- 8 minutes ago
Three months of work have transformed a $22,000 abandoned farmhouse in Japan from an overgrown, insect-filled property into a much more livable home. See the before-and-after renovation progress, from clearing wasp nests and garden growth to replacing termite-damaged floor supports, adding insulation, and rebuilding a bright, open living room.
The tour also covers a major bathroom renovation, refreshed bedrooms, traditional Japanese room details, and plans for the still-unfinished kitchen and garden. This hands-on Japan farmhouse renovation offers an honest look at DIY home restoration, living abroad, and the challenges of renovating an old Japanese house on a budget.
The tour also covers a major bathroom renovation, refreshed bedrooms, traditional Japanese room details, and plans for the still-unfinished kitchen and garden. This hands-on Japan farmhouse renovation offers an honest look at DIY home restoration, living abroad, and the challenges of renovating an old Japanese house on a budget.
Category
🏖
TravelTranscript
00:00we bought this abandoned property in japan for just 22 000 us dollars and we started renovating
00:06it about three months ago so today we're going to show you all the progress we've made
00:10in the last three months okay when we got here the first thing we noticed was just how overgrown
00:16everything was there was massive bushes here which were full of wasps spiders all sorts of nests
00:22creepy crawlies it was gross got stung by something i think it was a wasp i saw it land on
00:28me right
00:28here and just sting looks like a wasp nest there's yeah there's wasps climbing in and out of it oh
00:36my god
00:45wow they're all coming out now
00:53all of this was overgrown as well so the first thing we did we bought a new brush cutter wow
01:01this thing is awesome and we tried tidying up all this outside area but as you can see
01:07in just a couple of months a lot of it has grown back i can't believe how quick everything grows
01:12in
01:12japan but it's just because they get so much rain and sunlight and the humidity in summer
01:17it's insane that's why they call it green season take you for a tour down here
01:26i managed to cut a lot of this back
01:35but as you can see it's like these deep roots here that i just think nobody's touched it for
01:43years it's all overgrown over the rocks and everything so hopefully in phase two we can
01:49clear all this away and have all these rocks exposed and actually have a nice driveway we could probably
01:54fit a second car in here if we clear all this up but it's going to be covered in snow
01:59in like a month
02:02we couldn't even walk across here without getting spiders all over us
02:07and all the branches and everything so i think it's looking way better
02:17it's hard to tell how different it looks now than when we first got here but maybe when we're
02:21looking at back at the footage we'll be able to tell but this was all green carpet which was
02:27absolutely disgusting it was very old it was full of dust we ripped all of that up and exposed these
02:33floorboards which we are going to replace but we've run out of time at the moment um there was a
02:39big
02:39dresser here do you remember that yeah yep we ripped that out i'm actually really happy with this
02:44we'll show you guys this we came in here this was two separate rooms tatami rooms and a lot of
02:53it was
02:53sunken we didn't know why we pulled the floors up got rid of the tatami mats and we saw that
02:59a lot of
02:59the joists and the support beams had been damaged by termites and probably water damage and mold and
03:06stuff like that as well so we took them out we replaced a lot of the joists and we completely
03:11redid the
03:12floors what are you working on put all that rotten posts out so we put insulation in here because
03:28there was no insulation at all they had i don't know the japanese term for it but like a fire
03:34pit
03:34here i don't understand how it works i think you just have a fire inside and you kind of sit
03:39around
03:39the fire it was all exposed but we covered all that up it's all insulated we've got two layers of
03:45flooring here and this brand new floorboards took us about a whole day with our friend joel to put this
03:53down we realized after we did it that we didn't actually have to use these floorboards we could
03:58have got this what's it called tongue and groove tongue and groove flooring that we could have just
04:03snapped in place would have saved us a lot of time i don't think it looked good we still want
04:07to sand
04:08it back and polish it and have like a really nice stain on it but it's good for now okay
04:13so one thing
04:14that we've learned from not only just buying this house in japan but living abroad for the last five
04:19years is that moving overseas permanently involves so much more than just finding a place to live
04:26there's paperwork banking taxes insurance and a whole lot of stuff that you never really think about
04:33until you actually get overseas and for those of you watching from the united states which there is
04:38a lot of you that are thinking about making a permanent move overseas there's one really important
04:44thing that you do need to consider and that is what actually happens to your residency and other
04:49arrangements back home and that's exactly where today's video sponsor savvy nomad comes in they help
04:55americans moving or living abroad establish and maintain a u.s domicile in florida or texas with residential
05:02address services paperwork guidance and support throughout the entire process and if you're still
