#  >  > Living And Legal Affairs In Thailand >  >  > Construction in Thailand >  >  Roobarb's patch

## Roobarb

Now, I have an admission to make at the outset.  

You see I have this dirty little secret that I've not been letting on to any of you about, and it's this:  

All the while (well, the six months) that I have been a member of TD and posting largely irrelevant drivel about the machinations of life in the subcontinent I have in fact been, somewhat accidentally it has to be said, constructing a house up in Isaan.

When I say I have been constructing a house it's not actually me that's been doing it, and therefore here was the first issue:  I've been holed up in Delhi earning the wherewithal to pay for the thing whist all this has been happening.  With no idea as to whether I would get enough photos I was a bit wary of starting what could turn into a rather dull and wordy thread.  

Before anyone leaps on this, yes, it will still be dull and wordy, but it will have pictures so you can ignore the words if you want.

Here's the second issue: I was honestly rather unsure how this was all going to pan out, and given some of the problems that folks have faced with building in Thailand in the past, despite their detailed research and planning beforehand, there was a good chance that with the little forethought I did on building our place, the whole thing would quite rapidly turn to, um, custard as it were (i.e. be a complete disaster).

As we enter the final furlong of the build these two issues seem to have been resolved, which just then leaves me with a third, and it is this:

As I look through the photographs that I have they are somewhat limited both in quality (many were taken with a phone and MMSed) and also content.  Some glaring omissions that could upset the harder-core readers of the construction threads are:

- Action shots of the construction crew eating their lunch, or sleeping it off afterwards. 
- Any form of in-depth study of the building site's health and safety measures. 

For this I would ask that you use your imagination.  Suffice to say we did not try to influence the crew from what they would naturally do in any way whatsoever so, in this regard, your imagination won't have to wander too far from the well beaten path.

Not having been on site to take photos is a little frustrating as the pictures I have show the work, but in an odd sort of way way don't really tell the tale.  There are however many members have walked in these particular shoes before and produced some cracking reads, and no doubt more will follow afterwards.  Having gained a lot of pleasure out of reading of the experiences of others, I feel it's only right to chip something back in as best I can.

One thing to mention - I'll update this thread as and when time permits, but there will probably be some long gaps simply because, rather like the building works, I am too lazy to approach it in anything approaching a disciplined fashion.  

So, metaphorically hammering the first marker peg into the ground, here then is (or will eventually be) the tale of Roobarb's patch:

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## Roobarb

Where do we go from here?  Umm, a bit of background perhaps.

Over the years we've made regular sorties back to see the in-laws, and as our family has grown so various nieces and nephews have also appeared on the scene.  The long and the short of it is that the in-laws family house has become a bit of a squeeze and as a result the amount of time that we spend with them is becoming shorter and shorter each year.

Now, this may seem an ideal situation to some, but it is a shame as I  enjoy the trips up there.  In addition, a few weeks of Thai language  immersion each year is good for the kids.  

The folks live somewhere between Chaiyaphum and Khon Kaen, but closer to Chaiyaphum.  Unlike much of Isaan it's up in the hills and so stays a few degrees cooler than on the plateau, and there is generally a breeze blowing.



Forgive the slightly ratty pictures, I don't seem to be able to find any that were taken on a clear day



All in all there's not a great deal to do up here, but as a place to get away from the hustle and bustle of city life then it takes some beating.

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## Roobarb

There are two reservoirs nearby.  This one is just five minutes from the in-laws' house and has several restaurants near to the water's edge



It's a great place to while away a couple of hours in the afternoon over a beer or two...



... ahem, or three or four beers heading into the evening

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## Roobarb

And so several years back we decided to look for some land to build a holiday house on.

Quite sensibly I was told to keep well away for two main reasons.  Firstly I do tend to get a bit over excited about things like buying land, and am liable to buy the first thing I see.  The other reason was that negotiating a reasonable price for some land would be made considerably more difficult if there was a farang in view.

With that in mind I was left at home.  The only two requests I had were that the land overlooked some water, and was at least two rai to give me plenty of space to potter about in.   

Now, the in-laws had done a great job of asking around and there were five plots identified.  The first four were not right - either the water they overlooked was not much more than a muddy pond:



Or they looked over the reservoir but were too big - This piece of land had a great view but was 45 rai, and the owner knew it was worth a bit too.  



45 rai would take a lot of pottering and we really would be getting out of a 'holiday house' budget - or put another way, all we would ever be able to afford to put on the land would be a small tent.

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## Roobarb

And then...



A couple of rai on the edge of the in-law's village.  It's a sort of triangular shaped bit of land poking out into a lake



Now the owner was a decent chap and went to great lengths to say that it does flood sometimes, but hell, I could see that from the top picture, it was just at the end of the rainy season.  How much worse can it get?  Nothing that a few truckloads of soil won't sort out.

Perfect.  From the pictures this was just what we're after.   FIL was placed in his best negotiating wellies and dispatched that evening clutching six bottles of Chang to have a chat with the owner.

The long and the short of it was that the deal was done by about the fourth bottle.  

The money changed hands a few days later.  We now had somewhere to build a house whenever we decided to get around to it.

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## Bettyboo

I rather hoped this thread would be about a Rooney style weave...

Nonetheless, everyone loves a photothread, and everyone loves a building thread, so you're onto a winner. Good luck.  :Smile:

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## Roobarb

> I rather hoped this thread would be about a Rooney style weave...
> 
> Nonetheless, everyone loves a photothread, and everyone loves a building thread, so you're onto a winner. Good luck.


Cheers Betty.  Oddly enough thatching was a consideration.  Ultimately we dismissed the idea as, not unlike the Rooney barnet, thatch seems to thin out and need replacing every few years...

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## BaitongBoy

Cheers, Roobarb...Sounds like a winner...

Thought maybe a rhubarb garden with pie...heh...

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## stevefarang

A photo thread and building thread coupled with some witty descriptions. What's not to love ?

Looking forward to following this one Roobarb !!

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## Loombucket

Looks like a nice bit of land there! Keep those pictures coming.

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## Roobarb

> Thought maybe a rhubarb garden with pie...heh...


Ha, yes, I'm wondering if I should have named the thread 'Roobarb's crumble' instead.

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## Roobarb

> A photo thread and building thread coupled with some witty descriptions. What's not to love ?
> 
> Looking forward to following this one Roobarb !!





> Looks like a nice bit of land there! Keep those pictures coming.


Thanks guys.  Oddly enough both of your building threads were inspirations for me to try to knock this one together.

Loombucket - 'the nice bit of land there' comment:  Photos don't always tell the full tale.  More on that shortly...

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## Roobarb

Having procured this wonderful meadow I was itching to hop on a plane and come and have a look.  As often seems to be the case with this sort of thing though, our life elsewhere managed to get in the way of jaunts to Thailand and so it was nearly a year until we found our way back.

I know it was nearly a year as when we returned it was the middle of the rainy season and it had been, apparently, an especially wet one.

I think it's fair to say that the first trip to see the land did prove to be something of a disappointment.   In fact, 'seeing' the land could be considered to have been an overstatement:



It even had little waves developing on the water surface, this water was deeper than your average puddle.

In fairness the seller had pointed out that flooding was a bit of an issue, but in my enthusiasm I'd rather assumed this referred to the small damp patch on the field in the photo I had seen and not what now appeared to be of more Altantis-like concern.

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## Roobarb

Happily though it transpired that all was not lost.  Swept away with the excitement of buying the land I had not really been listening to what it actually was that we had bought, and it was only going to look at the place that things became clearer.

The land is roughly triangular shaped with one surface of the triangle running east/west and the other two pointing southwards into the lake.

It is split into two parts.  The pictures that I had seen (and have posted above) were of about 10 rai of agricultural land that formed the southern section of the triangle.  FIL had got this thrown in with the deal when we had bought the 5 rai of land along the northern edge of the triangle.

The 5 rai of land had been raised and was about a metre or so above the water level.  The photo below is taken facing roughly north towards the raised 5 rai (the bit behind the fence posts):

 

The only slight flies in this particular ointment were that the 5 rai of land had been raised by digging out two huge fish ponds, one running along the south side and the other along the east side, and unfortunately these were the two sides of the land with the best views.

Standing near the south west corner facing east: Fish pond 1



Standing at the south west corner facing North East: Fish pond 2



As an added issue, the central part of the land behind the ponds had not been raised, and as such had become a sort of bog:



The land had been astonishingly cheap, and I was beginning to see why...

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## Roobarb

Now, having expected to find some gently agricultural parkland that was ready to build on, it was clear that we would actually need to do a lot of work to get it to a reasonable state.

Wandering around I reckoned that we had three options:

1) We do nothing with the land, the in-laws can farm it and we sell it on if someone offers us a silly price at some stage in the future

2) We try to sell it on right away and buy a smaller, ready to build, plot somewhere else

3) We bite the bullet and get the 5 rai filled and levelled.

It was a near run thing, the weather was miserable which did nothing to sell me on the merits of the land, but we decided to go with option 3.  If nothing else, should we sort it out then it would be easier to sell on at a later stage if we chose to do so.

A local soil filling man came to have a look, and after a few beers a price was agreed.  

We left Thailand now a reasonably substantial chunk of money down and I was less than convinced that this was all going to work out happily.

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## Roobarb

Spool it on another year and we're back in Thailand.

The land has been filled and the sun is out.  What a transformation...

Looking in from the gate at the north east corner:



Fish pond 1 has now been transformed into a sort of Isaan take on a Parisian avenue:



Fish pond 2 has also disappeared, the car being parked in what was the middle of it:



There was still a bit of filling needed to raise the central bit:



And the view to the south east was pretty good.  Made it well worth filling the ponds.



We were back on track - albeit we didn't actually have a track but nonetheless things were moving forwards.

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## BaitongBoy

^Expensive to do?...

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## Roobarb

About Baht 300K I think.  It was a few years back so the memory is a bit hazy on the exact numbers.  Seemed quite a bit at the time but when I saw the results it was well worth it.

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## BaitongBoy

Looks pretty nice, for sure...

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## stevefarang

Roobarb,
Why not keep a fish pond ?

We dug a U-shaped fish pond on our second lot and have some fish in there. I think my wife was going to have some of her family grow and sell them. Hasn't exactly worked out that way. I want to raise that lot, as it's just a rice paddy, so it still tends to flood (so fish were able to get in & out). We haven't decided if we'll keep the fish pond as is, shorten it or just fill it back in. I do want to put my "man-cave" on that lot and adjust the layout for the chickens, ducks & geese so they aren't wading in water when it's rainy season.
I like your broad Parisian style avenue, looks so chic !

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## Roobarb

Thanks, I was pretty pleased at how it had all turned out.  More luck than judgement I have to say...

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## BaitongBoy

> Why not keep a fish pond ?


I'm sure the next one will show up soon...

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## Roobarb

> Roobarb,
> Why not keep a fish pond ?
> 
> We dug a U-shaped fish pond on our second lot and have some fish in there. I think my wife was going to have some of her family grow and sell them. Hasn't exactly worked out that way. I want to raise that lot, as it's just a rice paddy, so it still tends to flood (so fish were able to get in & out). We haven't decided if we'll keep the fish pond as is, shorten it or just fill it back in. I do want to put my "man-cave" on that lot and adjust the layout for the chickens, ducks & geese so they aren't wading in water when it's rainy season.
> I like your broad Parisian style avenue, looks so chic !


Yup, good question Steve.

A hole in the ground is a useful thing (fish pond, swimming pool etc) and I did think about either keeping one of the ponds or partially filling them both

The thing is that as we are not planning on living permanently here we will probably end up getting our fish from Big C rather than try to catch them in our own pond (assuming that the locals wouldn't have nicked them all beforehand).  

The other bit that worried me was that with small kids running around the steep-sided fish ponds would be a constant concern.  

The 'Man Cave' was also an important consideration. Whilst it's not yet on the approved plans as far as my wife is concerned, I know exactly where its going (up at the end behind the car in the picture above) which is on an area where one of the ponds were.

The final piece in the decision was that not being there to advise what we wanted there would be a good chance that the wrong bits would be filled.  All in all it was easier just to fill and level the whole lot.

The (much) longer term plan is that we may dig a fish pond in the 10 rai, mainly as it would give us some free soil to fill the rest of it a bit so that it doesn't flood quite so easily.  That's a while off though.

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## Loombucket

> Looks like a nice bit of land there....


..and even better now! Ok, so the ponds were a bit of an issue, but the avenue looks great and you can always plan a pond around the garden! So much depends on the view from the balcony anyway.

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## Roobarb

^ Thanks Loombucket.  Your right on building the house first, it's pretty much how things have panned out.  

When we filled the land we still were not too sure what we wanted to do with it.  It's only having now started building the house that thoughts on what to do with the rest of the place are beginning to surface.  

Ultimately planning and creating the garden will become my sort of 'pottering around' project to keep me occupied over the coming years whenever I'm up there.

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## Dead Metal

I love the way the story unfolds, from disappointment to wonderment.

Promising to be an excellent build that I am looking forward to reading.

TD is proving to be an excellent source of good ideas and inspiration.

Is it rude to enquire how much you have budgeted for this project ? If so my apologies.

Looking forward to the next instalment, thanks for sharing.

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## Roobarb

Dead Metal, thanks for joining in.  TD is an excellent source of ideas and inspiration.  To be honest it's largely to blame for me embarking on this build.   

I'll try to let you know the costs as we go forwards.  At the moment the story is still in about 2009 or something so the prices are all pretty out of date.  I'd guess that all in we sunk a bit under a million baht into buying the land and sorting it out, but I didn't really keep any record of it.  

As I write this I realise one of the major drawbacks to doing this thread is that I might actually work out what we have spent on the project so far, which could be quite disturbing.  

If you think I'm being deliberately vague with the prices then it's either I don't know, or it's that I don't want to know...  :Smile:

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## Roobarb

This particular part of the forum is meant to be about building rather than faffing about with filling land and the like, so I'm going to jump forwards to sometime around last November.

Having filled the land we'd decided to leave it time to settle, and this was a good excuse for doing nothing for several years. 

Each time we would go back to stay with the in-laws I would wander off to have a look at the land.  I'd generally pace around purposefully for a while and take some measurements that I would then either lose or find completely indecipherable when I got home.   In an odd way the land was fulfilling its purpose of giving me something to do up there, but eventually even I realised the futility of planning without ever implementing.

Everything was beginning to get a bit overgrown.

View from the gate, my sweeping driveway had become a field:



We had at some stage had someone fill the south east corner of the land by another metre in preparation for eventually building a house.  This was fairly rubbish soil and over time had shrunk to about 50 cms.  

The photo below is taken standing on the roof of a car parked on top of the raised portion facing north east.  You can still see the outline of where Fish Pond 2 was.  That fill was pretty solid and probably only shrank by about 20 cms or so.  



Looking south east from the raised portion:



Actually, let me see if I can get a video in from Youtube taken from the south east corner

No idea if this will work or not.


Good lord, I think it did.

I was going to be staying with the in-laws for a few more days.  Enough of the dreaming.  It was time for action...!

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## Roobarb

As Dead Metal pointed out above, TeakDoor is a great place for inspiration. 

At the time I think that Wimpy was just reaching the end of his excellent thread recounting how he bought a village house and rebuilt it on his land.

That was the answer, we needed to send out a raiding party to relieve a villager of their house.  

Now, if the truth be told, I was hoping that this would give us an excuse to tool around the countryside in the car for a day or two to fill some time and that nothing would come of it.  We could then head back home, myself content in the knowledge that I'd tried to drive the project forwards but alas, time as ever had prevented us bringing it to fruitiuon.  We could then resume the hunt when we returned a year later - and hopefully for the years after that.  Everyone says that finding old wooden houses is tough, this had to be a good wheeze for further procrastination.

If you remember, when we were looking for the land the in-laws had done a great job of sourcing some options, and I'd rather forgotten how enthusiastic they could get.

The following morning we all bundled into the car and headed off into a village some 20 minutes away up in the hills.  FIL got out and wandered up to the first person he saw.  After a few minutes it transpired that the guy had an old rice barn that he didn't want.  It was a simple little 9 post structure but with some decent floorboards.  He wanted 20K for it.

_"We'll 'ave that then"._

Further enquiries unearthed a fairly old 12 post house just over the road, again with a decent amount of wood on it.  The owner wanted 110K for that.

This is fun_.  

"Try 'em at 100"

_FIL goes into negotiation mode for 10 minutes...
_
"Yeah, deal".

_As I was really not planning on finding any houses I unfortunately didn't bring a camera with me so I can't show you what we bought.  

A few days later the cash changed hands and some hardy fellows were sent off to take the buildings apart.

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## Roobarb

It's probably at this point that I should mention that I know absolutely nothing about building apart from what I have learned from the pages of Teak Door.  One thing that did come to mind, as it had been mentioned on the site more than a few times, was that disassembled wooden houses left lying around had a tendency to gradually disappear, either because the wood gets nicked by the locals or because it gets eaten by termites.

The first problem could be solved by sticking the wood in the in-laws' back garden for a while, but that wouldn't stop the termites.

The only real option was to reassemble the buildings on our land.  As we were going to do that we may as well at least make them vaguely inhabitable.

It's a slippery slope...

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## beerlaodrinker

Interesting post roobarb , great to see someone having a crack at it.some talk about it while others such as yourself just get on with it ,nice one, look forward to more

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## Dead Metal

...i'm enjoying this.

I have read elsewhere on TD that they soaked the timber prior to dismantling.
 Is this the method you adopted.
 How easy was it to dismantle, did you lose much. ?

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## Roobarb

So it was back to the font of all knowledge (yes, Teak Door's construction threads) to get the basics of how to build a house.  

As you all know there is a vast wealth of information here, but much of it was above my head.  A common theme to the advice from most who had done this before was:

1) Have an architect draw up a plan
2) Get an accurate costing for all materials you will need
3) Speak to several builders first and see the work they have done before deciding on who to use
4) Get a detailed quote in writing stating what the builder would do and the payment milestones
5) Don't involve family members as if it all goes pear shaped then it can be awkward
6) The most important one: Be on site every day to check the materials and ensure the job is done properly.

It was all a bit scary but, given that we live overseas, point 6 we would have to ignore.  This in turn meant that point 5 was going to have to be questioned.  Points 3 and 4 were going to be reliant on who actually monitored the progress (see point 5 that we were going to ignore) and so were not terribly relevant.  Point 2 would be useful but also largely irrelevant given we are ignoring point 6, so point 1 was probably not necessary either.

Sorted.

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## Roobarb

> ...i'm enjoying this.
> 
> I have read elsewhere on TD that they soaked the timber prior to dismantling.
>  Is this the method you adopted.
>  How easy was it to dismantle, did you lose much. ?


I did ask about the soaking and apparently they knew about this and did soak them first, although we were not there at the time.  They took about three days to dismantle the 12 post house, I suspect the rice barn fell apart with a well aimed shove.

Did we lose much?  I really don't know, other than its surprising how little amount of space the wood takes up when the houses are dismantled.  My first reaction on seeing pictures of the dismantled buildings was that someone had nicked half of it.  The in-laws were pretty protective of the whole thing so I doubt any light fingered types would have got a look in.  

One thing that did surprise me was that the builder rejected quite a bit of the wooden sidings (is that the right name for the outside wall planks?) as being too thin, so that disappeared for some other use somewhere.  The main bits I was after were the posts and the floorboards anyway.

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## Roobarb

> Interesting post roobarb , great to see someone having a crack at it.some talk about it while others such as yourself just get on with it ,nice one, look forward to more


Cheers BLD, it was more by accident than design that we ended up building the house.  Once committed it was a bit difficult to come up with a reason not to continue...

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## Bettyboo

> He wanted 20K for it.
> 
> "We'll 'ave that then".


 :Smile: 




> This is fun. 
> 
> "Try 'em at 100"


 :Smile: 

Nice. This thread is getting better and better, but leaving me eager for more, more pics... Very nice commentary too.

In the video, looked like a very pleasant breeze - beer, sala, bbq, breeze, could be very nice indeedy...

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## Bettyboo

> some talk about it while others such as yourself just get on with it


I hope you're not including me in that first group, BLD!

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## Roobarb

> beer, sala, bbq, breeze, could be very nice indeedy...


Ah, yes, that's exactly what I had in mind, and oddly enough in exactly the same order of priority too.

The house is really more of a means to those ends.

We'll get into the pics shortly, I promise...

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## Roobarb

First of all the plans.

A few years back I found out about Google's Sketchup, again from these very pages.

I like Sketchup, and can spend hours happily knocking up designs for  things.  It makes it much easier to show a contractor/architect/designer  what you want, especially when language can be a bit of a barrier.  

