Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Chapter 8- INAX showroom part 3 - Return of the Architect

It’s really strange once you’ve gone to a particular showroom enough times you actually know where every thing is and it starts actually feeling like home…. This past Sunday we went on our third visit but this time with our Secret Sakamoto Weapon.

So we needed to confirm a few things about the kitchen as some of the storage units will be built custom.Sakamoto-san checked if we could source some of the door panels directly from Inax. So far the answer is that the type of wood finish is "no problem". But the type of handle it will come with needs to be verified. We want the same integrated carved handles (so it looks like solid piece of wood). We also needed to confirm the range hood and we’re glad we did since one particular display was way too low. You’d have to be about 5 foot tall to cook without hitting your head against it. But in the end it checked out. We should be able to adjust the height.

Another important note is that we got our first draft estimate and it’s a bit higher than we expected, but the builder probably priced in the fact that we would negotiate it down. In any case, we’ve decided to scale down the bathroom as the custom built-ins are EXPENSIVE. Below are some sample of the materials of the bathroom (right side- Sandstone Panel and Dark Grey Tiling) and washroom (left side-Zebra wood finish with pearly white double sinks and Sea-Blue-Green tiling). The overall feel will be of warmth and coolness.

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So moral of the story here is definitely third time is a charm especially if you go with your architect. I think we’ll be saving mucho dinero going with a high-grade system kitchen with light customization.

Below is was our reference point for the bathroom.

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2 comments:

  1. Eric,

    Thanks for sharing your building adventure!! I am really enjoying following your journey-- a bit envious as I love design and architecture and would love to have been involved in building our current home (we are over on Inokashira koen dori near the tamagawa josui canal). We bought second hand and loved the architecture, but it would have been fun to do it ourselves. What a creative process!

    Where are you building? Over by your current place?

    Please come join us in September for the Second Sunday gathering at sankaku koen if you are not too exhausted.

    Best,
    Lisa (Akira, Lilia and Will)

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