Kitchen Remodel – 2

Continuing on with the kitchen remodel on our 120 year old Japanese home. The site looks pretty messy in these pictures, but that’s what you get when you’re trying to live in a space while renovating. Every morning and evening I would open and close the blue tarp which became the only barrier to the outside during this phase of the project. Blue sheet blues…

With the first of the new floor joists cut, it was time to fit it in place. Essentially installation required lifting the post on the left in the photo below while simultaneously pulling it to the left to allow the joist to be slid in. More specificially the post has to be flexed enough for the stub tenons on both ends of the joist to clear the posts. With each stub tenon at 30mm long that means overall the post has to be flexed 60 mm. I didn’t capture the process fully in the first photos here, but there are more photos later on in this post that illustrate the process. The floating tenon style joinery that I’m using here is really advantageous for reno work like this, for exactly the reason described above. Imagine if the joist had a integrated tenons, which would usually be at least 90 mm long on each end, then your ability to retrofit or renovate a structure becomes much more difficult.

Overall the joinery went together smoothly and the shoulders closed up well.

The other side also closed up well.

To fully lock the joint I used a heavy duty ratchet strap to pull the two posts tight to the joist, and from there I could install the floating tenon for the corner post connection. Since the run of floor joists ends at the corner post, the floating tenon needed to be locked to the post somehow. I considered a bunch of options and in the end went with a tusk tenon. Tusk tenons are incredibly strong, and it seemed like a good option for this situation because I didn’t need to remove any more material from the post itself, as I would have needed to do with a more common pegged tenon. It’s a bit hard to make out, but in the photo below you can see the peg for the tusk tenon installed flush to the outside face of the post.

The other half of the floating tenon used shachi-sen (trapezoidal keys) to secure the joint. The peg mortise for the tusk tenon was offset by 1.5-2mm so there’s a strong draw bore effect when the peg and shachi-sen go in. The slot for the floating tenon here is extra long since I had to slide the tenon in from this side of the joint. (the concrete wall on the other side of the post prevented me from inserting it from the other side).

The first joist was a trial run of sorts, since I wasn’t sure how much flexibility I would have when it came to moving the posts and acutally installing the joist. But since everything went smoothly I decided to continue on with the same type of joinery for the next series of connections. Starting with the mortises.

We also started laying out and cutting mortises for the nuki. Most of the wall had nuki previously, but this particular location was formerly a doorway into the old doma, and the nuki mortises were blind cut on one side. So essentially we just opened the mortises up on the opposite side as well to allow the nuki to run the full length of the wall.

Here’s the neighboring post for the second floor joist run, with mortise freshly cut. It’s still standing on a remnant of the old dodai (sill beam).

With a jack installed to temporarily lift the post we used a ratchet strap to pull the post open allowing us to slide the next joist into place.

This was as far as we could get the joint together by hand. The stub and collar tenons were just starting to engage, but the joint had about 10mm to go to fully close.

From there the other end could be swung into place, but before installation the floating tenon had to be installed.

For this round of work I had help from my friend Eric, who generously came out for a few weeks to lend a hand.

With the floating tenon installed we lifted the joist up, while simultaneously mating it with the floating tenon.

With the tenons partially engaged we released the ratchet strap that was pulling the post open, and brought it over to pull the joints closed. We also used a sledge hammer to help drive things closed, but the ratchet strap did most of the work.

Around this time we got a delivery of some cut granite foundation stones. These were sized and cut for putting under each post in place of the old rotted sill beam.

With the new joists and first stone in place things were starting to look pretty nice.

Before removing the ratchet strap we also pounded in the shachi-sen to fully lock the joint on both sides. It’s helpful to have two people when driving in the shachi-sen. With one person on each side, and hammering in unison, you can drive the wedges in nice and evenly.

Around this time we also installed the first window frame as well as some of the bamboo lattice work. As we worked section by section, I was able to focus on layout and cutting for the joists while Eric started work on the bamboo lattice among many other details.

That’s all for now, but there’s plenty more to go.

Thanks for reading.