I've used it for all sorts of things from small office renovation plans:



To factory layouts:



As a visualisation tool I'd really recommend it to anyone.  It's free to  download (at least I think it still is) and very easy to use.

The thought therefore was that rather than getting an architect, I'd  simply knock up a design on Sketchup, print off a few photos of houses  from TD (belated thanks to many of you who unknowingly contributed here) then  pass the lot to a builder  and let him do his worst.  After all, the plan was to just do a basic  village house style thing so nothing too complicated.

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## Roobarb

And so the first attempt at a design was pretty simple, many of you will notice remarkable similarities to Wimpy's house:



Two bedrooms and a small bathroom upstairs:



... and space for a small living room, kitchen and bigger bathroom downstairs



I couldn't remember what Wimpy ended up spending, but had the feeling it was around 500K so I reckoned that if we came in around that then all would be good.

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## Roobarb

So far so good.

As much as I do like Sketchup, it does however have one fundamental flaw for the undisciplined, and that is that is it's easy to get a bit carried away with a design, throwing out wings, extensions, balconies, crenellated towers or whatever else comes to mind.

The difficult part is that having been fiddling around with a plan for a few days, and coming up with what seems the ideal design, the idea of deleting parts of the masterpiece is a bit tough to deal with.

Now this is all fine for just messing around on the computer, but it's dangerous if you are intending to actually build the thing.

And so this is where the wheels of practicality began to fall off.

First of all, another bedroom could be useful...
... and actually a larger covered area outside
... and the kitchen is a bit poky so that needs to grow a bit
... actually whilst we're at it having the stairs inside the house would be good too
... and a decent sized balcony looking out over the view
... a separate loo that can be accessed from outside would save having semi-wanted visitors traipsing through the house too 

The long and the short of it was that plan number 1 was clearly not going to work as I had completed the drawing long before I had got fed up with doing so.

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## Roobarb

It occurred to me that we had already bought both a 12 post house and a 9 post rice barn.  All in 21 posts.

If we therefore assumed that we would raise the whole thing on a 16 post concrete frame in a 4 by 4 layout we can keep the ground floor open (lots of outside space) then use 16 of the wooden posts for the first floor, and a few others for doing the roof frame.  Then just slap some walls on, down with some floors, bolt on a roof and we're all good.  We had the walls and floors already.  Just have to pay for a roof and we're there.

As mentioned previously I have absolutely no idea about building or architecture so to me the above logic seemed absolutely sound.  

Things continued to get more carried away with extra extensions, but I was enjoying myself and eventually ended up with this:







Though I say it myself, I was rather impressed with it.

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## Roobarb

At about this time Mrs. Roobarb was back in Thailand looking for a builder to do plan 1.  I emailed over the latest whizz bang idea (above) which was met with a sort of derisory snort - far too big, it will be far too expensive blah blah blah.  I did ask her, just for fun, to punt it around to the builders she was talking to and get them to give us a price for it.

Now the first builder was a guy from Korat.  He came highly recommended by someone.  He came and had a look and quoted about 300K for the small house and a bit under a million Baht for the big one (labour only).

The next builder showed up then never quoted anything.

Builder number 3 didn't even bother showing up.

OK, so the decision was we should probably go with builder number 1.   

A quick phone call - and we established that he had just taken on a big job in Korat and wouldn't be available for a year.

Bollox.

Another builder was found, he didn't want to do the small house as it was too small, he was OK with the big one, and would do it for 4 million Baht all in...  This was a non-starter

At this point the in-laws came up trumps.  They had been chatting with a fellow in the local market who said he's built a few houses in the past and was looking for something to do.  He had a look at the pictures and reckoned 150K or so for the small one and 430K for the big one (labour only).

The guy confirmed that all the houses he had built so far were by and large still standing.  Ideal, this is clearly the man for the job, let's get it started right away.

We needed to get the dismantled houses off the ground so we decided to get him to just build the basic structure and stick a roof on, we'd leave fitting it out until later on.

The only decision left was which house should we go for...?

Come on, what would you do?  It had to be the big one.

I had tentatively mentioned 500K as the budget to my wife a month or so earlier.  It was not therefore too difficult to persuade my wife that at 430K for the builder, maybe 100K for the roof and 100K for concrete and stuff was not a lot over budget, and then we would never need to extend the thing etc etc.

Now I know and you all know that there is no way that we would bring this in at 630K, but that's not the point.  She didn't know it and so agreed with minimal fuss.

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## beerlaodrinker

> I hope you're not including me in that first group, BLD!


Yes. pull your finger out betty. :Smile:

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## sunsetter

Great little thread in the making here, keep it coming, I think ill start checking in at TD again!

good luck with the build :Smile:

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## Roobarb

So, a bit more detail on what we are going to attempt to knock together over the coming months

The ground floor (from the north):



Going from left to right - 

- Kitchen (with outside kitchen in front)
- Don't know what you'd call the next bit - breakfast room perhaps - with folding doors to the ground floor verandah
(I feel like I'm writing estate agent's blurb here)
- Front door with stairs up to 1st floor
- Downstairs bathroom
- Outside dunny for unwanted guests


First floor (from the west):



Going from left to right:

- Bedroom 3
- Living room area to the front with balcony
- Bathroom
- Stairs up to loft area
- Bedroom 2
- Master bedroom with ensuite


Top floor (from the north):



The  idea here was that the top floor area would be a galleried overflow for kids to  sleep in etc, assuming that it didn't get to hot up there at night.

More  importantly I wanted the roof area to be as open as possible to allow  for ventilation.  There's generally a bit of a breeze where we are so  having opening windows in the gables means that we should be able to get  a flowthough of air most of the time.  This I hope will also be helped by having the large opening doors downstairs and the open stairwell.  The easiest way to get to the  windows in the gables is to be able to walk to them, hence putting a proper floor up  there.  

For ventilation reasons the wall that is shown in the top floor above the  master bedroom was taken out in the final plan.  It only ended up in the first plan as it was a case of  'I wonder if I can draw a wall in here on Sketchup - Oooh, yes, I can').

There  were a few other changes that were made as we went forwards (the stairs,  the downstairs bathroom layout, the windows facing the verandah, roof over the first floor balcony) but basically  this is what the builder was given.

Now the more technically  minded would realise that there is no scale to this thing.  The reason  for this was I was too lazy to try and add one, but the excuse I gave  was that I wanted to make sure that we maximised the use of the existing  wood we had.  If the posts were 11 feet high then there was no point in  making the ceilings 9 feet and lopping 2 perfectly decent feet off the end.  

As I write this I rather cringe in embarrassment at the admission, but we  left it up to the builder to work out the best dimensions to go with.  The only guidance was I wanted between 3 metres and 4 metres between the upright posts (if in doubt then the larger the better) and minimum 3 metre ceilings on the ground and first floor.

----------


## Roobarb

> Great little thread in the making here, keep it coming, I think ill start checking in at TD again!
> 
> good luck with the build



Thanks Sunsetter, good to have you aboard...!

----------


## Roobarb

It was about in February this year that we finished the highly technical evaluation of the various builder's proposals and agreed to go with the guy who we had met buying his vegetables in the market.

I wanted to get him to start right away.  Pick the nearest auspicious date, pay a bit more if it's going to take the monk a bit more research to find a closer one sort of thing and let's get going.

The builder though had different ideas.  He said that he was just finishing off another house and didn't like trying to run two jobs at a time so could only start in April.

Whilst this was a bit frustrating, ultimately when the house was built/finished didn't really matter to us.  More importantly however it was actually quite reassuring.  He seemed to have some pride in his work.

Did he want any payment up front as a deposit?

Not really, just 50K or so when he started to get the ball rolling and then the rest spilt into three payments of (I think) when the roof was on, the walls were done and when the house was completed.  Any variations are agreed and paid for on the spot - well, within week or so.

All seemed too good to be true.

----------


## Bettyboo

> He had a look at the pictures and reckoned 150K or so for the small one and 430K for the big one (labour only).


Can this gent come down to NN and work???  :Smile: 

That's a nice house, that's gonna cost bundles, looks like a 2 million + house to me... 

Keep it coming, Rhubarb, no custard here...

----------


## Roobarb

> Can this gent come down to NN and work??? 
> 
> That's a nice house, that's gonna cost bundles, looks like a 2 million + house to me... 
> 
> Keep it coming, Rhubarb, no custard here...


You might upset your in-laws a bit if you bring someone else in to spend your money Betty.  All those brownie points will quickly wash away...  :Smile:  

Kind of hoping it's not a 2 million + house as I'll be stuck out here for a good while longer trying to pay for it if it is. 

There's not really a budget per se but, not including buying the old wooden houses, the aim is to get to a basic finish at a bit over a million Baht (materials and labour).  So long as the thing doesn't fall down or get eaten by termites over the coming years then we can fiddle around with tidying up stuff and complete it to a standard that we choose when we need to. 

I really have no idea what it's going to end up costing (other than it will be more than I told my wife).  If it gets too much we can always down tools for a year or so whilst we lick the financial wounds.  

My take on it is that we've got an opportunity to have a crack at it.  If we don't give it a go then we will never know...

----------


## Bettyboo

^sounds great - all the best with it. Likely it'll turn out wonderfully, if expensive.  :Smile: 

That roof looks more majestic than the local wats...

----------


## Roobarb

^ Thanks Betty, we're definitely going for quantity over quality here.

I'll try to round up the total spend at the end of this.

----------


## Roobarb

Gosh, page three already and still no pics of any construction.

Apologies all.  Time to get the ball rolling.

First things first, time to clear all the weeds and stuff off the land:



Now I would have thought that a quick run over with the front scraper thing would have done the trick, after all the 1 metre of fill we had put there had already shrunk to about half that size.

But...

What on earth is this guy up to?  I think he's getting a bit over excited:



I'm wondering if he realised that we are planning on building a house here. 

I was later told that the soil had set so solidly that they needed to break it up a bit.  Fair enough - job done:




Actually the thing I was most impressed with was the aspirational statement that the tractor driver's canopy made:



If anyone ever calls him a useless cox he can simply blame the equipment

----------


## Koetjeka

> Originally Posted by Roobarb
> 
> He had a look at the pictures and reckoned 150K or so for the small one and 430K for the big one (labour only).
> 
> 
> Can this gent come down to NN and work??? 
> 
> That's a nice house, that's gonna cost bundles, looks like a 2 million + house to me... 
> 
> Keep it coming, Rhubarb, no custard here...


You might want to consider sun shading for the ground floor, it's going to be SO hot with these walls catching all of the sunlight.

----------


## Roobarb

[quote=Koetjeka;2630605]


> You might want to consider sun shading for the ground floor, it's going to be SO hot with these walls catching all of the sunlight.


Thanks Koetjeka, it's a good point.  For some reason the pictures on my screen do make the house taller and thinner than the actual plan so I'd hope that it will be more shaded than it seems.

For the time being I'm going to see how it goes. the wall in question faces North East and is shaded by a stand of trees fairly close by.  The only one that will probably catch the brunt of direct sunshine will be the end kitchen wall which faces south east.  We may do a sort of 1 metre 'skirt' directly under the wood walls of the first floor if we find that the sun is a problem.

----------


## Roobarb

Next thing, knock up a small shed to store materials in at one end and for some of the guys to sleep in at the other.

All in all I've seen worse sheds:



The site is not yet connected to the mains power so a small second-hand genset was bought and also housed in the shed



As  has been mentioned, the major problem that we have is that as we are  not on site we have to leave the builder and the in-laws to make certain  decisions with regards to materials.

I was, um, surprised, to see that pre-cast concrete pillars were being used rather than ones cast on site:





Because  there is a delay of two to three weeks between something happening and  us getting the photo, by the time I see something I don't like it's too  late. 

Of all aspects of the build, this is probably the part that I was least happy about.  On saying that they do seem pretty chunky and there was a reasonable amount of steel poking out of the ends (how far it goes down I hope I'll never find out...)

I've  sort of resigned myself to the fact that if we don't mess with their  formula then it will probably all work out in the end, at least for the  basics.  This is how they build houses in this area and, like it or not,  it seems to work.

----------


## Roobarb

Next up - I haven't a clue what this photo was of.

Looks like they've decided to take the opportunity for a quick game of boules



I think perhaps they are trying to work out where to dig the foundation holes.

----------


## Roobarb

Shortly afterwards the chosen day came, and an enthusiastic group arrived to get the building under way.

First up - hang around and wait.



Then a bit of ceremonial stuff



It sort of look like a leek that's been tied to a ducking stool



_"Chai, our last client was a Welshman and never paid us, don't think of doing the same..."_

And so up the posts begin to go:

----------


## Roobarb

Not sure if anyone knows why, but there seemed to be two different ceremonial things they had:

The leek...



... and what looks like a fish trap or something



What does it all mean?

----------


## Bettyboo

The post is up, so we're away!  :Smile:

----------


## Roobarb

Anyway, excitement over and they set to work getting more of the posts up:

----------


## Roobarb

Once all the posts were planted they then started lashing them all together.

First up bolt the tops together, then it's the shuttering for making the ground beams:

----------


## Roobarb

I was still a bit concerned about the quality of the precast concrete posts, but my fears were somewhat allayed when I saw these.



Not that they are a worthy substitute obviously, but the guys clearly cared enough about doing the job properly that they had taken the effort to make these little rebar riser things.  I therefore had to assume that they were not going to be too half assed about the more fundamental aspects of the build.

----------


## Roobarb

A few days later and the shuttering comes off:



Work has already started on constructing the beams to support the first level's concrete bathroom floor.

In the foreground are a bunch of concrete pipes that will eventually become the outside pillars on the downstairs verandah bit.

A few days after that and the bathroom floor bit has been completed.  A post has gone up for the kitchen 'extension' too.

----------


## nigelandjan

Brilliant thread rudebub absolutely loving it mate.
 :Smile: 
At least you and me are walking the walk Bro, , you seen any of Betty build?  Na, , me neither  :Smile:

----------


## Bettyboo

> you seen any of Betty build?


We raised the land, FiL did a bamboo plan, and the workers start on the 14th. I will be receiving weekly pictures which I will be putting into my building thread (which is already gloriously long despite very little actual work...).  :Smile: 

Mine will counterbalance your successes; members will have great joy at ridiculing the poor foundation, leaky roof, incorrect wall spacing, badly pored concrete, electrical dangers, lack of proper sewage/grey water management and general tardiness.

----------


## nigelandjan

Thanks again RB for a brill thread I have read right through it now, , BTW , I have nicked one or two of the early pics to make paintings,  will post em in here later if you like or chuck em in my art thread.

You sound like a really great guy and I wish you and your all the best with this build,, great entertainment on TD

----------


## Roobarb

> members will have great joy at ridiculing the poor foundation, leaky roof, incorrect wall spacing, badly pored concrete, electrical dangers, lack of proper sewage/grey water management and general tardiness.


You need to get a wiggle on there Betty, I'm sure my poor foundations, leaky roof, incorrect wall spacings, badly poured concrete, electrical dangers, lack of proper sewage/grey water management and general tardiness will eclipse yours...  :Smile: 

Quite glad that there are two similar sort of "let 'em get on with it and we'll fix it later" builds happening at the same time...

----------


## Roobarb

> BTW , I have nicked one or two of the early pics to make paintings,  will post em in here later if you like or chuck em in my art thread.


I'd be delighted, indeed honoured, if you were to post some of your paintings here Nigel, it would lend the build an air of quality that I suspect it will be otherwise lacking.

Just don't use any of the pics as the basis for technical plans to demonstrate how to properly build a house...  :Smile: 

Loving your build BTW, I wish you'd started a year or so ago as there are a few ideas I would have liked to have copied.

Betty now has no excuse not to get his one exactly right...

----------


## nigelandjan

:Smile: Cheers mate mabe a bit later we can call round to see you once I have finished painting with the 8" brush  :Smile: 

If the painting turns out ok I'll bring it with me for you to hang in the outside bog

----------


## Roobarb

> Cheers mate mabe a bit later we can call round to see you once I have finished painting with the 8" brush 
> 
> If the painting turns out ok I'll bring it with me for you to hang in the outside bog


Nigel, it would be a real pleasure to have you both over once the dust has settled at our respective places...

Your picture in the outside bog...  Not a chance mate.  Apart from anything else much of the wall space there has already been earmarked as a sort of gallery of unwanted gifts from the family  :Smile:

----------


## Roobarb

Not having had a lot to do with the details of how the builder was  planning on putting the place together I was a bit surprised to see the  ground beams were, well, rather above ground.  I suppose I'd just not  put two and two together but in most other builds they do seem to be a  bit lower.

What I had forgotten was that I had asked the builder  to raise the building a bit more to bring the house up to about a metre  and a half above the level of the land, in part to catch the breeze a  little more and also because of a niggling concern with regards to the  flooding when I first saw the land.  

Sensibly enough, he built the beams first then brought in the soil to fill around them.



I'm not sure how many truckloads were delivered, but I guess it was a fair few.

----------


## Bettyboo

Surprised Somchai didn't knock your beams over...  :Smile:

----------


## Roobarb

Indeed Betty, worrying at the time although 'Somchai the Truck' turned out to be considerably less concerning than then next chap to appear on the scene.

Following the delivery of the soil it then had to be flattened out so, entering stage right, we got 'Somchai the Tractor'.

Now I'm guessing that he was not on an hourly rate as he was clearly eager to get started, I thought he might at least have removed the plough:



There we go, a bit more of a challenge for him...



... made all the more interesting by still having half a ton of steel swinging around several metres off the back of his tractor: 



Job done and it seems, somewhat remarkably, with all posts are still standing:



Actually I was quite pleased to see that the ground beams held up to having a tractor being driven over them.  They must be fairly firmly attached to the posts.

----------


## Roobarb

Once the soil had flattened out then it was subjected to a fairly good wetting.  Whilst the site is not yet attached to the mains water and there is no well, the guys rigged up a pump at the water's edge:



This was sometime in May, the water level was pretty low in the lake so they had a long way to pump it.  You can just see the frame of the house at the far end of the stand of trees (just to the left)

----------


## Roobarb

Whilst this was going on there was a move afoot to sort out the wood from the houses that we had dismantled.  The primary reason for us pressing ahead with the build was that we had nowhere to put the wood other than into a new house.

There had been a bit of work going on with cleaning it up whilst it was in the in-law's back garden:



Once cleaned up it was loaded onto a trailer to be taken over to the site:



And then in a wonderfully cloak and dagger fashion was transferred from one side of the village to the other in what appears to have been the dead of night:

----------


## Roobarb

Some of the wood was also being worked on at the site:



All around the place there were little piles of siding planks and floorboards:



... and the woodpile stretched off into the distance in our impromptu woodyard under the trees:

----------


## Roobarb

The builder has been pretty good at weeding out the bad wood from the good.

This was deemed to be a good post and came up beautifully having been cleaned up:



But there was an increasing pile of rejected posts and beams, either because there was evidence of termite activity or because they were badly cracked or split:



It was about this time that we had been offered another village house for about Baht 50K, and seeing that we would need some more wood we bought that one too, had it dismantled and brought to our little site 'factory' for processing.

----------


## Roobarb

Obviously with all this wood lying about security was something of a worry, so the shed was extended and my brother in law kindly offered to kip here until at least we had the posts bolted onto the house structure:



I did spend several hours looking for the floorboards until I was told that many of them had been used to make the floor of the shed.  I guess they are less likely to be nicked if someone is actually sleeping on them.

----------


## Bettyboo

You have a lot of wood there.

Chainsaw Somchai looks scary... Nice pics; love to see work actually being done.  :Smile:

----------


## Roobarb

Back on the actual structure things were moving forwards rapidly.

Posts were beginning to go up on the first floor:



Starting at the master bedroom:



It was about at this point that it seemed to be starting to become a house.  I think that before, when it was just a concrete frame, we could still stop and leave it.  It seemed that now the wood was going up we were going to be committed to see the thing through.

It was also at this point that I reckoned that I really ought to do a thread on this, and that I'm a little embarrassed to admit was a good six months ago.

----------


## Bettyboo

The master bedroom looks lovely and airy...  :Smile:

----------


## Roobarb

Whilst some guys were working on the woodwork, others were sorting out the round concrete posts for the downstairs verandah.  Quite simple really - fix your rebar to the base, stick a concrete pipe over the top and the fill it with more concrete:



Once the posts were completed then the next step was to create the concrete beams for the first floor balcony's floor:

----------


## Roobarb

> You have a lot of wood there.
> 
> Chainsaw Somchai looks scary...


Yup, there was a fair amount of wood.  Basically the equivalent of three fairly shabby nine post village houses had creaked their last by this stage.

