An old picture of an old house, that will get a new look...
I mentioned in a previous post that we might start renovations at the Ajishima Share House soon. Well, that happened sooner rather than later. The big day came earlier this week, when I had some free time due to some hurricanes blowing through. I would have been working outside otherwise, so this was a nice respite.
The whole house needs serious attention, but we decided the first place to start would be a place that will get some serious use over the years...the toilet! As you will see, the toilet space was seriously cramped, as in I could not even sit down without employing some acrobatics I didn't even know I had in my repertoire!
So...the walls had to go to make it all more comfortably sized. I started by busting out the cupboard.
The whole house needs serious attention, but we decided the first place to start would be a place that will get some serious use over the years...the toilet! As you will see, the toilet space was seriously cramped, as in I could not even sit down without employing some acrobatics I didn't even know I had in my repertoire!
So...the walls had to go to make it all more comfortably sized. I started by busting out the cupboard.
This appears to be a perfectly normal, albeit old and literally moldy, Japanese style cupboard, but it had to go for one very important reason: the toilet is only accessible through the kitchen! This is one of the most disgusting things I could imagine (up until this point (Spoiler Alert!)), not to mention the fact that our toilet is actually an indoor outhouse. This means it is a pit toilet right next to where food is prepared. To remedy this and to add more floor space, we will wall off the original door and move the entrance to the other room and have it go through the space where the cupboard once was.
Out with the old and in with the...well we don't actually know yet! We have a vision in mind for the renovations but no set plan. We are kind of making it up as we go along, because we never know what we are going to find once we start opening up walls and floors and ceilings and stuff (SPOILER ALERT!!! It's insane what we find!!!)
 Before |  During |  After...we win the lottery! |
Yes, that is a urinal on the left. Yesser, it is wrapped in plastic. And yessest, it has tape in the shape of a face on it. Moving on...
Let's see how I smash the walls out...in three videos conveniently presented below...
(Warning: I haven't figured out how to wear my camera and work and not give people epilepsy yet, plus I cannot edit the videos because my computer is not cool enough, so, what you see is what you get!)
Let's see how I smash the walls out...in three videos conveniently presented below...
(Warning: I haven't figured out how to wear my camera and work and not give people epilepsy yet, plus I cannot edit the videos because my computer is not cool enough, so, what you see is what you get!)
This went on for a couple days and I finally got all of those pesky walls down. I haven't taken the final layer of plywood from between the cupboard and the bathroom out yet because that is the only thing keeping the dust cloud in the bathroom and out of the rest of the house.
And to answer your question, yes, that is a piece of plywood over the window. I was afraid I would smash it with my hammer or an errant airborne tile or mortar chip, so I decided to take it out to be safe. So, when I was pulling the window pane out it got stuck and I pulled too hard and it shattered. And the frame broke. And I am sure I cursed a little bit. Go figure! Maybe, I will just wall it in too...not sure yet.
At this point, we are at an impasse and stuck at the "During" phase in the picture above.
This is because of one singular, insanely absurd point. Remember the spoiler alerts from before? Well, the old style of toilets in Japan were just outhouses or pit toilets. Then, at a dark point in human history, someone decided to move the outhouse indoors. It is still a hole in the ground with a seat above it, but now it is enclosed within the living space negating a cold/wet/nighttime walk outside to go to the bathroom. However the smell is atrocious and it permeates every part of the house, not just the bathroom. But that is not even the worst part.
I would expect that the pit toilet would be essentially a concrete cube, six solid sides with a hole on top for a commode (and an access hatch outside for the "honeysucker" truck to remove the...ahem..."honey"). But wow oh wow, was I ever wrong!!! I actually can't see the concrete walls, but because I can see the foundation from outside the house itself and because the "honey" is not flowing over into the street, I can only assume that there are walls of some kind. I have no idea about the floor of the pit toilet and I NEVER EVER EVER want to find out (because it means getting in the pit and spelunking around a bunch of ancient "honey").
So, I have, in a round about way, which includes much speculation and sticking my fingers in my ears while yelling "la, la, la, I can't hear you," accounted for five of the six sides of the "honey" containment unit that is our pit toilet. The absolute shocker on top of all of this so far, is that there actually is nothing on top of any of this at all. That is, there is no cap, cover or upper part of the pit. The bathroom floor is somehow floating over the pit and the side walls of the pit just end, they do not connect to the bathroom floor and therefore do not enclose the pit. So the gases and pure evil from the pit is free to roam the crawl space that runs under the whole house. None of the floors are sealed anywhere in the house which explains why it stinks on the opposite side of the house at all times.
I discovered this when I broke out the earthen walls, only to be smacked in the face by a stench somehow worse than what emanates from the commode itself. The bamboo lattice that supported the earthen walls extended through the plane of the floor and once it was removed there was a huge gap. Only then could I see what hell lay beneath me, and before me.
Now, I have to fix this. We have a few options. As you might have noticed in the pictures above, I left the hideous pink tile floors in place for this reason. If I remove them, there is nothing over the pit at all. Plus, the floors are at different levels. If you count the cupboard space which will become the new entrance, there are five different floor levels here (not to mention three to five different ceiling heights depending on how you crook your neck when you look up!) and there is no easy fix for that.
