and polishing) will create the exterior finish of the garage. It`s a fairly labor intensive process, but once complete, gives a building a sleek, modern appearance.
The carpenters will come in tomorrow to bolt 4x4`s to the concrete slab which will hold the floor joists. It`s a different style of construction than I`m used to but does make sense. Rather than bury the plumbing and electrical in the concrete slab, everything runs through the void created by raising the actual floor you walk on above the concrete slab. We lost a couple days to rain, and the walls are now scheduled to arrive at the job next week Monday.
Furano, Hokkaido, Japan. Ski, snowboard, enjoy.
www.furanorealestate.jp

First Home Garage Form Work

Again, foreboding rain in the works tomorrow, so our garage wall concrete pour is uncertain. But, the form and steel work is pretty much complete and ready to go. Looking forward to being covered in concrete on more time.
Furano, Hokkaido, Japan. Ski, snowboard, enjoy.
www.furanorealestate.jp

Second Home Dig Complette

Here is the completed dig up at Furano-jo(castle). It`s hard to imagine what the place will actually be like when completed, but standing in that ditch is quite impressive. Obviously, the white lines represent the layout of the footings, with the larger squares indicating where steel pillars will sit. The boys will pour about 15cm of concrete within the white lines, then start the forms for the more substantial footings that the building will actually sit on. Since the dig is below the footings of the existing retaining walls, notice the steel piles driven about 5 meters deep to hold the walls from sliding.
Furano, Hokkaido, Japan. Ski, snowboard, enjoy.
www.furanorealestate.jp

Second Home Foundation Dig

Over at the Second Home, we`ve begun to dig the cavernous pits that will house the foundation the building sits on. There are no `Hito-bashira` planned for this home!:) A quick Google search of `Hito-bashira` will confirm the ancient Japanese tradition of placing a living human in the recesses of a building`s foundation and, of course, leaving him there forever. Obviously, the Japanese don`t actually perform this ritual anymore. The coolest thing I have seen them do though, is after performing the traditional ground breaking ceremony, the wooden stakes that mark the four corners of the lot (and also represent the four points of a compass) are actually buried under the home`s foundation.
Still no permits here, but there is again talk of them being printed this week.
Furano, Hokkaido, Japan. Ski, snowboard, enjoy.
www.furanorealestate.jp

First Home Garage Wall Rebar Work

Yet another wet day in Furano, but still great progress up at the job site. The rebar workers were out in force today, tying the steel that will reinforce the concrete walls of the garage. True to steel worker (and cement finisher, for that matter) personality traits, the expletives were flying around the job site faster than I could even come close to understanding them. Quite a rough bunch. But hey, they can definitely slap up sticks of rebar. Rebar work should be done tomorrow, and if all goes well with the rest of the forming, mixers are scheduled for another pour on the 17th. The 2x4 walls are scheduled to arrive at the job site on the 18th.
Furano, Hokkaido, Japan. Ski, snowboard, enjoy.
www.furanorealestate.jp

First Home Garage Wall Form Work

Just got back from the job site now, and we`ve had great progress on the garage wall forming already. This will be the front of the home as you head into the garage. With the concrete garage and black siding, the home should have a nice presence in the neighborhood. Just need to trim that tree a wee little bit!
Here is the slab all finished up. That big rectangular hole in the front of the picture will be the `hori kotatsu`, or sunken dining area. The step down will be the rear porch.
This would be the view looking off right. Don`t make me chop those power lines!!
I am pretty much standing on what will be the level of the veranda floor, and this is the view looking off left.
Since the walls will be poured in place concrete, once the forms are removed, that`s it. The finish at that point will be `what you see is what you get`. Therefore, the boys brought out nice, new clean sheets of plywood. The white sheets affixed to the plywood will help to keep rough spots in the concrete further in control.
Furano, Hokkaido, Japan. Ski, snowboard, enjoy.
www.furanorealestate.jp

First Home Slab Pour

Last week Friday we poured the slab that our First Home will sit on. The day started off super misty and was foreboding rain, but the Shinto priest stopped by the job and asked the rain gods to go away. Nah, seriously, the day turned out to be beautiful and the job ended as planned without incident. Oh yeah, that`s me, the skinny white guy in the blue jumper with the spanky new helmet on. Haven`t slung concrete in a while. My back was actually quite sore Saturday morning!!
Furano, Hokkaido, Japan. Ski, snowboard, enjoy.
www.furanorealestate.jp

Second Home Grading

Over at Home #2, we are still waiting for permits. The boys have begun to cut the lot down to a more reasonable grade. At present, there is almost a meter and a half rise from the low side of the street to the middle of the lot. Bringing the whole lot down will provide an easier grade, and even though the driveway will be heated, cars will have less of a chance slipping on all that ice and snow.
Furano, Hokkaido, Japan. Ski, snowboard, enjoy.
www.furanorealestate.jp

First Home Scaffold and Rebar Work

At our first home, we began erecting scaffolding and finishing up the rebar work for the concrete pad. If it doesn`t rain tomorrow, we are scheduled to pour at 8:00am. If it is just lite rain there won`t be a problem, but heavy rain is not conducive to concrete pours.
Furano, Hokkaido, Japan. Ski, snowboard, enjoy.
www.furanorealestate.jp