Chainsaw Somchai - I hadn't actually noticed the guy, you're right - look at the size of his chainsaw.  What on earth does he need one that big for?  

I'd better make sure I pay the guys in full at the end of this build...

----------


## Loombucket

> It sort of looks like a leek


I think it's a baby Banana. The symbol of new life!

Looking good Roobarb, I like the general design. Can't wait to see it with a few happy faces peeping out the windows.

----------


## nigelandjan

One of the best building threads I've seen on here in a while,  with such beautifull pictures.

An absolute credit to you mate,  thanks so much for the time and effort involved in sharing it with us.

BTW that shed your bil slept in resembles the shed I have to shower and do my ablutions in for the last 6 weeks, ,, never mind not be long now and I can sit down in comfort to evacuate whilst reading Dills latest posts then have a warm shower ( without the company of frogs )  :Smile: 

good on ya mate

----------


## Roobarb

> Originally Posted by Roobarb
> 
> It sort of looks like a leek
> 
> 
> I think it's a baby Banana. The symbol of new life!
> 
> Looking good Roobarb, I like the general design. Can't wait to see it with a few happy faces peeping out the windows.


Ah, thanks Loombucket.  So signifying new life it is really the polar opposite of being tied to a ducking stool then.  Showing the depth of my cultural understanding at a fairly early stage here!  I did at least suspect it was probably not a leek.

Any idea what the wooden thing it was tied to was?  I'm sure I used to see them in some of the shops that used to sell junk and 'antique' nick nacks in Chatuchak Market many, many moons ago. 

So if the banana is the symbol of new life, I guess the other one, the fish trap, has something to do with plenty/fortune or the like?

Is it even a fish trap???

I guess that this is all stuff to ask Mrs Roobarb.  Whether she knows is quite another matter.

----------


## Roobarb

> The master bedroom looks lovely and airy...


Well yes, it does.  

I've been studying the art of levitation in my spare time here in India which would therefore also allow us to do away with the floor.  :Smile: 



I'm rather hoping that there's still a bit more assembly work for the builders to do up there...

----------


## Roobarb

> One of the best building threads I've seen on here in a while,  with such beautifull pictures.
> 
> An absolute credit to you mate,  thanks so much for the time and effort involved in sharing it with us.
> 
> BTW that shed your bil slept in resembles the shed I have to shower and do my ablutions in for the last 6 weeks, ,, never mind not be long now and I can sit down in comfort to evacuate whilst reading Dills latest posts then have a warm shower ( without the company of frogs ) 
> 
> good on ya mate


Thanks Nigel.  Unfortunately the quality of the photos will soon take a bit of a plunge as they will start to be taken on one of the in-laws' phones rather than with a proper camera and the rainy season was fast approaching, the blue skies disappeared behind grey, English, clouds.

Actually, one of the reasons the guys were cracking on was that they wanted to try to get a roof on before it started raining.

----------


## Roobarb

A few more shots of the site as of early May

This one looking to the front, or back depending what side you take as being the front.  Quite logically my wife assumes that the front door is at the front of the house and therefore that's the front.  

Because the only bit I'm really interested in is the bit with the view, and this is the 'face' of the house then to me the front is around at the back.  Anyway, so as to keep things clear I'll refer to the side of the house with the front door as the front, and the side of the house with the balcony as the back.

Sticking with this format will also mean that if any of you come visiting I won't have to receive you in the backside, and that's an important consideration for all of us.

Ahem, so looking at the back of the site:



... and then looking across with the front of the house to the left and the back to the right:



You can see that the soil they have added has been pretty well wetted down and compacted after the manic tractor-driving Somchai's visit.

And finally a view from the other end of the site looking back at where the above photo was taken from:

----------


## nigelandjan

Here you are mate a little rendition of one of your earlier pics of your land.

It's in acrylics and I'm sorry a bit naff but I'm only just starting to use this gear,  mabe I'll do a nice pastel later of another one.

----------


## Roobarb

I'm not sure why, but I was really pleased to see the beginnings of the wooden frame go up.  Another shot of the master bedroom, this time from the back:



The worker's shed/BIL's residence is in the background on the left, and our stock of wood is stored under the trees at the back of this photo.

----------


## Roobarb

> Here you are mate a little rendition of one of your earlier pics of your land.
> 
> It's in acrylics and I'm sorry a bit naff but I'm only just starting to use this gear,  mabe I'll do a nice pastel later of another one.


Wow, great stuff Nigel, you've really captured the hills and background superbly.  I looked at it and immediately knew where it was.

You're in the middle of building your own house at the moment.  How on earth do you find the time to do something like this in what is it, two days since you said you would have a crack at it?  I'm seriously impressed.

Here's a picture from roughly the same vantage point (a bit lower and being still in the dry season the lake has pretty much disappeared)



If you're not that partial to your rendition then don't let it languish unloved.  I'd be delighted to let it grace one of my walls, once we've finished the place (which given this thread is running about six months behind real time should be in the next week or so).

Many thanks for posting it Nige.  The effort is much appreciated.  Cheers

----------


## Roobarb

Grrrr 

TD tells me that is frowns upon monogamy and is urging me to spread my love.  

Nigel, I'll have to green you later...

----------


## nigelandjan

Cheers mate,  got the same prob

----------


## Roobarb

Things are beginning to get quite exciting on the construction forum.  

- Rickschoppers is back and about to re-start his project
- Marmite's build is showing some signs of seismic activity
- BankaoDreamer is creating a fabulous looking traditional country home
- Aircut is about to start building a bridge
- Simon is building another hotel
- Nigelandjan is (are?) getting close to completing what must be the fastest, and least traditional builds we've seen
- Stevefarang is getting close to completing what must be one of the slowest...
- Kurgen has recently finished his pool, with promises of more to come
- Itnt has just today fired up a thread on his build
- Bettyboo has reached 8 pages of posts on his thread without having yet actually started to build anything whatsoever (but has promised that he would).   

Unlike all the other threads, and entirely because of laziness on my part, this one is running a little behind the reality on the ground.  

I mention this in way of explanation because, unknown to you, as you read this very post you're being sucked through a sort of online wormhole.  Whilst it is just a day since my last update, we have now jumped forwards a month in the build.

So it is with apologies to those posters who are giving you a real-time update with their ongoing progress that we now arrive at the end of May 2013.

----------


## Roobarb

Having left the builder to crack on with things for a month it was with a degree of trepidation that we returned.

There had been some good progress.

Looking at the front of the house from the north:



... and then from the east:



The builder said that the main rush was to get the roof on before the rain started in earnest at the beginning of June.  Quite reasonably he said that if there was no roof then everything gets wet and slippery which then slows things down.

Apparently they had built a few of the downstairs walls just to add a little stability to the structure as they worked on the first floor.

----------


## Roobarb

Wandering around to the back of the house things were beginning to come together there too.

The doorway for the outside loo is in place, the downstairs verandah is taking shape as is the balcony above:



The front bedroom (OK, the back one but you know what I mean) is there in skeletal form:



... and the master bedroom, still delightfully airy, has now got the start of a roof structure too:

----------


## Bettyboo

It's gonna be a really nice size, lots of floorspace; 200 sqm? More than enough space for the inlaws (quite a few inlaws...).

----------


## Roobarb

> It's gonna be a really nice size, lots of floorspace; 200 sqm? More than enough space for the inlaws (quite a few inlaws...).


Yup, I'm not too sure what the floorspace is going to end up at.  For the mathematically inclined each post in the main bit of the house is 3.85 metres apart (or thereabouts...).  The kitchen/master bedroom extension bit is 5 metres x 4 metres and the front door area is about 3 metres x 3.85 metres.  I'll have a crack at working it out at some stage. 

The parents in law already have a decent sized place just down the road, and whilst the BIL and his family are currently staying with them he's started work on building his own place, so I'm hoping the chances of infestation are relatively low.

On saying that it is Thailand so who knows.  There's enough land, I guess I can always spend a few more years in India and then build another one...  :Confused:

----------


## Roobarb

I was only up there for one day on this trip, and it happened to be a Sunday so none of the crew were working.  It gave me a good chance to have a poke around.

The problem with doing this is you start to look at things and realise that there is a better way of doing things, and that's exactly what happened.

First up - When drawing the house initially, I'd drawn in a rather Victorian looking garden door thing:



The purpose was that as you came in through the front door you would be able to see right through the house and out to the view on the other side.  Probably the major reason that it was still there was that I quite enjoyed trying to draw it on Sketchup and didn't want to delete it.

The builder had left a gap in the wall he had built for the door, but wanted dimensions to take it forwards.  This picture is looking in from the front door area looking towards the rear of the house:



The more I thought about it the less I wanted a door here.  From a practical point of view the folding doors in the breakfast room would be invariably open during the day so this door would never be used.  Secondly I didn't want to try to achieve anything too complicated without being there, and if it was a disaster then it would be a relatively expensive one.  The final thought was that it was directly opposite the front door, and that's apparently a bad Feng Shui thing.  I'm not a great believer in Feng Shui but some of the principles make sense in the terms of the feel of a place and I felt it was probably right in this regard.

So the first change to the plan was to ditch the door and stick in a normal window instead:

----------


## Roobarb

Changing the door to a window was an easy change at this stage.

The next bit was a little more complicated.

I was not too happy with the initial plan for the downstairs bathrooms for a couple of reasons:

- At nearly 2 metres by 4 metres they were quite a big waste of space
- The inside bathroom door opened directly into the hall, and faced the kitchen.  This was not such a problem with the configuration of the staircase, but I was not happy with that either.

The original plan:



By reducing the bathroom sizes down to about 2 metres by 2 metres then I could squeeze in a sort of corridor/study area under the stairs which would make the house seem a bit bigger and also mean that the downstairs bathroom door didn't open into the main living area:



Standing in the building site it didn't look like there was going to be enough room, but having just renovated one of our offices I remembered that the workstations were 5 feet by 5 feet and had plenty enough space for a desk and chair, so at 5 feet wide we could have a narrowish desk under the window.

But therein was the tricky part:



Not only had the wall been completely built, but there was a concrete lintel running right across where the window would go.

I knew it would always annoy me if I didn't make the change, so down the wall would come.

The revised look:

----------


## Roobarb

The next change was incorporating a roof over the upstairs balcony

I have no idea why I'd left it off in the first place as the south west facing glass doors would get the sun streaming through them from about 3pm every day and the balcony would be unusable pretty much all the time.

The new plan for the balcony:

----------


## Roobarb

The final change was to the stairs.  Initially they had doubled back on themselves, and I'd done this for a few reasons:

- It gave a bit of privacy for people using the downstairs bathroom
- The top portion of the stairs went up to the top floor directly opposite the front door, so as you came in your eyes would be drawn upwards towards the glass doors on the first floor (and blinded with the late afternoon sunshine...)
- It provided a break between the front door and the Victorian garden door thing

With the change to the bathroom design, the roof on the balcony and ditching the back door, it made sense just to run the stairs straight down the wall:



The builder charged an extra 20K for the balcony roof and the rebuilding of the wall.  Seemed reasonable enough.

----------


## Roobarb

Continuing the wander around, the view from the kitchen through the hall to the downstairs bathroom/soon to be study area:



The wall for the bathroom also needed to be cut back by about 2 feet.  The idea was that it would look more like this when completed:

----------


## Roobarb

A few more photos.

Looking though what will be a wall to the doorway between the hall and the kitchen:



The view outside from what will be the kitchen door:



... and finally a shot looking across the verandah towards the kitchen:

----------


## Roobarb

One of the things I like about the property is the views, and so reckoned that a climb up to the roof level had to be worth a crack.

Standing above the master bedroom it does seem quite a long way down, and looking at the woodwork I have no idea what's permanent and what's temporary (i.e. what you can stand on or not):



... but the balcony looks a good size:

----------


## Roobarb

Once I had got my balance then the view was actually really good from up here.   Seemed a shame to stick a roof on the place, but the builder felt it was worth doing.

If you'll forgive the rather dodgy attempt at panorama shots...

Looking south:



... and then west:



... and north



... and finally to the east:



The 'Parisian' avenue is the green grassy strip in the picture above (used to be one of the fish ponds).  Unfortunately the trees on one side were taken out by FIL, not sure why but there we are.  The garden is a long-term project anyway, get the house done first.

----------


## Roobarb

All in all I was happy with the way the place was panning out.  Not the most sophisticated or technologically advanced building methods, but it's a village build in the boonies and the builder was doing what we had asked of him.



It was now time to head back to India for a few weeks to earn a bit more to go towards paying for this.

----------


## Roobarb

I was away for the next six weeks, and over that time was sent various photos showing progress.  The quality if the pics is fairly poor as they were transmitted by the rather odd method of being taken on a tablet or phone, posted on facebook, then copied from facebook at this end and saved.  

Like with building the house, it was easier to stick with technology that was locally understood.

A few days afterwards, the kitchen window frames were getting installed:



As may be apparent by this stage I had been less than assiduous in my Quantity Surveying responsibilities and so the purchasing of window frames was all happened in a bit of a rush.

Happily for us a branch of Global House had just opened in Chaiyaphum a few months before we started building so, having been told by the builder that he needed window and door frames we piled in the car to go and get some.

What I'd not stopped to consider was a couple of things:

1) Because there was no scale on my drawings, and I'd not really taken the time to measure the actual room and ceiling sizes as they were being built, I had no real idea of what sizes of window frames I was after.

2) I'd not really considered that standard window frames come in standard sizes, and that Global House may not have enough of any particular size in stock.

It was only having sailed in to the shop that these considerations came to the fore.

Happily I did have my laptop with me so it was out with that to count the different shapes of windows we need, then see what they had in stock that would roughly fit the criteria.

All in all it worked out fairly well except for one window in the kitchen where I seemed to have ordered two window frames of differing heights.  

The offending window frame:



Changing it was not a major problem, and given my general ineptitude at this sort of thing I was happy that this was the only mistake that we made when buying the window frames.

----------


## Roobarb

Whilst some were fiddling around with windows, there was a race on to try to get the roof structure finished and the place under cover before the rains started in earnest.

The roof was something of a compromise. Initially I'd wanted to have a traditional curving tiled roof, similar to the stunning roof that DavidByron is putting on his house at the moment (and for any of you who have not seen his thread then it's in the 'North East Thailand - Isaan Forum' section of TD, the thread titled 'Day 1, Udon Thani').  Actually, here's a link to it:

https://teakdoor.com/north-east-thail...don-thani.html (Day 1: Udon Thani)

Having seen the house structure that had been built so far I was concerned about putting a heavy roof on the building and so for that, and equally for reasons of cost and potential maintenance if it was not done properly, we decided that terracotta roof tiles were not for us.

Being from the UK, the immediate choice is some form of roof tile over that tarry roofing felt stuff, it puts up with the UK weather pretty well so has to be a solid contender.  

Looking around on the net though I began to be sold on the idea of a metal sheet roof, specifically that this seems to be the preferred choice in places like Australia as a simple, low-maintenance solution.  Now I know that I'm risking some abuse here when I say that the majority of Australians can't be wrong, but I'm sure that they don't all sit in their houses wearing their hats with corks hanging off so as to keep the rain off.  The things must therefore work.

Having managed to get past the images of corrugated iron we opted for a colourbond roof with an insulation layer underneath, less for insulation but more in a hope to deaden the sound when it rained.  I reckon that colourbond, with insulation underneath and then a layer of gypsum would be reasonably soundproof. 

This is the sort of stuff:



I posted this pic on Betty's thread yesterday, he's still in the denial stage...  Toy house my ass Betty!  :Smile: 

By mid June there was the basic roof structure in place on the main section:

----------


## bankao dreamer

We have the same metal sheet roof on our house Roobarb there is nothing wrong with it. It is light and cheap and when it comes with the attached installation very cool and it does deaden the sound of the rain. Even if I had shed loads of money I would still use it.

----------


## Bettyboo

Some more excellent pictures and excellent commentary.

Why are your builders doing what you want, and why is it coming along so well - I don't understand...

The house looks really great; gonna be a lovely place, for sure.  :Smile: 

Not convinced about the roof, but Bakao Dreeamer has done an excellent job with his place, as have you Roobarb, so I'll bow down to superior knowledge.  :Smile: 

You bastards are putting my thread to shame...

----------


## Roobarb

> We have the same metal sheet roof on our house Roobarb there is nothing wrong with it. It is light and cheap and when it comes with the attached installation very cool and it does deaden the sound of the rain. Even if I had shed loads of money I would still use it.


Cheers BD, that's what I hoped.  Glad to hear it's not too noisy in the rain.

----------


## Dillinger

Great thread Roobarb, lovely looking house and views too

----------


## Roobarb

> Some more excellent pictures and excellent commentary.
> 
> Why are your builders doing what you want, and why is it coming along so well - I don't understand...
> 
> The house looks really great; gonna be a lovely place, for sure. 
> 
> Not convinced about the roof, but Bakao Dreeamer has done an excellent job with his place, as have you Roobarb, so I'll bow down to superior knowledge. 
> 
> You bastards are putting my thread to shame...


Putting your thread to shame?

You need to actually include stuff about building in a building thread...  You have at least got your roof chosen now, so there's a good start.  :rofl: 

I think the trick to getting your builders to do what you want is to start off with little or no real plan, and then be flexible about how you stick to it.  That way neither side is too sure on what they agreed to in the first place.

Another key bit of advice, and this is where you may struggle Betty, is to find a builder who hasn't got a clue about building.  He's far less likely to argue a point on the basis of experience if he doesn't have any to begin with.

Actually we've just been lucky with our guy.  He's from the next door village and this project is something of a status build for him so he's going all out to try and get it right as he reckons it will stand him in good stead for future work.  There are quite a few holiday homes being built by Bangkok-based Thais up at the nearby reservoir and his sights are firmly set on a piece of that action.

----------


## Roobarb

> Great thread Roobarb, lovely looking house and views too


Cheers Dill, appreciate it.

----------


## Roobarb

Having mentioned windows then it does bring to mind what was probably the only one point where things did get a bit tense.  My wife was back in Thailand at the time and, bless her, was finding this project management lark a bit on the stressful side.  It was certainly not helped by me pushing her to send photos, then requesting things I saw on them to be changed.

One of the changes that I had asked for was for there to be more space between the windows for the downstairs bathrooms.  It's on the last pic, but I'll post it again below.  The windows I'm talking about are the ones on the bottom right of the front of the house by the crouching person.



As the outside bathroom is a bit smaller than the inside one and I was concerned that the dividing wall would end up in the middle of a window.

There was a degree of harrumphing for the Thailand end of the phone but the point was acknowledged and agreed to.

Roll it on a week or so, and a few more annoying criticisms from the idiot farang who was sitting overseas and glibly issuing instructions to do stuff again (  ::chitown::  ) and then this photo turns up:



The bottom two windows don't line up with the top two, and the ones on the far side are far further apart than the ones on the near side.  Moreover they have entirely forgotten to put the windows in for the upstairs bathrooms....

Deep breath.  Pick up the phone.  Gentle suggestion that perhaps it could be changed a little so that everything all lined up?  Might look a bit nicer?  Maybe?

There was a long, long pause on the end of the phone.

Then there was a sharp inhale of breath - oh god this was going to be nasty. 

I knew that the inhale of breath was necessary to fuel an ensuing eruption. What I didn't reckon on was that it would be of a magnitude that would have put Krakatoa to shame.  We're talking molten lava, pyroclastic flows, sulfuric acid.  The whole works here.  Nature at its most violent.  Nothing whatsoever to be left out.

This, um, conversation was then followed by a period of radio silence, and the pictures stopped coming.  I had stuck to my guns on the window placement but I had no idea what the outcome would be and simply resigned myself to having the walls knocked down at a later stage and getting it redone properly. 

A few days later communication channels were reopened again.  The windows had been changed and by and large all do now line up.  The far side ones are still a bit further apart than the near side ones but, as I now know only too well, not so much as it makes any real difference.

I'd learned to pick my battles.

----------


## Bettyboo

It doesn't sound like you've been very sabai sabai, quite the opposite - Mr Hands On...  :Smile:

----------


## Roobarb

> It doesn't sound like you've been very sabai sabai, quite the opposite - Mr Hands On...


Well, the thing is this.  The build has been managed by my MIL who it has to be said has been excellent throughout, but my expectations on what she would be able to achieve were limited so sabai sabai was the obvious way forwards.

My wife was out in Thailand during June (48 degrees in Delhi, not worth hanging around here if you don't need to be) and so I reckoned that this was a good chance to get some stuff done the right way, and I used the opportunity to try and get a bit more 'hands on'.

As you saw the hand was pretty quickly bitten off so after that it was, well, 'blue roof if you want it dear'.   :Smile: 

Sabai sabai from hereon in.   I recommend it to everyone...

