The Thailand expat forum for Travel, Lifestyle and Fun.

dirtydog

There are many products you can use for skirting boards here in Thailand.

This first example is done in Teakwood, now this we charge an arm and a leg for, the skirting to buy is 100baht per meter length, that's cheap I hear you say,hmmmmm, that's just to buy it, this house to skirt was just under 200,000baht, it's only a 2 storey 3 bed house.

With skirting you end up with a lot of wastage unless your willing to use the cutoffs, but why would you use the cutoffs when your using one of the most expensive woods in the world?Who wants to see those joins?

Anyway first it all has to be sanded down, although most contractors wouldn't bother, then it has to be shelldrited to protect it from the insects, then it has to be varnished or laquered several times, then it has to be predrilled and also the countersink holes put in, this is even before we start thinking about fitting it.

dirtydog

The above house we also done all the windows in the same wood, now this was a real pig of a job cos as per usual the walls were all over the place, ie there could be up to a 2 cm gap in one run, now that don't look very pretty, so we had to use 3cm by 5mm strips to hide the inside gap, these were roughly cut to size, then fitted, then sanded down to the height of the main piece of wood, then filled etc, I mean how the fok do you price out something like that.

dirtydog

Jumping quickly to concrete architrave, as it just so happens I have a nice picture handy.

This stuff is great for the outside, in the UK we would just pour the concrete into moulds and make a few hundred per day, here they don't have the moulds or don't know how to make them, so they can only make 5 or 6 per day, I will go into making your own moulds at a later date, anyway this stuff you just drill a few holes in and screw it up onto the wall, and it's amazingly cheap, something like in this picture would be about 1,000baht, hell thats cheaper than those skanky hoes you shag in BKK.

dirtydog

Anyway for those of you out on the hunt for a wooden architrave shop this is what you should be looking for.

dirtydog

Anyway moving swiftly back to the cheapy concrete stuff, Here's some stuff you can stick outside your house to make it look that little bit better than the Jones, plus it's really cheap.

This one you could stick up on top of your entrance post at the entrance of your estate.

dirtydog

This is a pile of 5 toppings for going on top of your posts and cost less than 400baht each.

dirtydog

Of course square beams are so yesterday, so why not top that post of with a nice round one.

dirtydog

A few of these dotted round on the garden walls look quite nice and expect change from 200baht each.

dirtydog

Or there are these ones, but they look a bit poofy to me..

dirtydog

And the mainstay for framing windows and doors and making a feature out of them is of course the straight ones, these come in 2 meter lengths and you can cut them down to the size you want.

Marmite the Dog

I don't suppose you want pictures of my pukka plaster coving and ceiling roses from my Victorian house in the UK?