After much ado, and a ton of dirt, the major renovation is now finally done; looks like a totally different place. Interesting; after 6 weeks of mere inches of progress, 3 days of big renovation and the game is totally changed. We’re now walking on beautiful wood floors, sitting under our kototsu on our new raised tatami space and sliding open our new door. Of course we aren’t finished yet, but I guess you could say the end is in sight. Speaking of, we decided to move back “the end” 5 days till March 4th (just happens to be my birthday). We wanted a few more days to make everything perfect and just to reduce the stress load-plus everyday births at least 3 new problems.
We were super lucky to find Kawanaka san, our super amazing contractor. He just really helped us with everything, we probably called him over 20 times just with general questions about things that we wanted to improve in the building. We also had 2 signs put in with our logo on it, which obviously makes the whole endeavor feel real. It’s definitely going to be interesting to actually “run” a guesthouse, after spending 2 months preparing for it-kinda easy to lose sight on what this is all about.
In addition to all this, we had a great friend come and go, Mr Derek Patenaude from the great republic of Korea (via Canada). Poor bastard not only had to undergo freezing weather for 6 days in a row-complete with snow, he was also subjected to scrubbing walls and cutting out cushion flooring in the kitchen. Only a true friend would spend a precious vacation to work on a friends construction project…here’s to you brother!! We did get in a couple of good hikes and some damn fine okonomiyaki!!
We also had a visit from a group of people involved with permaculture in Japan. We were able to work out a trade for accommodation!
It has been a wild ride this last 2 weeks or so, both ourselves and the building have undergone much change. Now more than ever we realize how important our friends and family have been in helping us get this whole thing underway-we really feel lucky to be surrounded (both physically and mentally) by people who care and support us. Anytime a challenge appears, we quickly have a solution present itself, and it is usually from a member of our family or our friends.