05:08just in the planning stages they've actually put together a free moving abroad checklist to help you
05:13get organized before you actually leave and they also offer a free introductory call with their team
05:18if you've got questions about how the process works we'll leave the checklist and a link to their
05:23website in the description of this video and also first-time customers can use our code Lloyd and Mandy for
05:29a
05:29one-off 60 discount so thank you to savvy nomad for sponsoring today's video all right let's get back
05:35into this renovation we also didn't touch the walls in here yet this is like this weird sandy fiber i
05:44don't
05:44remember the name of it but these walls are everywhere in japanese houses it's like a minimal insulation that
05:50they use and you don't really want to sand it or anything like that or disturb it so
05:55the plan is we're going to render over that but again run out of time and money to be honest
06:05this could actually be used as a sunroof we actually kind of like it we're going to replace
06:09this whole door here but it's staying as is for now it's a lot tidier than when it was when
06:16we got here
06:17there were really old dusty curtains hanging from here when we got here it was so disgusting and
06:24it smelled so dusty and musty and yeah it's just so much fresher in here than it was when we
06:31first
06:32came in but honestly like this living room just makes the whole place feel so much more bright and
06:39open it was really like dark and separated and i don't couldn't see us really using a living room as
06:45it was we still need to get rid of all these railings that we've started but we'll get to that
06:51oh the kitchen is cleaner that's for sure we had a boiler here which was used for the bath which
07:01we'll show you in a minute uh we got a bit of that and it had a big vent going
07:05out there
07:08old boiler
07:18this kitchen is usable but we want to do a lot of work in the kitchen
07:23most of our time has been focused on this bathroom which has taken a lot of time and a lot
07:27of money
07:29so this was a separate bathroom in here
07:35we'll do a flashback to what it looked like but there was a little bathtub here
07:38and just a hose with a boiler that didn't work Japanese style bathroom
07:56so we spent the first three weeks in here using buckets and cold water to clean ourselves which
08:02i didn't mind too much i hated it
08:07it was okay because it was hot and it was summer so i didn't mind having like a cold bath
08:12at the end
08:12of the day but i knew that that wouldn't last too long so what we did was we ripped out
08:18the boiler
08:20and the bath and we just concreted all of this up to make one big shower we replaced the window
08:28so
08:28that's triple pane window now it's insulated it's actually really nice but that took a long time to get in
08:34it was really hard
08:48what's going on here there's something's out there
08:50oh
08:51and we've sheeted all the walls it's all insulated the roof
08:57all the walls this is all opened up now so we've got one
09:01big bathroom we've got all the fixtures everything all the plumbing's done
09:05for the shower we've got an air vent which they didn't even have a vent in here i don't know
09:09how that even works just so cold that they don't even need to worry about it none of this was
09:14insulated
09:15we kept the old drain because that was already fine to use and there was already plumbing here for a
09:23washing
09:23machine so we've kept that there as well all we really need to do now in here is waterproof everything
09:30which we're doing today and then we're tiling this for the shower which we have a tiler he's coming in
09:36a couple of weeks this is all going to be tiled nice black tile we've got nice gold finishings and
09:42everything for the fixtures and we need to finish off the flooring but we have the cement sheeting down
09:51and we've sheeted all the other walls as well with either gypro or fc sheets and got all new wiring
09:57so we have like
09:59power outlets here
10:01we've got an outlet here for our uh manatee mirror which is going to be going there this is going
10:06to be tiled as well
10:08they had an old sink here which was disgusting as well and a window there which we covered up because
10:14we didn't really need the window
10:15we did have to keep the toilet for now because that's another probably five thousand dollars just
10:22to get the sewage hooked up we would have loved to have done it in phase one but it got
10:28too expensive
10:29we have a big light up round mirror that's going to be going there and then a stone wash basin
10:36that's here
10:37we have all that stuff already but yeah we just have to install it once everything else is waterproofed and
10:43tiled in here but uh it's really exciting to see all this coming together and the process as well
10:49this is our first time renovating for lloyd and i and we've learned so much like an incredible amount
10:54in such a short amount of time it's something that we're actually really enjoying the process
10:58which is fun so i could see us doing this again for sure let's head upstairs and we'll show you
11:03guys
11:04what we've done up there it's not looking that great right now it's pretty messy but we have done quite
11:09a bit on as far as like staining and just general tidying we'll show before and afters of what it
11:17looked like when we got in here my first impressions were not good of up here because it was just
11:25filthy
11:25there was bugs everywhere and it just felt creepy we actually closed up so this room we closed it up
11:33pretty much the entire time that we were here until recently because it was just creepy and dirty but
