The kitchen eventually had to go...

What I learned today.

With almost 50 years the house is not that old but by dismantling the rotten parts we can see how houses were build in Japan at that time. One remarkable thing is that they relied much more on local materials. By  tearing down the walls we found clay and bamboos being used inside the walls. And local wood was used for the structure. One can argue about the efficiency of this materials but many of them are still in good conditions. Looking at the recommendations from our carpenter we find those materials replaced by plastics and metal. Maybe purchased and pre-processed in China and then finally adjusted, coated etc. in Japan. All compound materials which makes any recycling impossible. Why did they abandon those old methods? Comfort? Price? What if they would have kept developing the use of organic local materials with modern tools and methods? Are we just looking for the quick gains, the easy scalability? It seems so.

The kitchen before:

And 30 min later:

 The kitchen was disassembled in less than 20 minutes. Then came the walls and the floor. 

The electric wiring looks surprisingly good. 

Kitchen, walls and floor gone. 

The walls reveal some interesting construction technique. 

Great teamwork Bjarne!

Another memorable day of the Futtsu Journey.