----------


## Bettyboo

> As you saw the hand was pretty quickly bitten off


 :rofl: 




> so after that it was, well, 'blue roof if you want it dear'


 :Sad:

----------


## Roobarb

> Originally Posted by Roobarb
> 
> so after that it was, well, 'blue roof if you want it dear'


Sabai sabai Betty



Sabai sabai

----------


## Bettyboo

:smiley laughing:

----------


## Roobarb

It's a bloody good pic that one Betty, I think I might stick a copy of it up in the office.

In a funny way, for me at least, the house in Thailand is meant to be all about just kicking back, relaxing and being one's own peculiar self in a Jack Nicholson sort of way.  The house is my escape from being a corporate suit and all the expectations which it entails.  

It was actually the window incident that made me realise there was no  point in having the place if it was going to be a battle in creating it,  there would be bad vibes before we'd even moved in.  So what if the place ain't perfect, or if other houses look smarter.  As long as it gives me a chance to be myself for a few weeks of the year then it's fulfilling its brief.

Sabai sabai  :Smile: 

Hell, I'm beginning to sound like a hippy.

 

I've got some corporate ass kicking I'm expected to get on with tomorrow and before you ask, no, I don't run a donkey sanctuary.  Spread sheets and Powerpoints are calling...

... but for now I'll continue with my escape and do a bit more on this thread I think.

----------


## Roobarb

... actually, thinking about it, at times my office here could be easily mistaken for a donkey sanctuary.

----------


## Bettyboo

> It's a bloody good pic that one Betty


Indeed it is.




> It was actually the window incident that made me realise there was no point in having the place if it was going to be a battle in creating it


The uneven window will add character; parallelism is nice and structural, but controlled deviance is art...




> corporate ass kicking


That will be seen as gayism in these here parts...  :Smile: 

I gave up the corporate 15 years ago, miss the money, but not dealing with all the stuff. Enjoy...

----------


## Roobarb

And so the rush continued to get the roof on before the rains started.



It was a near run thing but ultimately they didn't make it:



A major drawback was that the guy who was welding the roof together, and was assiduously following local health and safety practices, managed to get a welding spark in his eye and then as he jerked backwards one of his safety flip-flops got caught on a beam and he fell off the roof.

Thankfully he was just above the bedroom on the right in the photo above and his fall was broken by the bedroom's ceiling rafters, but nonetheless he had to be taken to hospital to get his eye seen to and was off work for several weeks.  Happily he did make a full recovery, though didn't seem to have learned from the experience.  The welding mask bought for him remained unused as far as I know.

----------


## Roobarb

> Originally Posted by Roobarb
> 
> corporate ass kicking
> 
> 
> That will be seen as gayism in these here parts... 
> 
> I gave up the corporate 15 years ago, miss the money, but not dealing with all the stuff. Enjoy...


Yup, hate all the stuff (and nonsense) but it's paying for this place at the moment.  I just have to grin and pretend to be a part of it all...

Sabai sabai.

Where's that pic of Jack?

----------


## Roobarb

So whilst waiting for the welder to reappear, the rest of the crew busied themselves as best as they could with some of the wooden framework.  Here are some more windows going in:

----------


## Roobarb

There was also a bit of work going on to fix my changes down below as well.

The hole for the back door that I decided against has been filled in, the other wall knocked down and single lintel replaced with two.  The two window frames have also been installed: 



The kitchen window frame that I had cocked up was also replaced with one the right size:



All in all I was giving them plenty to (re)do.

It was about this time that both the roof and, separately, the welder showed up.

As mentioned earlier we went for the Colourbond sheets, dark brown as it would not make the house look too obvious, and with insulation attached to the bottom.



The sheeting comes in different thicknesses.  I can't remember what we went for but it was the thickest they could do this particular colour and style in.

----------


## bankao dreamer

^^^^
None of us realised there there is a difference between manufactures until our lads tried to fit the stuff covering our rear balcony onto the sheet that came with our house. 30mm difference in the tile spacing and 4mm in the depth Doh Doh. They got it to fit eventually and it doesn't show up that bad as its on the back of the house. Same colour as ours that Roobarb. Oh yes stunning views you have there mate.

----------


## Roobarb

> ^^^^
> None of us realised there there is a difference between manufactures until our lads tried to fit the stuff covering our rear balcony onto the sheet that came with our house. 30mm difference in the tile spacing and 4mm in the depth Doh Doh. They got it to fit eventually and it doesn't show up that bad as its on the back of the house. Same colour as ours that Roobarb. Oh yes stunning views you have there mate.


Yup, we went to three different suppliers to try to compare prices and soon discovered that it comes in different thicknesses, as does the insulation, and each manufacturer's presses for making the tile shapes was different too. It hadn't occurred to me that it would be that complicated, I thought we were getting the equivalent of corrugated iron sheets. 

Ultimately my wife chose the one we went for so I'd assume that price won the day.   I think ours is 0.35mm. Any thicker and we were told that we would need to go for the straight corrugated type that they use for factories rather than being able to have the tile effect.  The insulation was a choice of 3mm or 5mm.  We had the space so pushed the boat out and went for 5mm. 

I've just checked an old email to see if my wife sent the final specs but she didn't.  She did say that it was apparently about Baht 100,000.00 for all the roofing sheets including insulation.  No idea on how many square metres the roof is.  The covered area (between the posts) is about 176 sqm but the roof rises to about 10 feet on the ridge and there are gables, overhangs and all sorts of stuff.

A bit of an odd thing about this was that when the termite man came to lay down his termite pipes before we concreted the floor he looked at the roof, smiled, and said something along the lines of _'You'll be getting me back again soon enough to deal with the rats you will.  Mark my words, they love that there insulation stuff they do.  Chew it clean off the metal sheets.  Arrr, pesky little blighters'._ (OK it was in Thai and he didn't have a west-country accent, but you get the drift).  

I'm just assuming that the fellow was a little unhinged, possibly from years of inhaling methyl bromide or whatever it is they use to kill termites, but I do now have this slightly surreal image of hundreds of inverted rats clinging onto the roof and happily chowing down on the insulation.  Perhaps we should have gone for 3mm instead of giving them the full happy meal?

----------


## Roobarb

So we jump forwards again.  Another welder was drafted in temporarily to help whilst the first one contemplated what he must have done in a past life to deserve the injury.

The roof was beginning to take shape, with the balcony roof structure in place too:



The builder had opted for 1 metre overhangs.  In retrospect we could have done a bit more but still, we've got plenty of shaded space and the back of the house (the south side) has the balcony roof for at least half of it so the only walls really exposed to direct and prolonged sunlight are the south facing walls of the master and rear bedrooms.  

A few more pictures of the roof structure:





Still no first floor bathroom windows - best not to ask I think...

----------


## Roobarb

I had at least proof of one victory on the window front.  Probably not millimeter perfect, but good enough for this place:

----------


## Roobarb

Work had also been coming on well with construction of the wooden frame, in spite of the interruptions from the rain.

The front bedroom is beginning to take shape.  They laid the floor here to give themselves a bit of a platform to work from.  Many of the floorboards were still being used in the worker's hut.



The place was beginning to look like a house.  Seeing the little windows it seemed a bit of a shame to fill the walls in as it would block out much of the view, but the opportunity to change the design to something more racy had long passed.  Keep it simple Roobarb...

----------


## Roobarb

The upstairs living room was also beginning to gain its proportions, although walking around here was a bit tricky as the 'floor' was in reality just bits of old siding wood loosely stacked two or three thick.  Fine for your average Isaan builder, but not for my clodhopping weight.

This is a picture looking from the master bedroom, the staircase from downstairs will eventually be after the Q-con bathroom walls:



.. and then a view from the front bedroom doorway over the upstairs balcony:

----------


## Roobarb

And then, finally at the end of June, a roof was beginning to appear:



Not a lot of roof it had to be said.  Unfortunately the week they started was marked with strong winds and rain so crawling around on the roof with great big roofing sheets was not always advisable.

Not that it seemed to stop them though.



The rains had been making things a bit boggy, with some large puddles forming around the place, so a few more truckloads of soil were brought to give the water something to drain into:

----------


## Roobarb

As good as it all was, I was beginning to get a bit frustrated at the quality of both photos and the information.  After all, having spent the best part of two evenings painstakingly drawing the thing whilst watching the telly I felt a sort of paternal pride towards the place.  There was my baby being born and brought into this world without me having any part of it.

I designed (?) the place, I'm paying for it, I want a say in how it's all coming together...

... to hell with it, I'm coming out.

I did feel a bit like Cousin Avi from Snatch - for those that don't know it:


My language was less colourful, but I did understand his position.

----------


## bankao dreamer

^^^^^^^^  :smiley laughing:  :smiley laughing:  :smiley laughing: 

At least you wont encounter any Fecking Pickeys.

Nice place though mate I really like it.
Over here laugh or cry but it will be worth it in the end.

----------


## Roobarb

> ^^^^^^^^ 
> 
> At least you wont encounter any Fecking Pickeys.
> 
> Nice place though mate I really like it.
> Over here laugh or cry but it will be worth it in the end.


Nothing like a good bit of Snatch to liven up a construction thread...

Yup, should be worth it in the end.  I'm actually doing a 'Cousin Avi' tonight as apparently they are finishing the place at the moment so the end is nigh.  At least they think it is, I suspect in a rather Churchillian fashion that it may just be the end of the beginning.

I really do need to get a move on with bringing this thread up to date...

----------


## nigelandjan

Cor all that lovely timber RB, ,, I can almost smell that lumber. 

I'm gonna put me Dewalt apron on to make dinner tonight  :Smile:

----------


## Roobarb

> Cor all that lovely timber RB, ,, I can almost smell that lumber. 
> 
> I'm gonna put me Dewalt apron on to make dinner tonight


What's on the menu tonight Nige? - Chicken Teaka perhaps...

Actually you're right, there was some lovely wood that we managed to bag for this project.  The challenge I've had is in trying to get the builder from hiding it all away behind gypsum panels.  Not something I've been terribly successful with I have to say.

----------


## bankao dreamer

At least you havnt gone for the purple cushions or are they on order ? I love dags do you love dags

Snatch what a great movie so many one liners

----------


## mfosh

Hov much you pay for the roof ? m2 
Maf

----------


## mfosh

Hov much you pay for the roof ? m2 
Maf

----------


## Bettyboo

> s mentioned earlier we went for the Colourbond sheets, dark brown


How bland...  :Smile: 




> I do now have this slightly surreal image of hundreds of inverted rats clinging onto the roof and happily chowing down on the insulation.


Cats, get 2. In fact, you can have mine if you like!

That is a sizeable house. It always looked like it was gonna be big and lots of work. And, it looks big, and it looks like there's a lot of work going into it. Excellent pics and commentary, as usual.

----------


## Dillinger

Just realised how big that house is and asked the missus how many did she think could abode there, she says 8, she's the youngest of 9 which leaves a question for another time.

Coming on lovely Roobarb

----------


## Loombucket

Looking great Roobarb! It does seem to be a nice big house, which can be handy if you need to find a place to to hide from the world.

----------


## stevefarang

Looking good Roobarb. I share your frustration at not being able to be there to oversee things you want. My wife gave me a pink colored office for crying out loud !!

----------


## Bettyboo

> Just realised how big that house is and asked the missus how many did she think could abode there, she says 8, she's the youngest of 9 which leaves a question for another time.
> 
> Coming on lovely Roobarb
> __________________


Yes and yes.

There is no way that he will be keeping the inlaws outta that Mansion. They'll have a dozen in there, it'll start small with an elderly aunt staying there for a couple of days to be close to a local temple, blah blah blah, but it will end with a massive family living off of Rhoobarb...  :Smile:

----------


## BKKKevin

Curious... Why did you go for the porch floor to be concrete instead of continuing the wood out?... Was that just a lower maintenance choice?

----------


## snakeeyes

^
It was a money issue , no money ,  :Smile:

----------


## Roobarb

Happy Christmas all.

Sorry, I've been away for the last week and not had the opportunity to update things.  Thanks for the comments everyone.  To answer some of the questions:




> Hov much you pay for the roof ? m2 
> Maf


Honestly I have no idea. 

I reckon that the roof area is about 250 sq metres including the overhangs etc and taking into account a guess at the pitch.  Its guesswork though, using the site below which gave me the number:

Roofing Calculator

The roofing sheets were about 100K all in, the frame was knocked up by the builder and I have no idea what the cost of the steel was as it was just a part of the overall materials bill.  My MIL has been keeping meticulous accounts on what has been spent and where, but in all honesty I have no idea and am just sending the cash when funds get low. 




> Originally Posted by Dillinger
> 
> Just realised how big that house is and asked the missus how many did she think could abode there, she says 8, she's the youngest of 9 which leaves a question for another time.
> 
> Coming on lovely Roobarb
> __________________
> 
> 
> Yes and yes.
> ...


Ha, yes.  There is plenty of land so if the place ever did become terminally infested then I'll build a small shed in a far corner and let them have the run of the place.  No point fighting it.

Actually, we may be OK.  When up there last week we asked the BIL if he and his family wanted to stay in it whilst they built their place nearby.  An emphatic 'No' was the answer.  A bit more probing and we discovered that the reason was that there was no TV in the place.

I don't think any of them will work out that there is a solution to this, and I now have absolutely no intention of buying a telly myself, so we could be safe for some time to come.  




> Curious... Why did you go for the porch floor to be concrete instead of continuing the wood out?... Was that just a lower maintenance choice?


Very good question.  My plan went as far as the sketchup drawing we gave to the builder.  My thought had been that it would be a wooden frame, and if I was going to be clever then we would use that sort of polywhatnot decking stuff that looks like wood.  However the builder interpreted things differently and made it in concrete.  In retrospect I'm glad he did as it's both a low-maintenance option and also more importantly between the concrete balcony and the concrete bathroom structure to the rear it sort of wedges the rest of the wooden bits in place...




> ^
> It was a money issue , no money ,


Yup, that too.  By this stage costs of materials were building up and what with this just being a holiday pad, albeit a rather oversized one as it turns out, messing about with changing stuff was going to mean dipping into beer money.

----------


## Roobarb

So, where was I?

That was it, Cousin Avi - "I'm comin' to Thailand"

So come to Thailand I did, and things had moved on a bit.  First view of the place:



It was only at this stage that I realised quite how large this place was turning out to be.  Bloody Sketchup, it's great fun drawing something but you just don't get the same sense of scale.  Ho hum, we were pretty committed by this stage.  

The roof profile had been rationalised from my initial plan largely to save on cost, but also to try to remain a bit more in keeping with other houses in the area. 



As another nod in the direction of practicality the roof's end boards (no idea what the proper term is for them), rather than being the curved teak planks that I'd envisaged, are now straight bits of Shera.  

It's at that point in the build when the thing is swallowing materials.  We're definitely going for practicality and saving cost at this stage.  Tarting the place up can take place in years to come.

----------


## Roobarb

We now had the beginnings of bathroom windows upstairs too:



I've just caught up on what's been going on on the other construction threads and I noticed on one of them (Koman's?) the statement that he will be using red bricks for the bathrooms and Qcon for the rest of the build.  

For some reason we seem to have got this wrong too, but anyway its all too late now.  When I asked my wife she said that she opted for red bricks on the ground floor as she thought that they were better (my fault for not specifying) and the builder went for Qcon in the bathroom for reasons best known to himself (agfain, perhaps I should have paid more attention to the details).

Bricks aside, they need to get a wiggle on with the roof as the weather was definitely not on their side:

----------


## Roobarb

All that wood and stuff up there - it had to be time to go for a quick scrabble around up there to see what was going on.

First up, the bedroom looking over the back of the house, the guys just beginning to lay the floor:



The bedroom at the front of the house and facing the drive already had its floor in place, this was being used as a sort of platform to direct operations from:



The rest of the wood was just lying loosely on the rafters so walking about was somewhat hazardous.

A lot of the posts have odd notches and things in them which I rather like as it shows that they were used in a past life.  We're definitely going for the rustic feel here...

----------


## Roobarb

Heading back the next day, the floor in the back bedroom was now done:



... well, sort of

The balcony was also beginning to take shape:



Albeit a way off being somewhere to sit down with a cold one and admire the setting sun, but it's getting there.

----------


## nigelandjan

That's a similar point we have arrived at to mate,  trouble is my missus now wants this to look like a PD show home, ,,,, not for us you understand, ,,, but  to stick it up the local shed dwellers, ,, believe you me swords have been crossed more than once lately

----------


## Roobarb

Looking towards the front of the house from the first floor:



The stairs will run down the wall to the left, the downstairs bathroom being just to the left of the wall that the stairs will be against.

Still no progress with the building the front door area...?

Standing on the balcony looking towards the master bedroom:

----------


## nigelandjan

You got some beautifull views there mate

----------


## Roobarb

> That's a similar point we have arrived at to mate,  trouble is my missus now wants this to look like a PD show home, ,,,, not for us you understand, ,,, but  to stick it up the local shed dwellers, ,, believe you me swords have been crossed more than once lately


Nigel, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that my wife will keep pushing things the other way.  Her feelings on the place are:

1) There is plenty of room to stay with her parents when we are up there (which she is right about)
2) That this is therefore an enormous waste of money (which she's probably right about) 
3) That the only reason we are building this to give me somewhere to sit around all day and drink beer without getting too involved in the day-to-day minutiae of family intrigues (which I sincerely hope she will also be proven right about).  

Happy Christmas to both you and Jan BTW...

----------


## Roobarb

> You got some beautifull views there mate


See point 3 in my post above...  :Smile: 

You'll have to come and paint them at some stage.

----------


## Roobarb

Gosh, 1.30 pm already and I've not yet done me Christmas shopping.  Time to bail out 

More anon...

Cheers

----------


## Bettyboo

It is gonna be an imposing structure when complete, in that location. Bloody showorf...  :Smile: 

You can see your original ideas taking shape now; nice.



Just out of interest, what's under the floorboards, so that, for example, if one breaks, you don't fall down to the floor of the floor below?

----------


## stevefarang

Looking great Roobarb !  Have a Merry Christmas !

----------


## nigelandjan

It truly is a beautifull place,  you have achieved a lot in a small time here.

well done mate,  love to come over soon and see it, I've just about had enough of mine lol

----------


## bankao dreamer

Very impressive old son.

Merry Christmas

----------


## Roobarb

> Looking great Roobarb !  Have a Merry Christmas !





> It truly is a beautifull place,  you have achieved a lot in a small time here.
> 
> well done mate,  love to come over soon and see it, I've just about had enough of mine lol





> Very impressive old son.
> 
> Merry Christmas


Cheers fellas, Merry Christmas to you all too...

----------


## Roobarb

> It is gonna be an imposing structure when complete, in that location. Bloody showorf... 
> 
> Just out of interest, what's under the floorboards, so that, for example, if one breaks, you don't fall down to the floor of the floor below?


Showin' orf: You are right mate, the house is not exactly hidden.  

Bling, Isaan Style.  



Just one of the many bleedin' obvious things that didn't really occur to me at the outset was that a house with a panoramic view will generally be fairly visible to anyone standing within the panorama.  

Ah well, whilst its a fairly rural area of Thailand there are a few large, extravagantly garnished homes in confectionary colur schemes that various Bangkok types have put up nearby so ours, whilst a bit on the large side (imposing may be going a bit far...?), is not as bad as some others.

Floorboards: at the moment nothing is underneath them, other than the rafters.  There will eventually be a ceiling fan but I don't think that's going to provide you with the comfort level you were hoping for..

Actually having laid the floor the guys were then flitting about happily saying what a good job they had done.  They didn't take into account that the weight of your average Thai construction worker who spends the day doing physical work and surviving on a diet of rice and Laokhao is generally considerably below the weight of your average faring who sits behind a desk all day surviving on a diet of pizzas, beer and stuff from Cadburys.  

When I went for a stroll on the new floor I did find that, for me at least, it seemed to possess distinct trampoline-like qualities so I had the guys double up on the rafters.  Each one is now about 20 or so cms apart which means that if I do fall through then my, er, physique will probably prevent much else happening than my getting stuck by about the time my midriff reaches floor level.  So long as I avoid wearing a kilt upstairs whilst the downstairs ceiling fans are on then, should I ever fall through, the chance of a painful injury will be limited.

----------


## Roobarb

Whilst clambering about upstairs I noticed one thing that caused the old brow to furrow somewhat.

Initially when we had planned the house there was just going to be one bathroom on the first floor and no ensuite.

