Our biggest renovation mistake

Wasn't what I thought it was

November 2024

The sound of a car slowing caused me to turn my head to the street. There was not one car though, but two. Since the plumber was parked at the front of the Prayer House Shujin directed the first car to go down the street a little. The other car followed. Men started piling out of both cars. I recognised the builder, but who were all the others??

As the builder and his men neared the Prayer House he turned to the men accompanying him and said in Japanese, “This is a wild building site. Be careful where you step.”

There was a house under construction next door to us. It was the neatest, cleanest building site you’d ever seen. Unless you live/d in Japan, that is, and then it was just standard. Each tradesman cleaned up after himself, leaving no mess behind. Even though under construction, the place just looked so neat and orderly!

And here was our building site. Not just under construction, but demolition also! Partway through, half-demolished, some places half built, some not yet. Piles of rubble outside, and inside, piles of timber that have to be stepped over threatening a trip hazard, some floor removed with the need to step down onto bare dirt. More trip hazards.

The builder led the men inside, across weak floor, over timber, down onto bare dirt and into the bathroom. The gutted, no floors but bare dirt, and half-built walls, bathroom.

It turned out, Shujin had phoned him. Shujin had arranged for the plumber to come do some work, and when had turned up that morning, Shujin realised that it would be beneficial for the builder to speak with the plumber. So he phoned him and invited him to come.

A few short hours later come he did. With the whole crew!!

Once again, the builder was apologising to his men, in Japanese, “Sorry once again for the short notice, but I do thank you for dropping everything in order to be here.”

Not once did he bad-mouth Shujin, but continued apologising, when it was really Shujin who should be the one apologising!

The builder and plumber discussed what builders and plumbers needed to discuss and when it was all sorted, the builder talked with Shujin.

“I want to help you realise your dreams. I grew up in Tokyo and never considered leaving. I loved the city. But after I married, life took us to the countryside and there I raised my children, on a spacious land much like yours, with trees all around. I don’t regret it for a second. I want to help you live your dream.

And once I’m finished this job I don’t want our relationship to be over. I want to keep in touch.”

The kindness and goodness of the builder blew me away. God really did provide the right builder for us.

With the meeting complete, the builder and his crew left, the plumber continued on his with his plumbing job and Shujin and I were left to work around him.

We needed to remove the ceiling from a part of the bathroom that didn’t get demolished, as well as the plaster-cement that was lining the walls. Shujin pulled down the plaster board from the ceiling and wooden frame that was holding it together, and I was left to remove the plaster-cement from the walls and then sort and clean up the mess.

In that moment, I realised that our biggest mistake thus far with all this renovating, was not putting down ground sheets! What a disaster!! No. it was taking up the floor first, and then demolishing walls and ceilings!

It we didn’t remove the floor we wouldn’t need ground sheets, it would be easy to pick up the rubble, but when it fell on the bare dirt, it was a nightmare.

“Let’s just leave this under the new floor,” I suggested to Shujin as I was trying to pick up the small pieces of plaster-come-cement that I had just pulled off the wall. “It’s not flammable, and I don’t care if it’s under my floors!” It was mixed with shards of wood from a wall that had been demolished but not properly cleaned up.

“And these little pieces of wood will decompose eventually!”

“No, we should pick it all up,” said Shujin, “leaving that sort of rubble will just be home for vermin.”

Say no more!!

But he did.

“And the little pieces of wood might attract termites. It might be like chips to them!”

“I’d be very happy for them to come and eat these ‘chips’!” I retorted! “Just so long as they left the rest of the house alone!!!”

While I wallowed in self-pity about the tedious cleaning jobs I had to do and chiding myself for not being forwarding thinking enough to at least put down a ground sheet, Shujin had made a realisation of his own.

“I’ve made a really terrible mistake,” his voice serious, I waited to hear what could be worse than not using ground-sheets.

“The glass doors I ordered for the living room, they aren’t external doors. They are internal glass doors. We can’t use them.” He had come to the realisation after having talked with the builder.

My mind raced. Internal glass doors? I thought of Okasan’s house. On several of the windows an extra, internal window had been installed in front of the old wooden-framed window. This gave better insulation and was a common option for people who had old houses and didn’t want to completely replace an entire window.

But it was glass! Couldn’t we just use them?

But they weren’t double-glazed, and the glass wasn’t made to withstand external elements…

“They are custom-made,” Shujin continued, “to the specifications I gave. I phoned the glass shop. They’ve already started making them. I can’t cancel the order and we can’t return them. We’re going to be stuck with 4 sliding glass doors that we can’t even use!”

Yes, this was by far our biggest, and most costly, mistake yet.

Bugger.

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