Thread: Hi To All

Originally Posted by ChiangMai noon

^

nice part of the world where you are.


how long have you been there?

My wife and I were married in the States in 2000 and in the village in 2001. Here's a shot of the original house. (Got a message to remove the
link until I had 10 posts.)

In 2004 we (I?) finally had to succumb to the pressure that her Mom was subjected to from various members of the extended family who were at that point convinced that my wife wasn't getting a house out of the marriage. They're opinion was that Thai - Farang relationships lasted an average of two years and that my wife must be really dumb for letting the opportunity slip past her without getting a house out of me. OK, fine, so let's build a house - but we had little or no money. We applied for a building loan from the bank but that was paid out to us in installments contingent upon completing the structure in specific stages. More on that later.

We had always planned to build the house but there were a lot of issues to deal with, starting with the fact that I'm a handy guy but I had never done anything like that before in my life. Hmm, and where will I get the money? And, since the original house is on 55 talang wah, where do I put the family while we are building?

I wasn't living full time in Thailand then, nor do I now, so this project was something that I worked on during the limited time that my wife and I were there - about 3 or 4 months a year. We looked at house building books to get ideas.

We visited a construction company that would build a house for you from their plans or they would draw you a set of plans based on elements of their model houses and you could purchase them for 90,000 Baht(!). During our meeting at their offices the sales agent and my wife were speaking in Thai when she abruptly stood up and said, "Let go". I knew from experience that something was up. When we got outside the wife tells me that the sales agent offered to meet us at a coffee shop and sell us a set of plans from the files for 10,000 B. "Just tell me how many bedrooms you want" (!)

Anyway, I wound up measuring the land size and drawing a couple of rough sketches of what I wanted on the first and second floors and then asking around and hiring a guy from our area who could draw the plans to scale for the builder to read. I think he charged us 5000 or 7000 B and my wife referred to him as an "engineer". Nice guy with an Elvis hairdo, a big jade ring and a really long pinky fingernail.

Problem was there was no plan for plumbing or electricity. I guess those details are "afterthoughts" in most Thai constructions but our plumbing and electric installation turned out to be extensive - translation : western style. We did install a hot water heater which, of course, required galvanized pipes and our contractor had only "seen" his friend use a pipe wrench once before. It was a mini-disaster, water leaked through the walls everywhere. Thankfully, the construction is all concrete and teak. Anyway, getting ahead of myself.

To resolve the problem of what to do with the family we bought a house around the corner from the construction site. It fortunately became available when the widow (no kidding) who lived there was on the verge of defaulting on her bank loan and losing the house. There were complications. Before her husband died he deeded the front yard to his nephew and the nephew didn't want to sell for any kind of reasonable price. Long story short, the widow got a little less for her house and the nephew got a little more than the front yard was worth. My wife drove a hard bargain. I asked her if she felt sorry for the old lady. She said, "No". But what if she was your relative? The wife replied, "She is". OK, case closed. Here's a picture of "House # 2" at the time that we bought it. (Got a message to remove the link until I had 10 posts.)

More to follow. BTW, I can't seem to copy my text from the "reply window" and I'm terrified of losing it before I post, so I'll submit this and write more later.