After a bit of fiddling around I reckoned that we could make a decent sized bathroom and ensuite by being a bit clever with the dividing wall placement.  The first amendment to the plan was therefore to build it to this plan:



With apologies to Mondrian, I'm using something here called floorplanner - Create floor plans, house plans and home plans online with Floorplanner.com - which seems to have rather copied his style



_Piet Mondrian: Composition with Gray and Light Brown, 1918.  
Source: http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/mondrian_piet.html_

The plan was passed to the builder, well, it was passed to my wife to pass to the builder, whilst the foundations were being laid so I thought this had been done in plenty of time.

On the photos that had shown up during the course of the build there was clearly a solid concrete lintel running between the two bathrooms, so my rather clever design had been forgotten about/ignored/never given to the builder. 

By the time I had made my first visit to the property things were well on their way.  



I may as well have passed a copy of the Mondrain as everyone up there was much happier with the local solution ('There's a beam running underneath the floor supporting it'/'The builder has already built the wall'/'The drains are already in place'/'Looks nice na' etc etc).

Humph...

... battle choosing time.  

The lintel would stay and it was back to the drawing board.

Whilst it was a less elegant solution there was space in the 3.8 x 3.8 metre box to divide the bathroom into two similar sized bathrooms and still give adequate space between a 1 metre shower area and the walkway to the loo/basin beyond.

Amendment # 2:



The thought was still to have a little cupboard or shelves or something next to each shower area, but with the rather ad hoc nature of how my thoughts were being interpreted I thought it best not to further confuse matters at this stage.

----------


## Roobarb

In most places I know columns tend to be put on top of each other, but for some reason in these parts they are offset.  For those who are not sure on what I am getting at, here's a pic - it's the bits circled in red that I'm talking about**:



Now, I did know this but had been far too lazy to think it through and had just conveniently forgotten about it, leaving up to the builder to work out: and therein lay the problem.  

His idea of a workable solution and mine were sometimes at odds and in fairness to the guy, given there were no plans and I was never on site, he could only do the best he could given the experience he had.

The cause of the furrowed brow on this particular trip was something I had completely overlooked.

What I had forgotten about was that the pillars on the ground floor were in a grid of about 3.8 x 3.8 metres, but on the first floor this was not necessarily the case.

My already compromised bathroom shape was dependent on a 3.8m x 3.8 metre space.  Sticking with the red circle theme the problem may be apparent in the photo below...



What we really had therefore was a bathroom that was now going to look like this, the green line being where the actual wall was:



The issue was that to have a shower screen of some sort (bit of glass or the like) to stop water splashing about and giving people wet feet on their way to the loo, then the gap between the shower and the wall would only be about 50 cms, or else the shower would be too narrow to be practicable. 

Could we move the columns?:

_No, apparently not as they lined up with the columns on the back bedroom (top photo) and this was meant to be structurally a good thing.
_
Could we build the wall out past the columns?:

_No, there was a great big concrete lintel running between the two columns, and besides which the wall had already been built._



Could we knock the wall down, put in two lintels, one at 90 cms and one at 2.5 metres We then use the bottom lintel as the the top of a counter, maybe with some shelves or cupboards under.  The middle section of the wall would be recessed a foot or so to give a bit of shoulder room to the bathroom and line it up with the floor beam below, maybe putting a mirror in the recess.  Then we brick in from the top lintel to the ceiling?

_Arai na? Farang bork blah blah blah (in Thai) ,  Blah blah blah some more  , blah blah blah............ blah  

_(Roobarb  :mid: )


_Blah blah blah blah blah blah ... tham Farang

"The builder asks what height you want the balcony railings?"

_"I thought we were discussing the bathroom wall"_

Farang bork aray g'dai, blah blah blah...

... blah blah blah somtam ...

... mmmmm aroi maak 

_And so they all cleared off to lunch.

Clearly this was going to be all too complicated.  It's the kids bathroom anyway and they are small so an almost 1.5 metre wide bathroom is what they'll get_._  We'll stick some white tiles on it and just hope for the best.  If it turns out to be too narrow then we can knock the wall down later and do it my way instead.  

To shamelessly borrow from Betty's thread:

----------


## Roobarb

And so it is with that preamble that I give you shots of the upstairs bathrooms being constructed.

This is the ensuite bathroom taken from the middle of the master bedroom (note, following my visit we doubled up on the rafters here too):



Shower on the nearside of the half wall, basin and loo beyond.  The builder was guessing at what we wanted to do here and we'd not paid much attention to it either.  

For me bathrooms are always the slightly duller bits on building threads, they are never really big enough to get a proper picture of and, tiling aside, are all much of a muchness.  I think it's why I didn't bother too much with the bathrooms on this house (more fool me).

The ensuite is a decent enough size, about 1.8 metres wide I guess.

Next up a bathroom that it will be difficult to get a proper picture of as it seems tiny - the guest bathroom, all 1.5 metres (if I'm lucky) of it:



The builder kept saying it would be fine when its done but it really does look tiny.

An extra foot of space to the left would make a huge difference (as would have following my original plan), but it's clearly not going to happen now.

I'll just have to wait and see.

----------


## Marmite the Dog

Odd bathroom layouts you've got there.

Instead of (from top to bottom) shower > sink > loo have a look at sink > loo > shower. The shower will gain more space (as they need more) and the sink needs less. I'd keep the dividing wall between the shower and the loo (it will have to be moved a little bit).

----------


## Roobarb

As I think I mentioned previously, the idea here was to go for a village build level of quality for a few reasons:

1) We are not planning on living long-term in the place.  Holidays, extended stays etc but if it topples over (so long as we are not inside) then we are not going to be left homeless.

2) Realistically it was the best we could expect from a local village builder and with the project managed by the MIL.

3) Keeps it cheap.

It was by about this point that I was beginning to realise that what a village build meant was that none of the walls were truly square, most of the windows were off kilter, door frames wonky etc etc.

Personally I'm OK with it, I grew up in a succession of draughty old country cottages in the UK where nothing fitted properly and I sort of like the recreation of that style through natural ineptitude rather than forced design.  It adds character to the place.

Given the rather uneven nature of the whole place I was surprised to see this bit of technical wizardry hanging from the balcony:



Many of you will recognise it, and having put images of gibbets out of my mind, I soon realised that it was a water level thing, or at least I assumed that's what it was although it could as easily be something to do with a still for a bit of moonshine production.

It's a simple and accurate way of making sure that things are level in the horizontal plane.

----------


## Roobarb

> Odd bathroom layouts you've got there.
> 
> Instead of (from top to bottom) shower > sink > loo have a look at sink > loo > shower. The shower will gain more space (as they need more) and the sink needs less. I'd keep the dividing wall between the shower and the loo (it will have to be moved a little bit).


Yup, I agree with you, ideally it would be door, basin, bog, shower,.  The only issue is having the windows at the end of the bathroom, which I didn't want to move or change the shape of as they would upset the attempt I was making at making the front of the house symmetrical.  Given we are using cheapo wooden window frames that are likely to warp horribly at the first sign of dampness I wanted to avoid putting a shower alongside the window.  This was really the idea behind the first bathroom plan with the staggered walls, which if they had followed... 

The main issue is the guest bathroom.  In the ensuite the shower fits into a corner reasonably well.  Besides which having the loo at the end of the ensuite meant I could put in a decent sized window opposite allowing me sit in gentle medative contemplation of the wonders of nature whilst answering, er, another call of nature.

The showers are meant to be glass enclosed walk in affairs rather than the pre-made shower tray/screen things that you get in Homepro, but the floorplanner software doesn't seem to have an icon for this, hence the square showers in the rectangular holes on the plan.

----------


## Roobarb

As good as a water level is in the horizontal, it's not much use when checking to see if walls and pillars are straight and true.  

On wandering around and contemplating this I did notice one or two areas where possibly a bit more attention might not have been amiss: 

It does seem that the centre concrete pillar is a few degrees out (the one to the right of the brick wall).  Not enough that it really matters but once I'd noticed it then I see it every time:



The big one though, and it was far too late to do anything about it, was that the pillars on the outside of the kitchen/master bedroom extension seemed to be about 15 cms off centre.  The builder was presumably trying to keep the higher and lower roof ridges in line, so started the walls centrally on the main building but then had to angle them off to meet the pillars.  What this meant was that we seemed to be ending up with a distinctly rhomboid-shaped kitchen.

It was rather difficult to get a photo of it but the lines of the layers of bricks on this one from earlier on sort of shows the problem.  The kitchen wall starts in the right place on the main building, but then rather than following a course perpendicular to the wall, seems to drift off at about 100 degrees or thereabouts:



It adds a bit more character to the place.  In an odd way I rather like it because the house is an honest reflection of the skills that were locally available.  As mentioned before it's not much different from the sort of places I grew up in that were probably knocked together by farmhands with the builder doing everything by eye, albeit in the seventeenth century rather than the twenty first.

Besides that, and largely because of my spectacular misunderstanding of scale when drawing the thing, the rooms are plenty big enough that their exact shape doesn't matter terribly.  The only thing is that it will make the floor tiling a bit more complicated as most of the ground floor is open plan. 

I'm elected not to mention it to the builder at this stage though. See what solution he comes up with first...  :Smile:

----------


## nigelandjan

Tip 


DO NOT TILE ANY OF THIS AREA MATE! !

Paint it, , the TP are hovering over the keypads. 

Good luck with it mate, I'm sure a level headed guy like you will see it through

----------


## Roobarb

> Tip 
> 
> 
> DO NOT TILE ANY OF THIS AREA MATE! !
> 
> Paint it, , the TP are hovering over the keypads. 
> 
> Good luck with it mate, I'm sure a level headed guy like you will see it through


Yes, I read your thread and felt that sort of gut wrenching anticpatory fear of the inevitable that you get on a roller coaster.  You can see what's coming but you are already firmly strapped in and there is therefore sod all you can do about it.

If they had a crack at yours they will have a field day over mine...

Stay tuned, I sense a bloodbath.

----------


## helge

> Paint it, , the TP are hovering over the keypads.





> If they had a crack at yours they will have a field day over mine...


Nah; don't worry

Most posters sense in which construction threads constructive criticism is welcomed

----------


## nigelandjan

:rofl:  :rofl:  :rofl:    nice one RB

----------


## Roobarb

> Originally Posted by nigelandjan
> 
> Paint it, , the TP are hovering over the keypads.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I have no idea how to respond to that Helge...  :Smile: 

Is it a veiled criticism of my thread, or am I merely being overly sensitive in thinking so and it's actually a crack at Nigel?   Either way I've probably just proven you right.  

Perhaps it's it just a statement and the reason that nobody has been terribly critical of my build is that they think the all work so far is beyond reproach.   :smiley laughing:  :smiley laughing:  :smiley laughing: 

Not that I'm paranoid or anything...


... or am I?  :Confused: 


I've learned a huge amount from reading the construction threads over the years.  Whilst following the course of the projects makes for a fine tale, each build will have compromises, and it is the prioritising of what is important to the builder that keeps the dialogue different.  

The questions and comments from other readers that crop up along the journey, asking why something was done a certain way or saying they would have done things differently, highlight these priorities and make the construction threads both interesting and educational.

The reason for me posting the thread on my build is not just to tell a story, although I'd hope that people will enjoy reading it, but its more that it provides one of the many vehicles in this forum to share knowledge amongst TD members.  I've cocked this part of it up, and perhaps for others looking at embarking on a building thread it's a lesson I can pass on: by running a thread about four months behind what's actually happening on the ground it means is that any comments people make will have little effect on the outcome, and therefore some may feel it's difficult for their criticism to be seen as 'constructive'. 

Yet oddly enough I would welcome the criticism as whilst my thread represents the compromises I have made for my circumstances, others may be in different circumstances but want to do something similar.  For me it may be criticism, but for those reading this, and that's who this thread is for, others' comments could well be constructive.

I'm not on site, living in a shed, dealing with the builders and having to make decisions/compromises on the spot, then take the trouble to try and connect to the internet and upload progress each night so this project is not that personal to me.  I'm sitting in a nicely air conditioned office 1000 miles away and dipping in with an update whenever I get bored.  Other than proving that an idiot and his money are soon parted there's little else to my build that reflects on me personally.  A part of me wishes I was in the thick of it, but then again its just one of the compromises that I chose to make.

Nigel has built what he set out to build, on time, on plan and on budget.  Perhaps he wishes there are bits an pieces that were done differently and he has had to compromise on them along the way; but he rolled his sleeves up, got in there and in doing so achieved his primary objectives.  In all honesty, I learned a bit about tiling from the points raised on his thread, but at the same time I fully understand his position that a page of discussion on it, much like the discussion on his thread about what a member had for breakfast, diluted the primary purpose of his story.

Ummmm, where am I?  Ah, in the office.  I'd better got on with something a little more constructive (in the other sense of the word) than this.  Anyway, it's not a criticism of your post Helge, I guess if anything it's just an invitation for others to pipe up and ask questions or make comments on mine if they want to. 

Yes, I know - it's opening the doors   ::spin:: .

----------


## Roobarb

^ I've just reread my last post.  Gosh I can sound like a pompous ass at times.  For those that skipped it then well done.

Going through some of the last pics of this particular visit there's one I found of the welds for the roof frame.  All in all they seem to have done a neat job of this, at least to my untrained eye.  Obviously I'm leaving aside that one of the clowns managed to nearly blind himself then fall off the roof whilst welding the frame together. 



There could of course be all sorts of nasties hidden from view but by and large it all looked fairly similar to this.

----------


## Roobarb

> The big one though, and it was far too late to do anything about it, was that the pillars on the outside of the kitchen/master bedroom extension seemed to be about 15 cms off centre.  The builder was presumably trying to keep the higher and lower roof ridges in line, so started the walls centrally on the main building but then had to angle them off to meet the pillars.  What this meant was that we seemed to be ending up with a distinctly rhomboid-shaped kitchen.
> 
> It was rather difficult to get a photo of it...


I've just found a photo that may better illustrate this:



Spent ages looking for that pic this morning...

----------


## Roobarb

It was about at this time that the builder announced that we may have a bit of a problem on the floorboard front and suggested that we use Shera floor planks for the top floor bit (up in the eaves).

Off we went to Global House to have a look and cost it up.  The top floor was about 70 sq metres.  I can't remember the number of Shera planks it would have used but it seemed to be coming out to be about 60,000 Baht or so.

We then went to have a look at doing a sort of ply and laminate floor up there, but that was coming out to be a bit more.

We'd bought a nine post house with 55 sq.m of floorboards for 60K just a few months earlier.  We were bound to need some more wood anyway and besides which I was keen to keep all the floorboards as wood rather than cop out on the last bit.

We needed another house.

----------


## Roobarb

And so FIL was sent off on a mission to find us another house.

To recap, so far our house had consumed the wood from a small 9 post barn as well as both a 12 post and a 9 post house.  And still we needed more.  

I was not massively optimistic we would find anything as there is another house nearby that had recently been built and had also swallowed up four wooden houses in the process.  I suspected that we were either going to find that the novelty of having some folding readies but no roof over your head would be wearing a bit thin, or at the very least we would be subject to the laws of supply and demand.

But no!

Two days later and this beauty was unearthed:







... and the pièce de résistance:

----------


## Bettyboo

Basically, you've destroyed the homes of a fair sized community to build a rarely used holiday home! Are you in the banking trade...  :Smile:

----------


## Roobarb

A few of these...




... followed by 60 of these...




... and the place was ours

----------


## Roobarb

> Basically, you've destroyed the homes of a fair sized community to build a rarely used holiday home! Are you in the banking trade...


It's a fair question Betty.  

I'm not in the banking trade but I do sleep well at night so perhaps my vocation was missed...   :Smile:

----------


## beerlaodrinker

I'm enjoying t.his construction thread roobarb your an interesting bloke I reckon. Plenty of smart Indians all competing for a slice of the pie in one of the most populous country's in the world, you must be at the top of your game. Is the build going to be the retirement gaff ?The builds looking great, merry Xmas to you

----------


## Roobarb

> I'm enjoying t.his construction thread roobarb your an interesting bloke I reckon. Plenty of smart Indians all competing for a slice of the pie in one of the most populous country's in the world, you must be at the top of your game. Is the build going to be the retirement gaff ?The builds looking great, merry Xmas to you


Cheers BLD, glad you're enjoying the thread and a very merry Christmas to you and the rest of the Lao-Drinker family too.

I wish I was at the top of my game.  I suspect I was probably sent here as a punishment for something or other...  Actually India ain't too bad for a few years, there are far worse places for sure.

One of the odd aspects of Delhi life is that over both the summer and winter school holidays all the wives and kids that can seem leave the place to escape the weather (it's either high 40s in the summer or close to freezing in the winter).  Hanging around here is a bit dull for the family so the house is primarily therefore a holiday house, albeit for fairly long holidays as far as the family are concerned.   

There is also this thought creeping around the back of my head that if things go tits up on the work front I do at least have a place that the family and I can hole up in cheaply and reasonably comfortably whilst we sort out the next move, hence it being a bit bigger than would be strictly necessary for holidays.

Will it be a retirement home?  Dunno, the kids are young so retirement is a looooong way off for me.  I suspect I'd miss the bright lights too much to be in the countryside full time, but in an ideal world, assuming it's still standing by then, some time here and a small pad in BKK/KL or something wouldn't be a bad way of eking out one's twilight years.

----------


## Koetjeka

Wow did you really buy that for only 60k? Can you ask your FIL to find me a few of these beauties because every time I ask my wife she yells "who wants to sell his house???!"

----------


## Roobarb

> Wow did you really buy that for only 60k? Can you ask your FIL to find me a few of these beauties because every time I ask my wife she yells "who wants to sell his house???!"


Yup, I'm amazed but where we are (middle of nowhere north of Chaiyaphum) there are still a few of these sort of houses around.  Some of the prices have got silly though, we saw a similar one that they wanted 200K for, then one with corrugated walls that was looking for 100K, and another that had been almost entirely eaten by termites for 100K.

Somehow the FIL seems to winkle them out.  Beer and a winning smile seem to do it.  I hope to god it's not simply someone's holiday house and he and a few mates have dismantled it and pocketed the cash whilst the owners were away.  Possible I suppose....?

----------


## Bettyboo

We sold a wooden house about 5 years ago, about that size, 30,000 baht. It was the missus' mother's old house and in disrepair, likely to go to ruin and be eaten by termites; we don't use that bit of land anyways, we just leave it hoping it will go up in value...

----------


## Koetjeka

> I hope to god it's not simply someone's holiday house and he and a few mates have dismantled it and pocketed the cash whilst the owners were away. Possible I suppose....?


I actually read something like this a while ago, a foreigner bought a nice teak wood holiday house and someone actually stole his house (supposedly moved by truck) while he was in the USA for holiday.

----------


## Roobarb

> We sold a wooden house about 5 years ago, about that size, 30,000 baht. It was the missus' mother's old house and in disrepair, likely to go to ruin and be eaten by termites; we don't use that bit of land anyways, we just leave it hoping it will go up in value...


I don't think we're paying rock bottom prices for these.  From memory Wimpy paid 45k for the one that he used to make his place.  I guess a lot depends on the area.  60K seems the going rate around us for those that want to sell.  

Some of the ones I mentioned earlier were valuing their wooden houses on what it would cost to build a concrete house.  Logical I suppose, but ultimately a bit unrealistic.

----------


## Bettyboo

^folks do base value on different things; cost of material, replacement value, etc, so I see where you're coming from Mr 3 Million...  :Smile: 




> I guess a lot depends on the area.


I reckon that's right. Nakhon Nayok, where we have a few bits of land and are building the house, even though it's close to Bkk, close to big roads, doesn't flood, etc, seems very cheap. Maybe 100,000 per rai for decent land. I've heard of some very big prices for really shitty land in the middle of nowhere in Issan... I suppose wooden houses and the such are the same. We tend to go with the local low prices on everything, both buying and selling. The dad has lived in the village all his life, so prices aren't inflated...

----------


## Roobarb

> I hope to god it's not simply someone's holiday house and he and a few mates have dismantled it and pocketed the cash whilst the owners were away. Possible I suppose....?
> 			
> 		
> 
> I actually read something like this a while ago, a foreigner bought a nice teak wood holiday house and someone actually stole his house (supposedly moved by truck) while he was in the USA for holiday.


Eek, you're worrying me now Koetjeka...  :Smile: 

My place of course is being built to house my large family of Doberman Pinschers and Rottweilers. I like Germanic sounding dogs.  I did have Daschunds too at one point, but  I think the other dogs may have eaten them.

Did I mention on this thread that the lake was also shark-infested?

Betty also offered to lend me his two particularly savage cats.

----------


## Bettyboo

I'm a tad concerned that this city boy might struggle when we move to the jungle...