11:39it's gotten much better i believe that our partner joel has sealed all the windows and everything up
11:46here he's trying to make it so the bugs aren't going to come in he's taken out all of the
11:51old curtains
11:52that were on the window and we'll just show you before and what it looks now even just vacuuming in
11:59here made the biggest difference it was crazy there was like i guess it's like hay that they use on
12:06the
12:06walls and stuff was all coming down here so it's just sealed all that with silicon and put some pieces
12:12of timber in here really trying to make it so that not too much cold air gets in here but
12:17i mean it's
12:18going to be cold anyway because it's just not too bad that window might make it we'll see i guess
12:27yeah they don't do insulation here so we're going to have to experience winter for ourselves but
12:38we're about halfway done with our room here so we managed to sand all the timber back
12:44and stain it and we think it looks pretty cool actually yeah it turned out great this did we still
12:50have to do a second coat of stain on the roof because we bought the wrong one the second time
12:57but this this side which is going to be the kids room the roof looks amazing all the stain looks
13:02amazing in here but we are going to render the walls and still finish painting in the closet
13:09we also have some doors that we need to fix up so we're going to be maybe wallpapering these we'll
13:16see
13:16once they're cleaned up what we end up doing with them but yeah this is this is the room so
13:22far we
13:23still have a lot to do when we get back from our little holiday i'm really satisfied with how much
13:28we've done so far in here and i think it's going to be so much more comfortable than when we
13:33first
13:33lived here the first three weeks were so tough not comfortable at all but having a bathroom and a bit
13:41more cozy of a bedroom make it a lot easier so we did try two types of finishes on the
13:46walls here as
13:47i said we didn't want to disturb them at all but we tried this paint which is like a dark
13:52brown paint
13:53or it's supposed to be and ended up being pretty black so we didn't want to use that and we
13:59decided
14:00to try this render which looks pretty good it's like a white sort of render this is what it's looking
14:06like
14:07so far and this is the product that we're using you just squeeze it onto here and then butter it
14:16onto the wall it's still going to be like a rough textured wall but it's not going to have the
14:21like
14:21sandy look to it it's just going to look more like a plastered wall like rough plastered i think
14:27i think it'll look good but we didn't really apply it properly we just had a small patch that we
14:32wanted
14:32to try out and i think we're going to end up rendering all of the walls with that render and
14:38we'll do it properly we're still learning how to do all stuff like that but that paint that we got
14:42ended up being really good for the wardrobes so we painted this wardrobe and i think that looks pretty
14:50cool and then we just have these shoji windows which were all old and falling apart so we got some
14:59new
15:00shoji paper and we painted up or stained the windows so it looks like the paper must have been replaced
15:10at some stage already because there's like two layers here that's on the frame um that's not
15:16coming off very easily so i'm gonna have to get something to get the remainder of the paper off of
15:22the frame but the good news is the frames themselves are in great condition so we'll be able to sand
15:28them and
15:28stain them and keep them as well which makes me happy because i think they're really cool
15:45and we'll be installing them once they're done so this is one of the other bedrooms and it's
15:49actually probably the room that was in the best condition we slept in here for three weeks i haven't
15:54really done anything in here because we haven't needed to so this room is pretty much ready to use
15:59it just needs new windows some stain and paint and it'll be good to go we've just been using it
16:04as
16:04like a storage room and kind of like a kid's room as well lila and i've been spending quite a
16:09bit of time
16:09in here so like all of our fixtures and everything we've been using for like the tiles we've got also
16:15our
16:15wash basin and everything that we're waiting to put into the bathroom so we've just been using as a
16:20storage room let's go to the backyard okay it may not look like it but this is a huge transformation
16:35from when we first came in here all of this was so overgrown you couldn't really walk around the
16:42backyard at all especially around here like every time i had to walk around here i was getting branches
16:49and spider webs and wasps all over me we cleared all this up we actually have a path down here
16:55now
16:55which is sick this was disgusting it was full of nests like wasp nests and different spiders and
17:04everything like that once we cleared all this space we kind of realized how much room we have out in
17:10this
17:11backyard and we can actually create something pretty cool like we have plans on having a fire pit here
17:18maybe putting some gravel down or something like that i think we just need to see what it's going
17:23to be like in winter so that's all that we've completed in the last three months it's been a
17:27super busy three months let us know down in the comments how you think we've done do you think
17:31we're doing a good job maybe not we'd love to hear from you thank you guys so much for watching
17:36and as always we will see you guys in the next video bye
17:40you