Kitchen, bathroom, toilets
Yesterday we went to the TOTO showroom with our architect. It went much better than I thought it would! I thought Akinori and I would be signing divorce papers before we left, but we managed to leave without ever raising our voices at each other and there was only a few hours of silence afterward. I left happy anyway, and that's the most important thing! Am I right?
Our architect allotted about 4.2 million yen for the kitchen (including dishwasher, IH stove top, and built-in oven), bathroom, 2nd floor shower, and 2 toilets, and then sent off to TOTO for an estimate which came back nearly 1 million yen less than what he budgeted, which was really awesome news. With an extra 1 million yen in the budget there's a lot we can do. So yesterday when we went to the showroom and had a look at things there were a few items we upgraded, but I think all in all, the upgrades only add up to maybe 200,000 yen at most. There are a few upgrades I'm going to go back and undo. Like Akinori wants wire shelves in the bathroom instead of plastic resin. They are stainless steel, but I'm afraid in a few years they are going to look like shit. They have some nice looking plastic resin ones that can be pulled out and cleaned as well and they are only a few thousand yen more expensive rather than the ¥20,000 more expensive wire shelves. We also upgraded the walls of the bathroom so instead of plain white or off-white they will be fake dark wood.
I think the most expensive upgrade was to the kitchen counter/island and getting the deeper one that offers more prep/storage space. But the different is about ¥100,000 and well worth it I think. Our clever, clever architect already budgeted for the more expensive IH stove top, bigger oven, and bigger dishwasher I wanted. I was so relieved to see that. One more expensive upgrade was the first floor toilet. The 2nd floor toilet needs an attached tank because it's harder to get good water pressure on the 2nd floor of a building and the toilets with attached tanks are cheaper than the more recent tankless toilets, but the tankless toilet also has some features automatically built-in that you have to pay extra for in the toilets with tanks. So we got a tankless toilet for the 1st floor and I added an automatic seat lowering function on the toilet for the 2nd floor. I hate walking into a toilet that has the seat up and I can't count on the kids to ever remember to put the seat down so now I don't have to worry about it!
It feels kind of amazing to have that mostly sorted already! I can't believe how quickly things are moving along. Now Akinori just has to finish cleaning up the area where the house will be built as there is a whole mess of his work stuff there, including two enormous roofed shelving units with tons of lumber and other tools and a lot of my FIL's bonsai trees and other plants. The carpenter won't be ready to start until late October though so he basically has until early August to do that. Knowing him though, he won't start until August 1.
I have to give the bank a call and go in to meet the new loan officer who has taken over our account since the one we were working with before got transferred and we need to get two buildings on FIL's land officially documented. There is a small storehouse and a bathhouse that have to be documented or the bank won't lend us the money. So I need to get onto that ASAP. I'm going away again this weekend for the AFWJ convention and then I don't have anymore plans to go anywhere, so I think once I'm totally finished traveling I will feel more capable of getting stuff done.
Our architect allotted about 4.2 million yen for the kitchen (including dishwasher, IH stove top, and built-in oven), bathroom, 2nd floor shower, and 2 toilets, and then sent off to TOTO for an estimate which came back nearly 1 million yen less than what he budgeted, which was really awesome news. With an extra 1 million yen in the budget there's a lot we can do. So yesterday when we went to the showroom and had a look at things there were a few items we upgraded, but I think all in all, the upgrades only add up to maybe 200,000 yen at most. There are a few upgrades I'm going to go back and undo. Like Akinori wants wire shelves in the bathroom instead of plastic resin. They are stainless steel, but I'm afraid in a few years they are going to look like shit. They have some nice looking plastic resin ones that can be pulled out and cleaned as well and they are only a few thousand yen more expensive rather than the ¥20,000 more expensive wire shelves. We also upgraded the walls of the bathroom so instead of plain white or off-white they will be fake dark wood.
I think the most expensive upgrade was to the kitchen counter/island and getting the deeper one that offers more prep/storage space. But the different is about ¥100,000 and well worth it I think. Our clever, clever architect already budgeted for the more expensive IH stove top, bigger oven, and bigger dishwasher I wanted. I was so relieved to see that. One more expensive upgrade was the first floor toilet. The 2nd floor toilet needs an attached tank because it's harder to get good water pressure on the 2nd floor of a building and the toilets with attached tanks are cheaper than the more recent tankless toilets, but the tankless toilet also has some features automatically built-in that you have to pay extra for in the toilets with tanks. So we got a tankless toilet for the 1st floor and I added an automatic seat lowering function on the toilet for the 2nd floor. I hate walking into a toilet that has the seat up and I can't count on the kids to ever remember to put the seat down so now I don't have to worry about it!
It feels kind of amazing to have that mostly sorted already! I can't believe how quickly things are moving along. Now Akinori just has to finish cleaning up the area where the house will be built as there is a whole mess of his work stuff there, including two enormous roofed shelving units with tons of lumber and other tools and a lot of my FIL's bonsai trees and other plants. The carpenter won't be ready to start until late October though so he basically has until early August to do that. Knowing him though, he won't start until August 1.
I have to give the bank a call and go in to meet the new loan officer who has taken over our account since the one we were working with before got transferred and we need to get two buildings on FIL's land officially documented. There is a small storehouse and a bathhouse that have to be documented or the bank won't lend us the money. So I need to get onto that ASAP. I'm going away again this weekend for the AFWJ convention and then I don't have anymore plans to go anywhere, so I think once I'm totally finished traveling I will feel more capable of getting stuff done.
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