----------


## Koetjeka

> Originally Posted by Koetjeka
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 			
> 				 I hope to god it's not simply someone's holiday house and he and a few mates have dismantled it and pocketed the cash whilst the owners were away. Possible I suppose....?
> ...


No need to worry, your house is impractical to deconstruct. That guy's house was all "prefab" from the factory, shipped to his land and constructed in a few days time.

----------


## Roobarb

> I'm a tad concerned that this city boy might struggle when we move to the jungle...


Aha.  Perfect.  Thanks Betty.  That'll definitely scare 'em off.

----------


## terry57

First time I've seen this thread, thanks for your effort, it looks brilliant.

----------


## Roobarb

> First time I've seen this thread, thanks for your effort, it looks brilliant.


Thanks Terry, glad you've enjoyed it so far...

----------


## Marmite the Dog

> Maybe 100,000 per rai for decent land.


At least 400k per Rai outside of Udon.

----------


## Roobarb

OK, so we're going to skip July and early August entirely for one very simple but highly annoying reason and that is that my computer hard disc decided to pack up on me in August and I had not backed it up for a few weeks.  The camera is still up in Chaiyaphum and the photos may or may not still be on it.  It's either a matter of waiting for the next six months for the next time I'm up there in the hope that I didn't delete them, or we simply jump forwards a bit.

What are we going to miss?  

The concrete pour and that upsets me as, having been mincing around worrying about bathrooms, having a big truck on the thread would be a suitable injection of testosterone.  

Actually, I'm going to borrow the truck from Nigel's thread:



Thanks Nigel  :Smile: 

Mine looked very similar but had a a red eagle on the side.

It was not like this one:



It was much bigger and looked more purposeful.   Like one of these:



From what I'm told, it managed to get in there, dump it's load and then escape without getting bogged down.  There was none of this sort of nonsense:

----------


## Roobarb

It's been a while since I have lived in Thailand and, whilst I'm sure that the Siam City Cement company has been around for a while, I've never really clocked their logo until now.

The first thought on seeing the truck was that they had sent the cement by post:



+



=

----------


## Roobarb

^ From the last post it's clear to me that I'm avoiding the next bit as, having left the builder to it, we are about to move back into the murky world of crap, low resolution photos again.  

The photos will improve as we go on but for the time we are stuck with the digital equivalent of a pinhole camera.  I suspect that it was done this way to hide as much detail as possible so as to stop me phoning up and trying to change things.

Actually, to digress a second, I just Googled 'Digital Pinhole Camera'.  They actually do exist, albeit not commercially:





They produce images a bit like this:



Aaaagh, more avoidance.

OK, next post we're back to the build.

----------


## Roobarb

So other than the concrete pour and completing the roof, the other major item that had been going on was planking up the first floor walls:



There are not a lot of photos of people working on the site for the simple reason that the place was built by an initial crew of five people, with a few extras drafted in when needed.

The numbers dwindled throughout the build, firstly with the welding fellow successfully taking himself out of action for a while, then a couple from Petchabun who were a part of the team decided to throw their toys out of the pram and flounced.  Of the original crew we ended up with just the builder and his elderly mother on site.

But in fairness we were in no rush so we left it to him to get himself sorted out.  Progress was still pretty good all things considered:

----------


## Bettyboo

> Siam City Cement


The big fella used to wholey own them, but sold a large part of SSSC (known in Thailand, unsurprisingly, as 'boon nok') to a large Swizz cement company (Holcim?). I worked for them for a while, with their SMT, they were totally corrupt and useless, massive funds being sucked out by the corrupt managers, virtually all ex-Chula yellow shirters. It was amazing to me how the company survived. The health and safety concerns were from a different planet, on site deaths were, I believe, the highest in the world of any cement plant... But, they had all the big contratcs, all the drilling rights, never got sued...

----------


## biff

Hi Roobarb,
Good on you, for keeping the builder and his elderly mother on the job..
" do it once and do it right" Good chippies are hard to find anywhere, looks like they are doing a good job, to me..and you of course.

Will be a fine home when finished.

Cheers

Biff

----------


## Roobarb

> Originally Posted by Roobarb
> 
> Siam City Cement
> 
> 
> The big fella used to wholey own them, but sold a large part of SSSC (known in Thailand, unsurprisingly, as 'boon nok') too a large Swizz cement company (Holcim?). I worked for them for a while, with their SMT, they were totally corrupt and useless, massive funds being sucked out by the corrupt managers, virtually all ex-Chula yellow shirters. It was amazing to me how the company survived. The health and safety concerns were from a different planet, on site deaths were, I believe, the highest in the world of any cement plant... But, they had all the big contratcs, all the drilling rights, never got sued...


Sort of makes me wish I was there for the pour.  I'm now worried there are bits of some cement-works Somchai mixed up in it all.  

We'd better call in the saffron mafia.  Keep any potential pii at bay...  :Smile:

----------


## Roobarb

> Hi Roobarb,
> Good on you, for keeping the builder and his elderly mother on the job..
> " do it once and do it right" Good chippies are hard to find anywhere, looks like they are doing a good job, to me..and you of course.


Hello Biff

I didn't have much choice about keeping the builder and his ma, if they had left then we would have been rather stuffed...   :Smile: 

All in all they were doing a decent job of it.  Honestly it could have been a whole lot worse and my feeling was that we would be better off to get the house up and done to a standard that the builder was at least confident about achieving well rather than trying to push him to go further which would probably be an expensive mistake.  The thought is we can slowly rebuild it either as bits fall off or when I decide that I really can't live with some of the results.  

We were lucky with the builder as, whilst he was getting close to being out of his depth on this project (his style was more the sort of houses that we had dismantled to make this thing), he plodded along doing the best he could without us being around, and 90% of the time seemed to make the right decisions.  He kept the crew small as he was quite keen to try and keep complete monkeys off the site.  This was not always successful although in fairness to the guy his pool of available talent is a bit limited.

There were a few screw ups which only became obvious when the house was completed.  More of that anon...

----------


## helge

> Originally Posted by helge
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>  Originally Posted by nigelandjan
> ...


 :Smile: 

Certainly not a crack at your build or thread

It's hard to judge a build from pics

Details like tiles and the placing of windows/doors, which can hurt your eye are just..details

If you are happy, then all is good

Even with incorrectly placed bearing part, you seldom see it torn down/redone

I have wasted 34 years of my life in construction and had 4 builds done in Thailand, and still only advice I can offer,(has been repeated over and over on TD ) is: Be there


Yes the crack was at Nigel, and I shouldn't have, but :

He kind of provoked it  :Smile:

----------


## Roobarb

> Originally Posted by Roobarb
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>  Originally Posted by helge
> ...


No worries fella...  :Smile: 

I wish I was able to be there for the build as things could have been done a lot better, or at least I'd like to think they could have been.  

If I was building a house to live in long-term, especially knowing what I know now, I'd certainly want to be there every day.   In retrospect on this one I also wish I'd got an architect involved, had the job planned and the materials cost estimated properly too (although it may have stopped the project dead in its tracks if I knew what this was going to set me back before I'd started).

I'm happy with what I'm getting simply because I know I couldn't realistically expect any more.  In fact I have been incredibly lucky to have a builder who just got on with it and did the job he was meant to to the best of his ability.  With some of the horror stories on here it could have been a nightmare.

Your advice to all remains absolutely sound. Be there or beware...

----------


## Bettyboo

> I have wasted 34 years of my life in construction and had 4 builds done in Thailand, and still only advice I can offer,(has been repeated over and over on TD ) is: Be there


Nonsense!  :Smile:

----------


## helge

> Nonsense!


Always exceptions

And you are an easy going type of guy, so probably happy if your house is build on the correct address  :Smile:

----------


## Koetjeka

Don't cry when your house ends up like this one, 555. 
On a serious note, a site manager who can actually communicate in English is really helpful I guess. Just tell the guy that if something is not build according to plan he won't get paid.

----------


## Marmite the Dog

> Just tell the guy that if something is not build according to plan he won't get paid.


The result of that is the immature little pricks walk off site and you never see them again.

----------


## Roobarb

> Don't cry when your house ends up like this one, 555. 
> On a serious note, a site manager who can actually communicate in English is really helpful I guess. Just tell the guy that if something is not build according to plan he won't get paid.


 :rofl: ...  Yup, it is a concern.  I'm still half expecting my place to roll over into the paddy field below.  The upside is those folks probably have a lovely roof terrace.

As we started out with no plan on our build then there is nothing really for the builder not to follow.  He's just working off a few Sketchup screenshots that I printed out for him.

The builder's a decent guy.  I'm not out to screw him out of making a margin and in turn it seems that he's not out to screw us either.  So far, on a total quoted labour bill of 430K, we've agreed to an extra 25K of labour charges including stuff like adding a balcony roof, changing the downstairs bathroom layout, knocking down a complete wall (and changing a lintel) to put in a window, building a lean-to to hide the water tank etc.  I probably could have squeezed him for an extra 10% off, but all it would mean is that the next thing I ask him to do he will quote an extra 10% or so anticipating the negotiation.

I have been lucky with the guy, although I think it actually helped that he was able to get on and do things rather than having me being on site every day fussing around like a wet hen.

Agreed that if you are going to there every day you will probably get a better result.  Equally importantly, the ability to anticipate and clearly communicate what you want before actual cost has been incurred will help keep tempers from fraying along the way.

----------


## Roobarb

> Originally Posted by Koetjeka
> 
> Just tell the guy that if something is not build according to plan he won't get paid.
> 
> 
> The result of that is the immature little pricks walk off site and you never see them again.


It could be either a blessing or an absolute pain in the ass.  

Pick your battles wisely...  :Smile:

----------


## Roobarb

And so the planking up of the exterior continued (and I do apologise for the quality of these pics).

Photos of the back of the house, the rear bedroom in the foreground:



Another shot of the rear bedroom.  The single pane window in the corner looks into the upstairs living room area.



The master bedroom is on the right of the photo below with door to the kitchen below:

----------


## Roobarb

Continuing the stroll around the house, the master bedroom (kitchen below):



... and then the en-suite behind the bedroom.  I was actually rather pleased with the large window, and had the loo placed directly opposite so I can bask in the morning sunlight, enjoying nature's glory as I, well you know.

----------


## Roobarb

Work had finally started on the front door area too.

When I asked the builder why he hadn't built it along with the rest of the place he said that he didn't know what dimensions I wanted.  To be honest I didn't have a clue either so we went for 10 feet by whatever distance the pillars were apart, then an extra five feet for the front door overhang.  



The guys appeared to be busy trying to get the front door frame in straight.



It was nice of them to make a bit of effort here, the front door was definitely one of the straighter door frames in the house.

----------


## Roobarb

It's a sort of weird batch of pics this, but I'll do the best I can with it.

So walking in through the front door, the study area is to the left and eventually the stairs will be here.  The end wall appears to be crying out for a bit of render:



Inside the kitchen looking at... a wall with render I guess?  This is facing roughly towards the front door:



The rendered wall is the one at a funny angle to the rest of the house which has left us with the rhomboid kitchen.  Nothing exactly wrong with having a room that is less than square, it's just a little less conventional than perhaps I was hoping for.

... although TIT so perhaps it is actually quite conventional?

----------


## Roobarb

And then wandering out onto the downstairs terrace and looking back into the house towards the kitchen:



... and then one from the back of the house looking onto the terrace.



I know it's difficult to picture at this stage (actually I should say 'imagine', it's perfectly easy to picture if we had used a decent camera), but I'm looking forward to the end result on this.  This will probably be the main lolling around, beer drinking area during the day.

----------


## Roobarb

And then going upstairs (well climbing up a ladder as we don't yet have stairs).

Looking down from the first floor to where the front door will be.  The stairs will eventually be against the wall on the left:



The triangle of wall under the front door roof will eventually be glass.  It seems a real shame to plank up the rest of it though as I do like the view out to the trees and the splash of colour that they provide.  

I did toy with putting two large, triangular shaped fixed smoked glass windows in instead of the walls - smoked glass so that they are less obviously windows when you look from the outside.  It would make, at a glance, a sort of leaf wall which would be pretty cool as there's stuff all else you can do with that area.  It's one of those things that had I been on site I would have done, but I wasn't so it got put on the 'too complicated for now' list. .

How difficult could it be to retrofit?  The walls are wood after all so five minutes with a chainsaw, insert a wooden frame, some glass et voila.

All is not lost, a potential project for the future.

----------


## stevefarang

Looking sweet Roobarb. Definitely a different build. I like the idea of leaving that front area open as much as possible to see Mother Nature,

Happy New Year !!

Steve

----------


## Roobarb

Continuing upstairs, looking sort of north west I guess, the balcony is to the left and the front bedroom to the right:



The idea is that we will have windows under the eaves of the roof so we get lost of natural light, and can open them to get some ventilation during the daytime.

Then looking into the front bedroom (finally a slightly better quality picture):

----------


## Roobarb

Then going to the other end of the first floor living room area, the rear bedroom (next to the balcony):



MIL smiling away in the background.  Don't let the flowery pyjamas deceive you, she proved to be a tough project manager, kept meticulous records of expenditure  and was on site every day.

One thing we noticed was that the door was at the wrong end of the wall.  Quick phone call to the project manager and the next day a blurred photo to show it had been moved:



I wanted to try to keep the bedroom doors as far away from the main living area as possible.  This area of the living area will be separated by the ladder/stairs up to the second floor mezzanine area and having the bedroom door on the far side of the steps made more sense.

----------


## biff

Thanks Roobarb for keeping us updated on you beautiful home.
I am  supposed to be out drinking beer on New Years Eve, relaxing.
Will just have to have a coldly, viewing your build updates.

Have a Happy New Year, to you, and your family.

Cheers
Biff

----------


## Roobarb

And finally from this batch of dreadful photos, with the rear bedroom to the right, looking in to the master bedroom:



... and then standing in the master bedroom looking at the en-suite:



Plumbing for my 'loo with a view' in the background...

... and the first glimpse of what the view will look like (god I wish these pics were better).  The base of the window is about 50 cms so about knee height when seated.  If anyone looks up, well, it will serve them right frankly...

----------


## Roobarb

Steve, Biff, thanks for your comments.  A very happy new year to you both, and indeed all other folks who have waded this far too.

It's nearly 1 pm now in Delhi and definitely time for me to be leaving the office to go and do something more exciting than sitting around here.  I'll update the thread with some more pics in the new year.

Cheers all...

----------


## Marmite the Dog

Fascinating. One of my favourite builds on here at the moment.

----------


## Roobarb

> Fascinating. One of my favourite builds on here at the moment.


Thanks Marmite, I'm honoured...

----------


## Bettyboo

Happy New Year, Rhoobarb - keep up the good work.

There is a lot of bloody wood gone into that place! It's very nice to see it coming together. You have quite a thrown to be proud of surveying all that is yours...  :Smile: 

You appear to have a ghost problem!






> One of my favourite builds on here at the moment.


Bastard!

----------


## Roobarb

> You appear to have a ghost problem!


It's the ruddy cement.  

You were the one who pointed out Siam City Cement's attitude towards health and safety.  I wish you'd mentioned it before we had them come and pour the floors.  

Awwwlthough, a few pii floating about should keep the in-laws at bay.  Actually quite a reasonable trade off.

Happy new year to you too Betty, and also happy new year to my new best mate, Marmite...  :Smile:

----------


## nigelandjan

Lots of lovely wood in there RB, , I would be happy just to come in and sniff for 5 mins

----------


## Roobarb

> Lots of lovely wood in there RB, , I would be happy just to come in and sniff for 5 mins


Unfortunately I wasn't there whilst all this was going on.  I'm appallingly bad at it but I've always enjoyed working with wood so to be a part of a woodworking project on this scale, as opposed to my normal epic of knocking together a mis-shapen shelf or something, would have been fun.

----------


## Roobarb

Given the contentiousness of the subject it is with more than a degree of trepidation that I now find myself standing on the edge, staring into the no man's land from which Nigel is just now climbing.  

It as much in the spirit of solidarity with those who have also run this particular gauntlet as it is an integral part of the tale that I'm therefore launching myself, bayonet pointing forward and head held high, into the matter of...

(drumroll)

... TILING.



I sense the frissons of excitement coupled with pure terror as I post the picture above.

Gosh...

When I was back in Thailand in May, long before the roof had even been started, I decided to go and get the tiles bought and delivered.  I knew that is I didn't do this right away then one of two things would happen:

1)  The build would get to the point where they needed to do the tiling, we wouldn't be around to choose the tiles and so someone up there would chose for us.  A lovely pink and lime green combo would be the result.

2) Even if we did choose the tiles we wanted but waited to pay for them later then there would be a strong chance that they would be out of stock and so the best alternative would be the lovely pink and lime green number.

The only way of having the tiles I wanted was to buy them right away.  One thing I was sure of was that if the tiles were already there, whether they were liked or not by anyone else, they would at least be used rather than someone wasting money on buying some alternatives.

Having traipsed around various tiling shops and Global House, each of which was challenged either in terms of taste or stock holding, we finally found a local place that quite remarkably had both what we wanted and enough quantity to deliver the whole lot the next day.

Unfortunately I didn't take a photo of the stack of tiles, but for those who were interested in this sort of thing it was about 1 metre by 3 metres by 70 cms, and cost about Baht 60K

Bits of me pile of tiles:

----------


## Bettyboo

Here we go. Nigel's revenge is about to start. He has been rather grumpy recently, so expect him to get really stuck in here...  :Smile: 




> A lovely pink and lime green combo would be the result.


Could be worse...




> about Baht 60K




I'm looking forward to this tiling extravaganza, and I believe I can speak for all of TD when I say 'I hope it doesn't go perfectly smoothly'.  :Smile:

----------


## Roobarb

I mentioned a while back that the builder had taken it upon himself to build us a rhombus-shaped kitchen, and so ultimately it was going to be challenging to have floor tiles as the house's lack of 90 degree corners would be quite apparent.

The plan was therefore to have a sort of border near the edge, and then all the tiles in the central section in a diamond pattern rather than perpendicular to the walls (well some of the walls) as it would disguise the rather vague attention to detail when building the house.

First of all, try explaining what I want to the builder.  Results in a quizzical expression.

Secondly, explain it to my wife, who gets it but feels it may be a bit complicated to explain on the phone.

This is a battle I will eventually win so third option, draw what I want and stick to my guns:



All fairly simple.  Well not too complicated anyway.

Or so you would think...

----------


## Bettyboo

> First of all, try explaining what I want to the builder. Results in a quizzical expression.


I fully understand his POV.




> Secondly, explain it to my wife, who gets it


She's a better man than me.




> draw what I want





> All fairly simple.


Nope.

Gonna enjoy this, loads of scope here... Just gonna give Nigel a quick PM, so he knows to get down here a.s.a.p. - he won't want to be missing this.  :Smile:

----------


## Roobarb

^  Well I thought it was simple, but clearly not.

Happily my other half was due a trip to Thailand so off she went to oversee this particular aspect of the build.

1) I get is a phone call saying that nobody does floors like this in Thailand.

- A quick scrabble around on the net and I email some incredibly complicated looking tiling patterns from Thai websites. 

2) I get a phone call the following day saying that nobody does floors like this in our particular bit of Thailand.

- Deep breath, explain again.  Whether it is a diamond pattern or a square pattern, 90% of the tiling work is identical, it's only around the edges that they may need to concentrate a bit more.  Besides which, tell the builder I won't notice his mess up with the kitchen this way...

3) The builder says there will be a lot of wastage, better to do it his way

- I don't care, we'll get him a few more boxes of tiles.

4) I get another call back - OK, he's accepted the diamond pattern, but the dark border thing, how wide do you want it?

- Ummmm, three inches, each tile is 12 inches wide so chop 'em in four equal bits and we're all good.

5) The next call - The builder says that if you cut the tiles then you will end up with sharp edges and cut your feet.

- OK, ask him how he normally cuts tiles then.  Actually, better than that, tell him to make the dark border tiles about 2 mm lower than the rest of the floor, we'll sort it out with the grout.

Yes, I knew that the concept of a millimetre (indeed a centimetre) would be lost on him but it's a negotiation, we're never going to end up with this.

6) The next call - Well the builder says he could do it that way but he...

- He can do it that way?  Good, ask him to get on with it then. 

Throughout the build I have been careful to try to keep our expectations within the capabilities of the builder, but with the tiling I wanted to explore the boundaries a bit.

----------


## Bettyboo



----------


## Roobarb

And so the first two pictures turn up.

Picture 1:



On first impressions he seems to have got the concept, but there are several issues:

1) Looking at the right hand side of the doorway it looks like the tiling by the pillar is made up with offcuts.

2) Actually, the dark border bit seems to follow the pillar around to the wall which was the last thing I wanted as it accentuates the ugly pillars.

