It was in August I got information there was a thatched house roof in Inashiki-city, Ibaraki.
When I saw that house, I was so excited but it was abanded and almost impossible to renovate so I had nothing to do even though I was looking for an empty house for the guest house.
In November I went to Thailand to see my friend’s field and their new restaurant.
At that time my friend and her husband showed me so artistic restaurant that had renovated very well by themselves.
In addition, when I was in Germany many people had DIY spirit. I also renovated an old building with a lot of artists. It was really fun.
My friend from Thailand told me she might help me to renovate for 2 weeks so I thought it might be possible to renovate and use for the guesthouse.
But I have no knowledge about archtecture and so on like her hasband. I thought If there was somepne who was good at doing carpentery work and support me it might have been possible.
I have a friend who is an archtect, really curious and active elder woman.
As usual, I visited her cafe after coming back from Thailand to Japan.
Then I met a young girl who is studying thatched roof there.
She was really willing to renovate the thached roof house for her master’s thesis and knew other person related to thatched roof work.
She told a thatched-roof craftman about us and she visited here.
The craft man is a woman and pretty young age but she has been working as a thatched-roof craftman for 10 years.
It seemed there were so many great members related to thatched roof house, so I thought I could have renovated with them.
But problem is replacing thatched-roof is extremely expensive.
And the house has a heavy damage…
The graduate student said ” I can work with you! Currently I’m woking on my thesis so I want to write about the house. I’ve heard from the craftman, we need to cut bamboos soon it’s a good timing to do that. After few months banboos will absorve water and soaked bamboos are not possible to use for the roof.”
In front of the thatched-roof house,there are some bamboos. I know who is the owner of the land and asked him if I can cut bamboos. The ownder accepted willingly.
There is a guy who is good at doing carpenter work, so I asked him if he could cut bamboos when he had time. He replied to me. “OK, dayafter tomorrow I have day off. “
Then we started cut bamboos.
Another guy also helped me for 1 hour to cut bamboos.
It took for a few hours to cut bamboos and we got around 30 bamboos.
It was pretty hard work to cut bamboos but it was fun!
I was also heard we should get thatch. In this area, there is a large Japanese pampas grass field called “Kayaba” in Japanese.
Luckily I was introduced to a person who has been taking care of the Japanese pampas grass field and could talk to him.
Moreover, I met a guy who’s grandfather was a thatched-roof craftsman and his warehouse was not used anymore but they have some materials for the roof and provided me for free.
I got them and carried while getting great support from others.
So far it looked everything went super well, but the problem was occurred….
Thatched roof house Part 2 is here !
