Definitely worth considering
Long-term readers may remember I bought an old flat last year (a ‘manshon’). We’d actually been renting it for a while and liked the place, liked the neighborhood, and as we bought it from a friend, we got a great price.
However, it is both 25 years old and has been through the big earthquakes in 2011. It needs a bit of TLC and there are a few things we wanted to do to it to make it even more pleasant to live in.
There is a fair amount of work, so I decided to do it slowly, piece by piece. I’m not at all handy, so will be farming all the work out to contractors. I figure we’ll probably get better deals (and better work done) by dealing with each job separately, getting quotes from a number of companies, and paying close attention to the work. I am guessing that if we rolled everything up into one giant job it’ll be much harder to keep track of and would probably cost more.
Here’s my rough plan (each step will be handled separately, as time and money allows):
- Make the house warmer (double/triple glazing, etc.)
- Ventilation (mechanical heat recovery)
- Remodel bathroom
- Remodel kitchen
- Lighting
- Wallpaper/interior design
We just completed stage 1, and I think my plan to space things out was a good one. If we were dealing with all six of the above at once right now, I would be completely overwhelmed.
This was a relatively simple job: install inner windows and a second, inner door to isolate the front door. In Japan the outside of manshons, including windows and doors, are commonly owned and it’s difficult to get permission to make changes -because of this the inner window is very common. Basically you install insulated windows inside the current windows, which stay in place. It’s a quick and relatively easy job to install the windows, which are made to measure and just need to be slotted into place.
I learned many things. The first was the importance of talking to and getting quotes from several companies. The range of quotes was incredible, with the most expensive being twice what we ended up paying. Talking to different companies is also useful as you can learn about what the job will entail, which makes it easier to negotiate and check work.
The second thing I learned is that it is vital to know what you are talking about and be very precise with what you are ordering. We ended up getting Lixil Inplus windows, and by talking to another company I learned that there are four types (from single pane to double pane funky glass). Going back to the company we eventually went with I discovered they had assumed we wanted the cheapest, whereas we actually wanted the highest quality (which were only slightly more expensive). I managed to get the contract changed before we signed it.
​We also got an interior door built. This is less common than the double glazing, so I had to really help the company figure out how to accomplish the job. We had two problems: they assumed we’d want the door to open to the left, while I wanted it to open to the right, and they decided to go with the medium size (doors come in three sizes here apparently!) while all the other doors in our flat are large. Fixing both of these required the building work to be rescheduled, although it was of course all done at their expense.
We’re also eligible for government subsidies, as shown on the form below. We should get 76,000 yen back at some point.
The whole thing took about six months and required a lot of back and forth. The company was fine and didn’t try to charge us more, but it’s been a fairly stressful experience trying to co-ordinate and renegotiate (and find time to be home to supervise the work).
Still, it’s finished now and the results seem very worth it. The flat is much warmer and more pleasant to be in, the noise from outside (we live on a main road) has almost disappeared, and we don’t need anywhere near as much heating as we used to. I’ll have to see what this does to our electric bills, but I’m expecting a significant reduction in both winter and summer.
With the subsidies the job cost just under 470,000 yen, so purely in terms of money I expect we’ll easily make it back within ten years, and the quality of life boost in the meantime is huge. Well worth it in my opinion and I’m really happy we did this. I also learned a lot, which should help with future stages 🙂
Anyone else have similar or different experiences with home improvements?
interesting post! I am curious about how you plan to install the mechanical heat recovery system in a japanese apartment.
also, what was your thought process when deciding between the double glaze windows and triple glazed windows? how did the math work out?
Hi JM
You’ll have to wait until the next post to see the MHRV post, but basically my friend Mark told me about a German product that seems to be suitable.
The double or triple glazing is basically you keep your existing windows and they add single or double pane glass inside them.
The price difference between the cheap single pane and the efficient double pane was negligible, so we went with the best model.
It’s good to see a detailed post about this. If we buy a flat, windows and an interior door are the first thing I would want to install.
I wonder if insulation on outside walls or on the floor/ceiling is an option in Japan. Depending on the season, our outside walls radiate a lot of cold or heat. It feels like this could be mitigated by a layer of insulation, but the cost would probably be prohibitive. It would be nice to not waste heat (or air conditioning), though.
Hi Jerry
Our manshon is basically a long concrete tube with other units on all four sides (left, right, above, below). Only the ends face the outside. I thought about insulating the walls, but the construction quality is good enough that it probably isn’t necessary.
There are different grades of manshon, from cheap rental ones to more expensive owner occupier ones. Ours was built just around the bubble time and is pretty high quality.
Just wondering, have you ever considered using the polystyrene uchimado stuff that’s sold at home centres? Or do you think it’s just a bunch of crock?
https://matome.naver.jp/odai/2137873688264229801
Hi BOH
Actually, we used to put bubblewrap on all the windows in winter. It makes a big difference, and is cheap. However, it looks horrible and is a pain to put up and take down.
We also found it really useful to hang thick sheets of plastic inside the front door (bought from DIY store) like the ones supermarkets have in their meat lockers. Also very effective and cheap, also annoying to go through every day and ugly.