3) At first I thought it was the photo, but the tile just to the left of the bucket seems to have been cut at a very off angle.  I wonder why...

4) Of course.  He's started off in the kitchen using the wonky wall as the base line.

I knew that this would be fun.

Picture 2:



Yup, the dark border doesn't really follow the line of the cabinets. 

Actually, this was the first time I'd seen the cabinets, but i was so wrapped up in excitement at the fun and games that the tiling was about to give us that i didn't notice them.  A bit of a pity as it turns out.  More of that later.

----------


## helge

> 4) I get another call back - OK, he's accepted the diamond pattern, but the dark border thing, how wide do you want it?  - Ummmm, three inches, each tile is 12 inches wide so chop 'em in four equal bits and we're all good.


Diagonal and a border ?

You got my attention.  Learn something new, as they say

----------


## Roobarb

>

----------


## Roobarb

> Originally Posted by Roobarb
> 
>  4) I get another call back - OK, he's accepted the diamond pattern, but the dark border thing, how wide do you want it?  - Ummmm, three inches, each tile is 12 inches wide so chop 'em in four equal bits and we're all good.
> 
> 
> Diagonal and a border ?
> 
> You got my attention.  Learn something new, as they say


You'll learn how not to do it I should imagine...  :Smile:

----------


## Bettyboo

I'm not saying anything... I'll wait for the cavalry. 

On an untiling note, the windows are a nice size with lovely views. &, lots of nice usable worktop space; reckon those units will end up really nicely.  :Smile:

----------


## helge

See the pics now

Concept not that stupid

----------


## biff

Hi Roobarb,
I must say your workers are quick, about 50 minutes to lay all those tiles..Must be Aussies.
Looks good though, plenty of cupboards, lots of room and light.

Thanks for posting, good thread.

Cheers 

Biff

----------


## Roobarb

So I asked for another photo of the transition between the kitchen and the dining area as there was definitely something amiss but the last picture was not too clear.



The builder was clearly hiding in shame - either that or he was bending over his bucket to get some more cement and lay more tiles...

Right, stop all engines.  Time for a rethink.

Obviously they don't want to do it exactly the way I've asked.  I have no idea why but I reckon that as I'd won my battle they were being a bit sore about it.  The best thing to do is explain the problem and see what solution they suggest.

Damn, can't find the photos - More on this later..

----------


## Bettyboo

> as I'd won my battle


Keep telling yourself that, Rhoobarb. The Thais will grind you down and get it done they're way...  :Smile:

----------


## Roobarb

> Concept not that stupid


Thanks Helge, It may be why I had trouble getting it put into reality.

----------


## Roobarb

> Originally Posted by Roobarb
> 
> as I'd won my battle
> 
> 
> Keep telling yourself that, Rhoobarb. The Thais will grind you down and get it done they're way...


Yup, just the battle mind you.  The thing is to make them think it's going to be a long drawn out war so they can win a few later.  The trick is then to try and quit when you find yourself suitably ahead. 

I knew that I shouldn't try anything too complicated, but everything had been going so smoothly so far.  Silly I know but I just felt that something was not right with the build without a cock up along the way.

Hell, a few tiles and a day or two's labour.  It's a bit of a giggle watching them try to work it out...

----------


## Roobarb

> Hi Roobarb,
> I must say your workers are quick, about 50 minutes to lay all those tiles..Must be Aussies.


Judging by the quality of the workmanship mate, they might as well have been Aussies...  :Smile:

----------


## lom

> I'm not saying anything... I'll wait for the cavalry.


You rang?




> On first impressions he seems to have got the concept, but there are several issues:


You asked for it by not being there.




> 1) Looking at the right hand side of the doorway it looks like the tiling by the pillar is made up with offcuts.


I got hit by deja vue now.. He doesn't want to waste the offcuts and can't see anything wrong in using them 




> 2) Actually, the dark border bit seems to follow the pillar around to the wall which was the last thing I wanted as it accentuates the ugly pillars.


Thais have no feeling for ugliness.




> 3) At first I thought it was the photo, but the tile just to the left of the bucket seems to have been cut at a very off angle. I wonder why...


see 1, this is the remain after cutting of a small triangular piece. Such a big remain can't be wasted..




> 4) Of course. He's started off in the kitchen using the wonky wall as the base line.


He corrected for the wonky wall  :Smile: 




> I knew that this would be fun.


As I said, you asked for it. 
Diagonal pattern tiling is not for tilers who are used to making one middle row which is supposed to be the centre line which they then follow up with rows on each side. This tiler must have gotten very confused about where his centre is..

----------


## Roobarb

Hello Lom,

Yes, I was sure they were going to mess it up one way or another so giving them the chance to do it in truly spectacular style was too good an opportunity to miss.  My not being there only really served to limit the amusement factor for me as I missed watching them all standing around scratching their asses as they tried to figure it out.

I know absolutely nothing about tiling.  So diagonal tiling is actually more difficult than normal straight tiling then?  No wonder they were resisting the idea.

I like your thought about him fixing the wonky wall by using it as the basis for his tiling.  He's straightened the wall beautifully, albeit in doing so he's made the rest of the house wonky instead.

----------


## nigelandjan

Oh dear ( head in hands )  why oh why do we put ourselves through this?  


On a positive note,  I have seen a gap in the market and a work permit opportunity.

I'm gonna become a door to door lino salesman  :Smile: 

Good luck RB  I feel for you mate sorting that lot out.

Betty I've got a rather nice slate grey offcut about 6 by 5 metres,  can do you a deal before you go into tiling hell

----------


## Roobarb

> Oh dear ( head in hands )  why oh why do we put ourselves through this?  
> 
> 
> On a positive note,  I have seen a gap in the market and a work permit opportunity.
> 
> I'm gonna become a door to door lino salesman 
> 
> Good luck RB  I feel for you mate sorting that lot out.
> 
> Betty I've got a rather nice slate grey offcut about 6 by 5 metres,  can do you a deal before you go into tiling hell


Actually Nigel you raise a good point.  Betty's tiling is yet to start.  Not only that but we are getting close to the point when he is going to reveal the choice of roof tiles too.

Our little exploits are a mere prelude to the main event.  :Smile:

----------


## taxexile

It might be too late for some of you guys in the middle of a build, but when we had some tiling done I spent the day before they started by marking out the concrete base,  tile by tile, cut by cut, edge by edge, grout space by grout space with a felt tip marker and string threads.

Then it was just like following a painting by numbers board for the builders.

----------


## Roobarb

So, back to tiling...

The story so far:  I have asked the builder to do an impossibly difficult diagonal tiling pattern.  I know nothing about diagonal, or indeed any other form of tiling so have no idea that this may be a bit complicated.  The builder has grudgingly had a crack at doing it but not taken into account three things:

1) He built the house with few of the walls perpendicular to the other, so using a wall as a base line is not a good idea.

2) There is a large area to be tiled, and starting at opposing ends to work towards the middle is very unlikely to be successful. 

3) He knows the sort of finish I want to get to, and I know the solution that I'll be OK with but for now I'm not going to jump in to help to get there.  

I'm just going to sit back and enjoy watching them scurrying around for a while.  Consider it payback for them not building the place straight in the first place.

----------


## Roobarb

> It might be too late for some of you guys in the middle of a build, but when we had some tiling done I spent the day before they started by marking out the concrete base,  tile by tile, cut by cut, edge by edge, grout space by grout space with a felt tip marker and string threads.
> 
> Then it was just like following a painting by numbers board for the builders.


It actually doesn't seem a bad idea Tax.  It would have worked well for doing the border in my place which would then have probably taken away much of the confusion.

I'm not so sure it would have worked for the whole floor area though as with the longest L X W floor dimensions of 15.5m x 14.5m the margin for error (especially with me doing it) would have been enormous. On saying that, from what Lom pointed out earlier, marking out a centre line from which they tile from could have been useful too.

----------


## Dillinger

^^ He would have sent smithers to supervise.

I pictured you more like this roobarb







 :Smile:

----------


## Roobarb

The next day I received the proposed solution:



Much happiness all around...

... except that is from me.

The whole point of not having a doorway into the kitchen and having the same type of tiles throughout is to bring it all together as one room.  Having a great big black line between the two was not going to do it.  It would also accentuate, not hide, the wonky kitchen.

Still using offcuts too...  :Smile: 

The clue I gave the wife to pass on the the builder was that the problem was in the kitchen, and if they tiled the rest of the ground floor house first then finished up with the kitchen, almost as if it was an an afterthought, then the focus would be on the correct area.

Off they went to think about it again.

----------


## Roobarb

> ^^ He would have sent smithers to supervise.
> 
> I pictured you more like this roobarb


Ha, nice one Dill.  At times I feel about as helpless out here in India as Apu is in his convenience store in Springfield.  Swap the faces and the top pic is particularly apt...

One of the benefits of living here whilst building a place in Thailand is that everything is relative.  The Indians are a highly inventive bunch and could teach the Thais volumes about not following instructions and how to truly screw things up.  The problems we have faced with the house are a mere dip in a paddling pool compared to the sea of disaster that awaits the unwary here.

Arriving in Thailand from India I find is a similar experience to that of going to Singapore whilst I lived in Bangkok some years back.  After about half an hour there is this happy realisation that everything works, there's little hassle and it is actually possible for things to be done properly in Asia.

My builders can try as hard as they want, but they would really have to set their minds to it surpass my expectations of the levels disaster that could be achieved on this project.  I'm banking on them simply taking their normal, laid back, mai pen rai sort of approach instead. 

Everyone's a winner   :Smile: 

BTW, I sent my wife to be my Smithers and supervise this stage.  This is where I think my analogy of being Mr Burns gives way to being Apu in your bottom picture.

----------


## Dillinger

see if you can guess these 2 posters with building threads

----------


## Marmite the Dog

Betty & Nige?

----------


## Dillinger

heh heh :Smile:

----------


## Roobarb

So, sticking with the cartoon theme, I was having fun out here:



Later in the day I received another call from the other half.  They'd  all thought about it and reckoned that what I was suggesting was that  they take up the tiling in the kitchen, do the rest of the floor then finish off the kitchen later on.

Smart cookies the lot of them.

This is where I'd made a bit of a misjudgement though.  As mentioned previously, the reason from buying the tiles up front was that I knew that however hideous anyone else thought them to be, thrift normally trumps aesthetics in Isaan so they would be used.

My enjoyment of the game was beginning to be curtailed by some resistance to the idea of raising the tiles on the kitchen floor to do it again.  Yes, there would be some broken tiles - we could buy more.  No, it wasn't a waste of money - well OK, it was but it wasn't going to bankrupt us etc etc.

Sensing the other side digging in I reckoned a compromise would have to be in order.

I would give in on the transition between the kitchen and the rest of the house and suggest a way of dealing with that on the understanding that they would redo the border in the way that I wanted it.

An agreement was reached, the crudely doctored photograph below mapping out the armistice treaty:



The transition would be moved to be central on the pillar and would be done in stone colour, not black.  They should start the transition at a width of 3" and let it end up being whatever width it needed to be at the other end.

The black border to the right of the pillar would run as shown.

Victory, of sorts anyway.

----------


## Roobarb

... and then another phone call.

"The builder was wondering if he could change the border a bit.  How about something like this?  It would save him digging up the rest of it"



No, because it then makes the pillar look even more off centre than it did before.

Look, it's not complicated.  Here's how they handle going around pillars, just try to keep the dark border about 3" away from the pillars and then fill in the other bits with stone coloured tiles:

----------


## Roobarb

Half an hour later an other phone call:

"You mean like this?"



Good enough, let's run with it.

And so they did.  The existing tiles were cut with a grinder and the unwanted bit knocked out then the border bit was done, well not properly of course, but in a way that to my eyes at least looked a bit less odd:



It had been a long, hard day, but nonetheless a battle worth fighting I think.

----------


## Roobarb

Tiling then continued the next day:





With only one or two more minor miscalculations therafter:

----------


## Roobarb

Another major step forwards was that we now had stairs.

I'd said that we just wanted something simple and basic, so that's what we got.  They do the job though:



Stairs are great things to have.  Look, people can use them to walk up and down on.



I wonder why they built so much of the house without thinking to install them.  The amount of stuff they've had to haul up with ropes is amazing.  Anyway, as is clear from this thread I'm not a builder and also not doing the hauling so I don't really care too much.

----------


## Roobarb

The little study area under the stairs seems to have turned out to be just about large enough for a small desk and chair, maybe a bookshelf at the end for some dusty, leather-bound tomes.



I'm glad we squeezed down the size of the two downstairs bathrooms and paid a bit extra for the builder to rebuild his wall, having this little corner has balanced the feel of the house.  A window at the far end would have been nice, but it's something to go on the list for another time.

There's a bit of a gap between the top of the stairs and the ceiling of the study (you can see it in the photo in the post above).  I may put in what our dearly departed and much missed friend Dr. Andy might have described as a 'Gay Arch' when we get around to getting the gypsum professionals in (as opposed to the Gyppo Butchers which is what our current builders seem to be with regards to hanging plasterboard).

----------


## Bettyboo

> Actually Nigel you raise a good point. Betty's tiling is yet to start. Not only that but we are getting close to the point when he is going to reveal the choice of roof tiles too.


You'll be pleasantly surprised at both. &, I don't care; their house, they're gonna live there, not I, so it's all good.




> It might be too late for some of you guys in the middle of a build, but when we had some tiling done I spent the day before they started by marking out the concrete base, tile by tile, cut by cut, edge by edge, grout space by grout space with a felt tip marker and string threads.
> 
> Then it was just like following a painting by numbers board for the builders.


Where's the fun in that, typical Northerner - control freak (I suspect Roobarb may have some Sheffield blood in him...).




> Arriving in Thailand from India I find is a similar experience to that of going to Singapore whilst I lived in Bangkok some years back.


Hmmm, that's bad. I've only ever been to Nepal and Sri Lanka, and neither seemed too bad. But the Indians here in Oman are a nightmare; Thais are, and this is not easy to say, far superior, reasonable, honest, hard working and the list goes on...




> heh heh




 :Smile: 




> Victory, of sorts anyway.


Yeah, ok... You seem to enjoy making trouble, Roobarb. How is your blood pressure? I can see, though, how, in a semi-lucid Indian trance, it could all seem like fun. The bit I don't get is how your missus puts up with it? She must be a very reasonable, in an unThai way, woman! My missus is typically Thai, i.e. mad, so I couldn't give her the stresses and strains that you've been providing your poor missus...  :Smile: 

The stairs and everything look very nice. Lots of nice pictures and commentary, thanks.

----------


## Roobarb

> Where's the fun in that, typical Northerner - control freak (I suspect Roobarb may have some Sheffield blood in him...).


Funny that, you sense it as well.  The thing is that when I hear people in the office whisper "That Roobarb - he's a boring fork" I've always reckoned it's because of my piercing, steely glare and also my being from the UK (quite possibly they think Sheffield now that you've mentioned it) that it reminds them of cutlery.  

Other than cutlery I didn't really know anything about Sheffield.  London & Home Counties - yup.  West Country - no issues.  Watford - pushing it.  Further north - There be Dragons (OK, that's Wales but you get the drift - outside loos and that sort of stuff).  Anyway, I decided to have a quick look at what Sheffield has to offer on the net.  

Did you know...

1) It's in Yorkshire

2) Sheffield have a Roller Derby Team.  It's the Sheffield Steel Rollergirls

Here's a pic of them:



Readers will be sad to know that they have missed their last event:



'Doors open at 7pm, and so does the bar!  We'll be blowing the first whistle just after 7.30"

Judging by where the bloke in the picture is pointing he's going to be one of the lucky ones at 7.30.  The girl can't keep her eyes off it.

Actually I'm not from Sheffield.  It's not something that has bothered me until I saw this and realised what I had been missing.  




> Hmmm, that's bad. I've only ever been to Nepal and Sri Lanka, and neither seemed too bad. But the Indians here in Oman are a nightmare; Thais are, and this is not easy to say, far superior, reasonable, honest, hard working and the list goes on...


SL & Nepal are fine.  India is OK most of the time too, but there are times where it excels itself in fukwittery.  




> Yeah, ok... You seem to enjoy making trouble, Roobarb. How is your blood pressure? I can see, though, how, in a semi-lucid Indian trance, it could all seem like fun. The bit I don't get is how your missus puts up with it? She must be a very reasonable, in an unThai way, woman! My missus is typically Thai, i.e. mad, so I couldn't give her the stresses and strains that you've been providing your poor missus...


She's a long-suffering woman Betty.  TBH I'm not sure how she puts up with it either.

----------


## Roobarb

Now there are some stairs it might be time for a quick wander upstairs and see what they have been up to there.

First up, the bedroom at the front of the house has its gypsum partition walls up.  



To be honest the builder didn't do a great job with the gypsum, so we decided fairly early on that we would just get him to do the basics.  At some stage in the future when we get around to it we will then get some proper gypsum folks in to come and sort the place out. 

Then from the corner by that little bench thing looking off to the other end of the house:



... and the same view but from a different angle:



Still a long way to go but the place was beginning to take shape, albeit not a shape with corners at perfect right angles.

----------


## Roobarb

The carpenter had also started on the stairs to the mezzanine level, or at least I thought he had only started on them and we were going to get bannisters and stuff.  He apparently thought differently so they never really progressed from this point.



Looking from the guest loo they are quite steep:



Before the guy started I was asked what I wanted the stairs he to be like, so I pulled a picture off the net of something that looks a bit like a boat's companionway ladder and told him to copy that:



Wotcha reckon - did he make an effort to capture the essence of what I was after or does it look remarkably similar to how he made the other staircase?

I suspect the stair-making Somchai to be a bit of a one-trick pony - it's another thing to change later on.

Actually, I'm now thinking that a spiral staircase might be a good alternative here instead.

----------


## taxexile

> Quote:
> Originally Posted by taxexile
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 			
> 				It might be too late for some of you guys in the middle of a build, but when we had some tiling done I spent the day before they started by marking out the concrete base, tile by tile, cut by cut, edge by edge, grout space by grout space with a felt tip marker and string threads.Then it was just like following a painting by numbers board for the builders.
> 			
> ...



its quite simple really,  some of us are born to give orders, and some are born to take them.

spent my student days in sheffield, its a wonderful city, right on the edge of the peak district,

----------


## armstrong

steep!?  they're fucking vertical!

----------


## Roobarb

> steep!?  they're fucking vertical!


Yup, and that's the problem as its meant to be a ladder so you climb it using hands and feet, but he's built it as a staircase so there's nothing really to grab hold of which makes the climb somewhat perilous.

The joys of net being there...  Another thing to do right later.  At least there's a decent amount of wood that can be salvaged when that happens.

----------


## BKKKevin

> steep!?  they're fucking vertical!


Given the example the builder was given I'd say the finished product would come under the definition of "Same Same"...

----------


## Wasp

> Happily though it transpired that all was not lost.  Swept away with the excitement of buying the land I had not really been listening to what it actually was that we had bought, and it was only going to look at the place that things became clearer.
> 
> The land is roughly triangular shaped with one surface of the triangle running east/west and the other two pointing southwards into the lake.
> 
> It is split into two parts.  The pictures that I had seen (and have posted above) were of about 10 rai of agricultural land that formed the southern section of the triangle.  FIL had got this thrown in with the deal when we had bought the 5 rai of land along the northern edge of the triangle.
> 
> The 5 rai of land had been raised and was about a metre or so above the water level.  The photo below is taken facing roughly north towards the raised 5 rai (the bit behind the fence posts):
> 
>  
> ...


.......................

Beelimey  *Roobarb !!!!!*

  I finished my Thread and you helped me and encouraged me through it ... but I had not read your Thread .

Now I have the time and I've just got this far .

I won't jump ahead ......... but looking at Little Venice here I'm astonished for what you're facing .

 BEEEEELIMEEEEEEYYYY !


....................... Wasp .

......................................

----------


## Wasp

> It occurred to me that we had already bought both a 12 post house and a 9 post rice barn.  All in 21 posts.
> 
> If we therefore assumed that we would raise the whole thing on a 16 post concrete frame in a 4 by 4 layout we can keep the ground floor open (lots of outside space) then use 16 of the wooden posts for the first floor, and a few others for doing the roof frame.  Then just slap some walls on, down with some floors, bolt on a roof and we're all good.  We had the walls and floors already.  Just have to pay for a roof and we're there.
> 
> As mentioned previously I have absolutely no idea about building or architecture so to me the above logic seemed absolutely sound.  
> 
> Things continued to get more carried away with extra extensions, but I was enjoying myself and eventually ended up with this:
> 
> 
> ...


  Please pardon me again jumping in 8 pages ago ....... but this is *fabuloso* !!!

