Thread: Marty's New Home in the sticks

Can't have too many photos!

Originally Posted by FatOne

they are a different crew than those that did the foundations

That would be the norm. Roofing is a bit specialized and outside the skill set of the concrete mixers/pourers. You will probably find the roof tile is laid by a different group to the ones that did the steel fabrication. There are building crews out there that consist of "jack of all trades" types but they are grotesquely dangerous as a rule. The know how to do everything badly.....and they do......

All Cool Koman, these guys seem to have a great work ethic, and they have done a great deal in a short period.

Here's a couple of pics of the roof supports pretty much completed. Annoyingly when I was last in the village we picked out tile and paint colours, now , when it comes time to get the tiles the colour we wanted isn't available. I was after a nice light blue that would be cool and look nice without getting too dirty. Most other light colours would do, but of course the only colours that are available are all dark colours - why would you only have dark coloured tiles in a tropical country? Oh , well, unless we want to wait a couple of months we have to go with a dark colour, and it looks like a dark maroon type roof for us, hope it doesn't look too ghastly!

Last Pic today, looks like a very strong roof structure, should withstand anything Thailand can throw at it!!

Marty,
If you notice, there are a lot of black cars in Thailand. I always thought that was a stupid idea, being in the tropics. But it turns out, the cheapest car color is black, so most Thais will save the money and stick with that color. I found that out when my wife bought the Honda City last year.

Most likely, the same reasoning goes with the roofing tiles. The cheapest ones and most easily available will be the dark ones, that most people don't want.

Steve

PS: Be sure they put a good amount of primer or "rust-proofer" on the welded areas of your roof structure.

Thanks Steve,

I picked out the nice light blue cool colour months ago, from a brochure which said they were more expensive and would need to be ordered as a special request. So the builder only ordered them 1 month ago, and they are quoting another 2-3 months delivery. How long does it take to manufacture a roof tile?? Anyway, I reckon there will be bigger things to argue about later.

After looking at the most recent pics last night, Kung and I picked out a number of problems. First, we asked for a roof overhang of 1 metre all around the house to give a bit of shade, it looks like we'll be lucky to have half that from the pics. Secondly, the roof over the carport and the front porch doesn't meet, I know there was some talk about leaf catching when I first proposed this roof, but on the photo it isn't even close! So when we get out of the car and go into the house in summer we'll get soaked. Thirdly the carport floor doesn't meet the porch floor, there is a gap of about half a metre of dirt-- now that's just stupid!!!
Anyway Kung spent about an hour on the phone to her sister last night and she finished up telling me these things would be fixed. I'm stuffed if I know how they are going to fix em, but we'll see- the cement floor won't be a problem.

Originally Posted by FatOne

and she finished up telling me these things would be fixed. I'm stuffed if I know how they are going to fix em, but we'll see- the cement floor won't be a problem.

I'm with you FatOne. Please let us know how they "fix" these. Choke dee!

Originally Posted by FatOne

we asked for a roof overhang of 1 metre all around the house to give a bit of shade, it looks like we'll be lucky to have half that from the pics

A half meter will give you just as much shade as a full meter... only half the area will be shaded, but the quality of the shade will be just as good, and it costs less.....be thankful, they are just looking after your expense controls......

Originally Posted by FatOne

the roof over the carport and the front porch doesn't meet,

Originally Posted by FatOne

the carport floor doesn't meet the porch floor

Originally Posted by FatOne

now that's just stupid!!!

Originally Posted by FatOne

she finished up telling me these things would be fixed

Yes yes, of course they will be fixed....relax and don't worry about it....Thai's "fix" everything in due course...and the baht exchange rate is dropping, so things are looking up.....

Thanks Terp, and for your kind comments Koman. I tend to agree, if they can fix these I'll be amazed! Can't say I wasn't warned, but I still have my hair- so far!

Marty

A few more pics posted by SIL, not much has changed. By the look of my accuweather app on my phone it has been and will be raining for a while so maybe we won't see a lot of progress. I'm dying to see what the roof tiles look like when on, maybe they won't be as bad as I fear!

This pic is from the back of the house, terrible quality I think she used a box brownie camera, but it gives another perspective. You can get an idea of how much fill we put in, and I want to put more fill in the back to give us some sort of a backyard. The back slopes down to a creek of sorts.

Another box brownie shot of the back, weird perspective!

That's about all I have so far! Kung keeps telling me that all our complaints mentioned before will be fixed, so I await the outcome with baited breath. See ya on the flipside!

^^^ ^^ Looks like she Instagramed those shots.

Coming along nicely, don't worry, everything will be ok in the end...

The roof was always gonna be 'interesting', so I'm eagerly awaiting to see how that ends up.

Originally Posted by FatOne

baited breath

A surefire recipe for halitosis.

AAAAARRRRGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!!
Sil just sent Kung a pic of the roof tiles that were delivered 5 mins ago!!! The pic next to them is the colour that Kung picked. Is there any similarity? Nup! I tell her to ring sil and tell her to get them taken away. Why would I want cow shit brown / rust coloured tiles? We were sent a colour choice of about 4 dark colours and this wasn't one of them! Makes you feel like jumping on a plane, except there's no point because they wouldn't understand my ranting and swearing.

Yes, "Tawny Brick" is definitely a lot better than "Anemic Cow Shit. Incredible how they can try to pull this kind of thing off. They probably have a big supply of the Cow Shit roofing that even the locals won't buy at discounted prices, so they decided to offload it on the farang hoping it would not be noticed.......

I think Tawny Brick is the colour of our roof. It's a really nice rich colour......hold your ground; give no quarter; make them take the Cow Shit tile back and get Tawny. or else.....

Actually it was the SIL brilliant photographic skills that sent us into a spin, although this pic isn't perfect you can see it is actually the colour we ordered. Kung phoned her and asked her to get the shop to pick up and re-deliver the correct ones and they insisted they had delivered the colour we ordered. Then she got SIL to take another picture and explained how to use the camera on the phone we gave her!!!! It does look like we'll have to re think the exterior paint colours tho, we had planned on a blue tile with contrasting blue paint. Looking at colours now, but probably go with a light pink with very dark red almost brown on the top and bottom for about 50cm.

Well they've started to put the tiles on, from this shot they look grey, colours are not easy to see with my SIL photographic ability. She hasn't quite worked out that the sun should be behind her, but at least she's not using the multiple camera filters that come with the phone now.

Here's the latest disaster to try and upset my normally balanced sanity, night before last the rain collapsed the retaining wall that was built to contain the fill, and you can see my house in the background! Kung phoned the SIL last night and the builder is apparently going to rebuild it today. It wasn't his build, this was done well before he was appointed, but I reckon whoever she employed to build it was a local shonk.

At least they are using some foil insulation under the tiles which is a start. I don't believe this will be enough and have asked for fibreglass insulation between roof and ceiling. Has anyone had experience with just the foil insulation? Do I need the fibreglass Batts?