The renovations we just did were a more expensive and effective version of these 🙂
Great post again, thanks.
We are thinking of a kitchen reform, so I am interested in your thoughts on that.
We reformed our kitchen a couple of years ago and we went through IKEA. They were having a cash-back campaign at that time which meant that we got enough vouchers to also renovate our washbasin area (now two sinks) at the same time. It was a bit of a hassle having to go in and plan the layout of the kitchen but after that was decided they had a contractor come and do the fittings and new wallpaper and flooring in both rooms.The guys did an excellent job and the total for the two rooms, including our top-of-the-range kitchen with western-sized dishwasher and oven, cost less than 1 million yen. If you choose a cheaper model and you’re willing to do the assembly yoursel f you can do it for much much cheaper.
On the other hand, we also got Tokyo Gas to come in to do an estimate for us. The woman came to do the measurements and never bothered to get back to us with an estimate! We decided not to waste any more time with them after that.
Thanks so much for the information. I hadn’t thought about IKEA and will check out the website. I also didn’t realize that they could arrange contractors – that is very useful to know and self-assembly is one of least favourite activities 😉 I’ll talk to my wife about IKEA and if we have questions, we might add another comment here. I suspect that some other folks may be interested, too. Thank you!
Hi Brian
Thanks! According to my rough plan (and our finances) we’ll get around to doing the kitchen in 2018 or 2019. I’ll write it up then 😉
I’ll probably be doing it before then, so I’ll share any useful info.
Would love any tips! I’ve never done any of this stuff before 🙂
Great info, and very timely for us – thanks, Ben! My question is about the inside-window additions. It’s not clear from your post, but these are removable, right? Otherwise, how does it work when you want to open a window?
Hi Marcos! Sorry that wasn’t clear: the inside windows are permanent (they have to be airtight after all), and they open just like normal windows do. Take another look at the photo at the top of the post, you can see the original windows on the outside and the new ones on the inside -each with their own lock.
I guess that is a welcome side effect too -increased home security 🙂
I was interested to hear that you thought separating the jobs would make it cheaper. My experience with reforming our apartment was the opposite. We bought an older place (85 sqaure metres) and decided to reform most of it before we moved in. We had a really great estate agent who went and got the estimates for us and managed to bargain the companies down as a whole package.We moved some walls, had a new bathroom and toilet fitted and had the whole place re-decorated and re-floored all for around 800,000 yen, including the estate agent’s cut.
Our later experience of combining the kitchen and washbasin area renovations also seemed to result in a better deal.
A friend of mine in Tokyo is also actually trying to renovate her small kitchen at the moment but she can’t find a company willing to take on such a small job. Perhaps it depends where you live but it seems that in Tokyo some companies aren’t willing to take on a job unless they are sure they can make enough money on it.
Well, it’s just a theory. I may be wrong about this 🙂
And it’s not just the cost, it’s me feeling overwhelmed with the details, and if we do the whole thing at once there are A LOT of details.
My reasoning is:
1. by getting quotes for each part of the job from various companies, we’ll be getting a good idea of how much it should cost
2. by talking to various companies I will learn a lot about the job and what it entails. Different companies mention different elements of the job.
3. I’m not in a hurry, and I want things done the way I want them. Case in point this time round: the type of windows, how the doors opened, size of door, colour of wallpaper, etc.
So I’m happier dealing with each bit as it goes when I have time to do so and we have some spare cash.
There would be a lot to be said for rolling everything together, getting a loan to pay for it, and getting it done.
Instead I’ve decided to do it bit by bit when we have the spare cash to pay for it.
I think it’s going to work out so we do 1-2 stages per year.
I did my inner windows in our bedrooms myself. They were called Inax In Plus. You can order them made to measure ones from places on Rakuten. Installing them was a doddle – just screw the new frames into your existing window frames and pop the windows in. The bedroom windows were about 22,000 yen for single pane (I just needed them for sound insulation as we’ve already got double glazing). You can get double glazed units for a few thousand yen more.
http://item.rakuten.co.jp/auc-dream-diy/inp2hm51514/
Sounds like you’re a lot handier than I am!
Looking at our original quote for single pane windows, the company quoted us 21,000 + tax to install them, so it might be worth getting quotes just in case -although it is a pain to arrange to be around while they’re working, etc.
More stingy than handy really. I’m looking into having an internal door too, though I think I’ll leave that one to the pros.
Hi,
Thanks for posting the article about your window renovation. I am buying a house in the south west part of Tokyo. It was recently renovated and everything is great except a number of the windows are frosted glass. I know they do that for privacy reasons but it drives me a bit nutty to not be able to see out of a window. The windows are single paned. Are they able to replace the glass in an existing single pane window with double paned glass?
I believe it’s going to be much more expensive to replace the window than to add the insert on the inside (this is why they are popular).
Also, the frosted glass may well be mandated by the building code so it might be worth checking that.
You can do both easily be getting a quote for the work. Any reputable renovation company will be happy to give you a no-obligation quote.
Hi,
Thanks for the reply. I wonder how you find out if the frosted glass is a building code requirement.
Curtis
The easiest way is probably to ask a builder. They should be familiar with building codes in their area. You could easily do so as part of getting a quote on a job.