Dragon Room Tokonoma and Shoji Window

I finished the shoji window in the second floor landing, and the tokonoma in the dragon room.

It was a little easier to install the tokonoma in this room than the last one. The little cabinet with the sliding door was easier as well, because it was a lot larger than the tiny one in the other room. I used the same chiyogami paper on the sliding doors to the cabinet as I did on the fusuma.

I wish I was brave enough to have made the posts in the tokonomas in both rooms from actual sticks, rather than the supplied dowels, but it's difficult enough to get the ready made ones to fit. I'll just have to figure out how to incorporate some natural things later.

I attached the left hand tatami room to the landing last night. Now I am ready to attach the dragon room to it.

The next step will be to start making the porches that swing out from the building when it is open. Each porch covers one tatami room and half of the center room.

First tatami room progress and first fusuma

When I started this project, I was going to try to make it authentic to around 1900, but I am having too much fun with my decorative paper, which I don't think would have been used back then, so now I guess it is just a Ryokan I am having fun with!

I have gotten more done on the first tatami room. The raised platform is in, but the tokonoma won't be finished until later. I also made my first fusuma, (sliding door to the rest of the ryokan). In the old days, artists used to paint these, so I decided to use some of my nicest origami papers to decorate the doors.

This photo shows the left wall of the second floor landing. This room will be white to match the reception room below it, but will have this patterned mulberry paper instead of the one with leaves that I used downstairs.

Changing Room Doors and working on 2nd floor left side room

I found out the the doors from the changing room to the spa are sliding doors, not shojis, as I expected them to be. I'm not disappointed, they look nice, but the frosted "glass" for the windows in the doors was quite small, and there isn't a lot holding it in there.

Straight through the doors, to the right of the sink, you can also see part of a small bench with a tiny tatami on it that I made today.

This is the start of the second floor tatami room on the left. I used more mulberry paper, but I'm not sure whether I like it or not. I have so many fancy papers, and I really like using them, but I'm not sure it is authentic.

The back wall will be where the tokonoma is. (A divided section with a raised floor on one side, where a scroll and ikebana are displayed). The other half of that wall holds cabinets and shelves. (I think that is called something else, but it might be just part of the tokonoma, I have to look that up again).

This is a six tatami room. I built the little table and two more legless chairs today as well. They still need to be varnished. I may not make the cushions for the chairs yet, somewhere I have some really beautiful cloth I would love to use on them, so I'm going to wait on those.