The two options as we see them now are:
1) Crawl under the house and build up the pit walls with cinder blocks and mortar until it reaches the existing bathroom floor and then seal the crap out of every nook and cranny with silicone caulk and pray I don't asphixiate while I'm down there;
2) Break out and remove the tile floors and then pour a concrete slab over the pit as the pit's ceiling and the new bathroom floor.
The first choice entails leveling out the floors by building the rest up to the height of the highest floor, which means stepping up, and therefore limiting accessibility for the older folks on the island who will make use of the Share House. The second choice involves a skill set that I do not posses, and therefore we would have to hire it out, and there is no funding for such a thing right now, however, we would have a nice level floor throughout the room.
I am not sure of how we will proceed, but I am sure of one thing: whoever built this infernal pit toilet is full of shit!
This is a huge dilemma, but one we will certainly overcome. We made the decision to buy the Share House knowing full well that we would always have a pit toilet, because there is no space for a septic tank as the footprint of the house is basically the same as the shape of the land it sits on and we are walled in on two sides by retaining walls for the neighbors who live uphill and have streets directly on the other two sides. There are commodes that can be retrofitted over pit toilets that have flaps and valves to keep the stench at bay, and we have used them before at other establishments, including restaurants, and they work wonders.
So, at least we know what the future looks like, and more importantly, smells like: it smells like NOTHING! Now it's just a matter of figuring out the next step. I just hope I don't step in anything funky along the way...
And to answer your question, yes, that is a piece of plywood over the window. I was afraid I would smash it with my hammer or an errant airborne tile or mortar chip, so I decided to take it out to be safe. So, when I was pulling the window pane out it got stuck and I pulled too hard and it shattered. And the frame broke. And I am sure I cursed a little bit. Go figure! Maybe, I will just wall it in too...not sure yet.
At this point, we are at an impasse and stuck at the "During" phase in the picture above.
This is because of one singular, insanely absurd point. Remember the spoiler alerts from before? Well, the old style of toilets in Japan were just outhouses or pit toilets. Then, at a dark point in human history, someone decided to move the outhouse indoors. It is still a hole in the ground with a seat above it, but now it is enclosed within the living space negating a cold/wet/nighttime walk outside to go to the bathroom. However the smell is atrocious and it permeates every part of the house, not just the bathroom. But that is not even the worst part.
I would expect that the pit toilet would be essentially a concrete cube, six solid sides with a hole on top for a commode (and an access hatch outside for the "honeysucker" truck to remove the...ahem..."honey"). But wow oh wow, was I ever wrong!!! I actually can't see the concrete walls, but because I can see the foundation from outside the house itself and because the "honey" is not flowing over into the street, I can only assume that there are walls of some kind. I have no idea about the floor of the pit toilet and I NEVER EVER EVER want to find out (because it means getting in the pit and spelunking around a bunch of ancient "honey").
So, I have, in a round about way, which includes much speculation and sticking my fingers in my ears while yelling "la, la, la, I can't hear you," accounted for five of the six sides of the "honey" containment unit that is our pit toilet. The absolute shocker on top of all of this so far, is that there actually is nothing on top of any of this at all. That is, there is no cap, cover or upper part of the pit. The bathroom floor is somehow floating over the pit and the side walls of the pit just end, they do not connect to the bathroom floor and therefore do not enclose the pit. So the gases and pure evil from the pit is free to roam the crawl space that runs under the whole house. None of the floors are sealed anywhere in the house which explains why it stinks on the opposite side of the house at all times.
I discovered this when I broke out the earthen walls, only to be smacked in the face by a stench somehow worse than what emanates from the commode itself. The bamboo lattice that supported the earthen walls extended through the plane of the floor and once it was removed there was a huge gap. Only then could I see what hell lay beneath me, and before me.
Now, I have to fix this. We have a few options. As you might have noticed in the pictures above, I left the hideous pink tile floors in place for this reason. If I remove them, there is nothing over the pit at all. Plus, the floors are at different levels. If you count the cupboard space which will become the new entrance, there are five different floor levels here (not to mention three to five different ceiling heights depending on how you crook your neck when you look up!) and there is no easy fix for that.
The two options as we see them now are:
1) Crawl under the house and build up the pit walls with cinder blocks and mortar until it reaches the existing bathroom floor and then seal the crap out of every nook and cranny with silicone caulk and pray I don't asphixiate while I'm down there;
2) Break out and remove the tile floors and then pour a concrete slab over the pit as the pit's ceiling and the new bathroom floor.
The first choice entails leveling out the floors by building the rest up to the height of the highest floor, which means stepping up, and therefore limiting accessibility for the older folks on the island who will make use of the Share House. The second choice involves a skill set that I do not posses, and therefore we would have to hire it out, and there is no funding for such a thing right now, however, we would have a nice level floor throughout the room.
I am not sure of how we will proceed, but I am sure of one thing: whoever built this infernal pit toilet is full of shit!
This is a huge dilemma, but one we will certainly overcome. We made the decision to buy the Share House knowing full well that we would always have a pit toilet, because there is no space for a septic tank as the footprint of the house is basically the same as the shape of the land it sits on and we are walled in on two sides by retaining walls for the neighbors who live uphill and have streets directly on the other two sides. There are commodes that can be retrofitted over pit toilets that have flaps and valves to keep the stench at bay, and we have used them before at other establishments, including restaurants, and they work wonders.
So, at least we know what the future looks like, and more importantly, smells like: it smells like NOTHING! Now it's just a matter of figuring out the next step. I just hope I don't step in anything funky along the way...
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