I think I'm never going out again ...... I think I'm just going to read all these Threads like a Thriller to see if an end product came out that is anything like the intent .

This design home *Roob*  .... in the UK .... would be a million pounds !!!!

Looking just lovely it is .

Welsh Wasp

.................................................

----------


## Roobarb

> Originally Posted by armstrong
> 
> 
> steep!?  they're fucking vertical!
> 
> 
> Given the example the builder was given I'd say the finished product would come under the definition of "Same Same"...


I came to the same conclusion Kevin so didn't bother doing anything about it.  

It is what it is...  :Smile:

----------


## Roobarb

> Please pardon me again jumping in 8 pages ago ....... but this is fabuloso !!!


Jump around as you want Wasp.  I'm delighted you're enjoying my particular tale.




> I think I'm never going out again ...... I think I'm just going to read all these Threads like a Thriller to see if an end product came out that is anything like the intent .


There are some great threads in the construction forum.  Some a thrillers, many are comedies and there are happily very few horror stories.  Most people seem quite happy with their end result.




> Looking just lovely it is .


Thanks Wasp, you are just at the plan stage though.  Read on and see if you think the reality comes anywhere close...   :Smile:

----------


## Wasp

> Originally Posted by Wasp
> 
> Please pardon me again jumping in 8 pages ago ....... but this is fabuloso !!!
> 
> 
> Jump around as you want Wasp.  I'm delighted you're enjoying my particular tale.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


 _Ooooh ?   What's gonna happen ?    What's gonna happen ?

 I read three other threads pretty much all the way through in 3 sittings .
But I'm not doing that now .   I'm treasuring the tension .
_
*Roob* ....._ How far is this from Korat ?

Don't worry - I'm not even in Thailand !  But how far to Korat ?  Just curious_ .

 ..................... Wasp ............
.........................................

And please do tell me Rooby - That extract showing Cousin Alvi ..... did you find that as a single piece on Youtube or did you cut it out yourself ?  Because what I want to know is ....... if you cut it out yourself what programme did you use to do the cutting ?  I like those kind of activities . Love Photoshop - but don't know about videos .  And I'm struggling along with Sketchup ... but I'll get the hang .

----------


## Wasp

..............   Well * Roob*

I've just got past your traumas with the two bathrooms upstairs . ( Page 7 )

Absolutely hilarious !!!!

I said in my own Thread that you and Bettyboo are a pair of funny guys .

Your quotes seem to be " ... back to the drawing board "    "I thought it best not to further confuse matters at this stage " and " ... we can knock the wall down later and do it my way " .

  Love it !!!!!!!

Wasp

..........................

----------


## Koetjeka

Am I still sleeping or are these stairs not straight? It looks to be a little like this \



It's a nice design, in sketchup it looks small but on the photos is HUGE, I really like it. I eagerly await the photos where you show how they make the triangular windows, you rarely see them in Thailand. I'm also eager to see how the glass baluster turns out, actually I'm eager to see anything in this project, haha.

----------


## Roobarb

> Am I still sleeping or are these stairs not straight? It looks to be a little like this \


I think it's just the photo, in reality they do seem to run reasonably parallel to the wall - although that does make assumptions that the wall is in the correct place.  having walked up and down them a few times I'm not entirely convinced that the stair treads are truly horizontal, but they are at least solid and it does the job.




> It's a nice design, in sketchup it looks small but on the photos is HUGE, I really like it. I eagerly await the photos where you show how they make the triangular windows, you rarely see them in Thailand. I'm also eager to see how the glass baluster turns out, actually I'm eager to see anything in this project, haha.


Thanks...  I thought it looked quite small in Sketchup too, it's a dangerous bit of software...  :Smile: 

The issue I think I found is that whilst I knew what I wanted from my experience of city living, the builder's conceptual understanding was limited to his experience of what happens in his immediate vicinity.  Whilst I think he spent a fair amount of time trying to figure stuff out, and I think did a good job in the circumstances, it would have helped if I was around from time to time. Everything turned out fine, albeit with a slight Isaan slant (in both senses of the word)...

----------


## bankao dreamer

Am I still sleeping or are these stairs not straight? 

S T R A I G H T
I am not familiar with this concept please advise.

----------


## Roobarb

> *Roob* ....._ How far is this from Korat ?
> _
> And please do tell me Rooby - That extract showing Cousin Alvi ..... did you find that as a single piece on Youtube or did you cut it out yourself ?


Wasp, sorry for not replying earlier.  

1) We're half an hour north of Chaitaphum, so about two hours north of Korat and an hour or so to the west of Khon Kaen.  Middle of nowhere basically.

2) Cousin Avi came straight off YouTube, someone else did something clever 
to cut it into a clip, all I did was copy it.

----------


## Wasp

1) We're half an hour north of Chaitaphum, so about two hours north of Korat and an hour or so to the west of Khon Kaen.  Middle of nowhere basically.

2) Cousin Avi came straight off YouTube, someone else did something clever 
to cut it into a clip, all I did was copy it.[/QUOTE]


Received and acknowledged .  

Thank you Roob .


W.




_I'm dehydrating here from a lack of more Roobbuild news ._


..........................
.............

----------


## Bettyboo

Oh, Dil's giddy aunt... Who's gonna be going up there??? Hope you don't have a beer deck up there and a beer fridge downstairs. 

The rest of the pics look good. Lots of space, airy, light, nice. But, for 4 million you'd expect a nice place.  :Smile:

----------


## Marmite the Dog

> 1) We're half an hour north of Chaitaphum


Is that near Chaiyaphum?

----------


## lom

> We're half an hour north of Chaitaphum


Kaset Somboon?

----------


## Roobarb

> Originally Posted by Roobarb
> 
> We're half an hour north of Chaitaphum
> 
> 
> Kaset Somboon?


Yup, that sort of area.  We're just north of Tatton National Park.

----------


## Roobarb

> Originally Posted by Roobarb
> 
> 1) We're half an hour north of Chaitaphum
> 
> 
> Is that near Chaiyaphum?


Yes, a mere letter away...  :Smile:

----------


## Roobarb

> Oh, Dil's giddy aunt... Who's gonna be going up there??? Hope you don't have a beer deck up there and a beer fridge downstairs. 
> 
> The rest of the pics look good. Lots of space, airy, light, nice. But, for 4 million you'd expect a nice place.


'Up there' is mainly just because it gives easy access to open the windows in the roof ends to give lots of ventilation during the day.  We may chuck some mattresses/bean bags up there for the kids but that's all.

4 million  :rofl: ... I thought we'd agreed 1.5 plus change?

----------


## Wasp

................
I just want to be Post Number 300.

.....................  *W* .
...........................

----------


## Roobarb

OK, continuing the tour of upstairs

Looking into the master bedroom:



The builder's initial thought was to leave the wooden walls open on the inside, and use wooden partitioning for the internal walls.  'Yipsum' was something of an exotic departure for him.  Truth be told they didn't make a great job of it, but we'll get that sorted out later on.

The wall has gone up for the ensuite bathroom - yes QCon... :

 

... and was it sealed? - was it ****. (i.e. I think it highly unlikely).  

The walls in the rear bedroom were now by and large completed:



... and peering into the spare bathroom:

----------


## Roobarb

Page 13 already, I've just realised its four pages since we've taken a stroll around outside to see the progress there.  Better have a bit of an update on that:



They had been pretty busy bees out there, render on the outside walls and a coat of paint too.

We had had a call asking what colour we wanted the downstairs walls, with a few helpful suggestions thrown in.  Expecting the worst I said just paint all the walls in white.  Not a shade of white, just plain old white.   



The master bedroom with the kitchen below:



The kitchen window is a bit off centre as I gave up with trying to get that right during the great window standoff earlier in the year.

The kitchen wall facing out to the rear of the house is inset by about a metre or so (the wall to the left of the kitchen as you look at the photo) as the idea is that it forms the basis for the outdoor kitchen, but gives a bit of separation between that and the downstairs terrace so I won't be disturbed from by beer drinking whilst stuff is being pounded and ground.

One oversight was that the afternoon sun shines right into that corner, so I think at some stage (not now) we'll put up an awning there.

Back to the offset window - actually it all works out happily in the end as the large expanse of wall proved to be a good spot to site the water tank.  The joys of designing stuff as you go along...

----------


## Roobarb

Continuing our way around the house:

My 'loo with a view' window was apparently causing some confusion:



It was the last bit to be planked up, and at this stage the Q-Con wall seemed to be higher than the window frame.

Ah well, they'll figure something out I'm sure.

The front door area has shot up quickly too:



All in all it was beginning to look similar to the initial drawings, albeit a bit bigger than I'd expected and with fewer straight lines.

----------


## Roobarb

It was about this time that the builder was asking what colour we wanted the wood to be stained.

Keep it natural was the cry, but actually finding clear, matt varnish seemed to be a bit problematic.  It would have been much easier if I had been out there as I could at least have tried a few varnishes out to see what colour then ended up as. 

After a lot of faffing about eventually this TOA two pot clear polyurethane was uneathed:



At least I think it's this one.  I can't read Thai but we went for the matt version of this.

I was pretty happy as this should be hard wearing stuff and, applied properly, would last for a while.

But there was a flaw to this particular wheeze.  Did any of you spot it..........?


....... yes, well done, _'applied properly'_.


So for those that don't know about this stuff, one tin is a sort of hardener and the other one the varnish.  The idea is you mix it in equal proportions, add a bit of thinners if its the first coat, and then off you go.

The varnishing Somchai felt that all this was a bit complicated, so the best bet would be to splodge on the juice from just one tin, then continue with the contents of the next tin when the first one finished.

Luckily he started from the upstairs balcony wall so, being shaded by the balcony roof the damage is not that obvious, but in case anyone is wondering, the top section of the photo below was done with just one part of the two part varnish (and took about a week to harden), the bit of wood resting on the ladder-like thing was done properly, as was the wood on the wall below it.



Knobs.

I'm just happy that they realised before they had done the entire place.

----------


## Marmite the Dog

> The varnishing Somchai felt that all this was a bit complicated, so the best bet would be to splodge on the juice from just one tin, then continue with the contents of the next tin when the first one finished.


Yet more amazement at just how fucking stupid these 'people' are.

----------


## nigelandjan

Oh dear, , and people wonder why I was getting stressed at the point of decoration.

It's probably best you exit the Country at this point whilst they do they're level best to convert your home,  into a shed like dwelling they are more familiar with.

breathe in mate. I've been there.

On a more serious note,  that water tank looks very small to me for the size of property,, don't get me wrong I'm not critising just trying to help,  we have a 1000 litre one for our small pad,  probably me got it wrong.

All the best mate

----------


## Roobarb

You're right Nigel, the further on you get with the construction the more detailed the work becomes and herefore the greater opportunity for the crew to demonstrate some original thinking - or as annoyingly a complete lack of thinking.

One of the reasons (money aside) that we are going to end this phase of the build at 'lock-up and leave stage' is because we are fairly sure that doing anything more whilst not being there will only mean that we have to get it redone again properly later.

Thanks for pointing out the water tank.  The one in the picture appeared on site a while back, I think it's the builder's.  We'll get a 2000 litre tank to back up the rather erratic village water supply a bit later on.

----------


## Bettyboo

> 'Yipsum'





> QCon


You know all the trendy words, don't you!




> a bit off centre


a "bit"...  :rofl: 



OMG! You would not want the house done in that; that'd really fuk up a lovely looking house, with all that wood you raped from the village.




> Oh dear, , and people wonder why I was getting stressed at the point of decoration.


Stop enjoying Roobarb's pain, Nige.  :Smile: 

The house does look very nice, very big, lovely views. Quite eclectic, but plenty of character. Starting to look like a home now, nice. It's only gonna get better from here on in, as long as Somchai and Samak aren't left to run wild...

----------


## Wasp

*Roobarb .....* 

     "Truth be told they didn't make a great job of it, but we'll get that sorted out later on."

  " back to the drawing board !"

...... " I thought it best not to further confuse matters at this stage "

 " ... we can knock the wall down later and do it my way "


_
There's definitely a pattern here Roob but I can't exactly put my finger on it .

But what I really like is the feeling I have when I come back here ..... I can see there's new stuff on Roobarb's build .... so GREAT !!  it's time for biscuits , coffee and a read .

Always an interesting read and a bit of a phenomenal house !_

................  *Wasp*
.....................

----------


## nigelandjan

I'm not enjoying RB, s pain one bit Betty,  he's a good old boy, , I genuinely feel for the guy.

However I am rather looking forward to your build getting to this stage  :Smile:

----------


## Roobarb

> ... However I am rather looking forward to your build getting to this stage


Oh yes, aren't we all......  :Smile:

----------


## Loombucket

> Yet more amazement at just how fucking stupid these 'people' are.


Indeed! I often wondered why they bothered to issue instructions at all. I can remember asking, on many occasions, why the instructions were not followed and was met with with a stony stare and the usual comment of, 'we are Thai people'!  :Smile: 

It starts to look like a nice place now Roobarb. Keep it up.

----------


## Wasp

"Marmite the Dog" _  "  Yet more amazement at just how fucking stupid these 'people' are.  "_

Loombucket :  _"  Indeed! I often wondered why they bothered to issue instructions at all. I can remember asking, on many occasions, why the instructions were not followed and was met with with a stony stare and the usual comment of, 'we are Thai people'!   "
_

..................................................  ..................................................  ................


   You know ..... sometimes I think we're a bit harsh on these people . 

 My home is still in England and I wonder sometimes how I would feel if some wealthy Thai turned up and built a HUGE house that was totally of a Thai design . 
 In the English countryside .

And what if he asked English builders to construct this Thai design with just a few sketches and drawings .... while he was off in Peru making the money to pay for it ?

I think the English guys would make mistakes . 

 And I think they would say " _Well that's how we do things in England_ ".

I do think I would feel mightily pissed off if all the homes around me were in the low end of the market and then this bloody foreign Thai rich bastard was building a huge 5 bedroom 6 bathroom 5 toilet place !!! 

And what if  the English builders were staying on site until it was done ...... and sleeping in a shack ?

I DON'T think the English builders would greet you with a sunny smile - grateful for the work . Whereas the Thais do ...... and they are ....... grateful .

So I think you should ease back on them a little bit .

...................... *Wasp*

......................

----------


## Koetjeka

> "Marmite the Dog" _  "  Yet more amazement at just how fucking stupid these 'people' are.  "_
> 
> Loombucket :  _"  Indeed! I often wondered why they bothered to issue instructions at all. I can remember asking, on many occasions, why the instructions were not followed and was met with with a stony stare and the usual comment of, 'we are Thai people'!   "
> _
> 
> ..................................................  ..................................................  ................
> 
> 
>    You know ..... sometimes I think we're a bit harsh on these people . 
> ...


I disagree, I think in England they would do a way better job, even if they don't know the architecture. They would do research, which I've never seen any Thai person do. They would ask for more information when needed, something else a Thai person rarely does because of the language barrier. And also, if the English guy screws up he will get fired by his boss, something that doesn't seem to happen in Thailand. You screw up, but they'll never fire you.

Sleeping in a shack doesn't matter because the workers are used to it, their homes are probably the same as the shacks because they can't afford anything better.

----------


## Wasp

And I think you're right .  In England they will always do a way better job .

But you're talking about English education and expectations versus Thai lack of education and happy-go-lucky standards .

When you look at Roobarb's place ... or anyone's .... look at how much they get _right_ !


Wasp

----------


## Koetjeka

> When you look at Roobarb's place ... or anyone's .... look at how much they get right !


That's true, we always focus on the negative while we should focus on the positive. You guys got some awesome places, sure some things might not be like we had planned but in the end they're all great buildings!

----------


## Bettyboo

> You know ..... sometimes I think we're a bit harsh on these people .


I agree, Wasp.

My lot are doing everything Thai style, without foreign instruction, and for under 15,000 British pounds are building a nice functional little house.

But, the wood staining incident and the lack of centreing, etc, does look dodgy. But, you pays your money and takes your chance. Roobarb has used the local guys, and they've mostly done a very good job, the house is coming along great, it's eclectic with character, was built to Roobarb's "unique" design, and everyone's a winner. Koman wants everything top drawer and has employed a professional to oversee the entire build, along with top notch contractors - he says it isn't consting much, but that cannot be so... You do have options here, the different threads show that; your own thread, Waspy, was local builders controlled by your lady, and it turned out brilliantly. For 2 bob money these local builders and workers do better than a 2 bob job in my opinion. My parent's (they live in Javea, Spain) kitchen extension is brilliant, nicer than my house, the quality of workmanship is high, cost nearly 100,000 euros...

----------


## Koetjeka

> My parent's (they live in Javea, Spain) kitchen extension is brilliant, nicer than my house, the quality of workmanship is high, cost nearly 100,000 euros...


For that price you can have a 4bedroom 2bathroom teak wood house here ^_^

When I'm going to build my house, I actually plan to do most work myself. Not to save money but just because it's my dream to build it myself. Sure, sometimes I'll need help but I think I can actually do a lot myself. It's going to take a few years before I start though  :Sad:

----------


## Roobarb

> Originally Posted by Wasp
> 
> You know ..... sometimes I think we're a bit harsh on these people .
> 
> 
> I agree, Wasp.
> 
> My lot are doing everything Thai style, without foreign instruction, and for under 15,000 British pounds are building a nice functional little house.
> 
> But, the wood staining incident and the lack of centreing, etc, does look dodgy. But, you pays your money and takes your chance. Roobarb has used the local guys, and they've mostly done a very good job, the house is coming along great, it's eclectic with character, was built to Roobarb's "unique" design, and everyone's a winner. Koman wants everything top drawer and has employed a professional to oversee the entire build, along with top notch contractors - he says it isn't consting much, but that cannot be so... You do have options here, the different threads show that; your own thread, Waspy, was local builders controlled by your lady, and it turned out brilliantly. For 2 bob money these local builders and workers do better than a 2 bob job in my opinion. My parent's (they live in Javea, Spain) kitchen extension is brilliant, nicer than my house, the quality of workmanship is high, cost nearly 100,000 euros...


^ Wot he said.  The labour cost to build my place, including my changes to the 'plans' (such as they were), was Baht 455K, of about GBP 8,000.  That's all the labour for the entire build.  I doubt I could get a skilled worker for much over a single month in the UK for that money.

I'm asking them to do things which are pushing the boundaries of their experience.  They will make mistakes.  It's frustrating when they are silly mistakes (like not reading the instructions on a pot of varnish) but honestly it's not the end of the world.  For the equivalent cost of a few beers I can get someone to sand it down and redo it later on if it bothers me.  

The place has been built with little other guidance than the initial pictures I put up on this thread.  In all honesty the guys have far exceeded my expectations in most areas.

----------


## nigelandjan

Some good points made here in these latter posts,  it is unfortunate how these guys treat our homes,  but let's not forget what they are working  for. 

The lovely little pad we have ended up with cost a quarter what it would have cost in the UK

----------


## Koetjeka

Don't forget that everything here is cheaper as well. In Europe one might earn 60.000THB working as a cashier but this person surely struggles to survive just as the construction workers here because 1 meal for example is over 200THB.

Also note that 90% of the Thai construction workers are high school drop outs in contradiction to the construction workers in Europe. This explains a lot too.

----------


## Bettyboo

This is a very nice shot. You can see that the house is gonna be really nice, lovely balcony and views. Even Marmite, although he wouldn't admit it, would be jealous...

----------


## Roobarb

> This is a very nice shot. You can see that the house is gonna be really nice, lovely balcony and views. Even Marmite, although he wouldn't admit it, would be jealous...


Cheers, Betty.  It's all turning out rather well I think, in spite of my not having the first clue about what I'm doing...   :Smile:

----------


## neemo

Nice house, great thread!

----------


## Bettyboo

> in spite of my not having the first clue about what I'm doing...


I don't see why that should be a hindrance.  :Smile:

----------


## Wasp

.......

*nigelandjan*

......."  it is unfortunate how these guys treat our homes "

_I don't understand that ._

 How these guys treat our homes ............... _ I think these guys are always trying to get it right !

I think they are proud of what they do and I think they know that if they do a really good job the fallang will recommend them to the next fallang .

I'm sure they want to show people their work ...... and with a sense of pride in what they've done .

Because as someone just pointed out - they ARE mostly school drop-outs with families dependent on them and they've found their way into a respected job instead of back-breaking rice growing .

I honestly do not think they treat your homes in any way badly out of intent .
_

   .....................  *Wasp*

...................................

----------


## Roobarb

> Nice house, great thread!


Cheers Neemo, I appreciate the appreciation.  Thanks...!

----------


## Roobarb

> Originally Posted by Roobarb
> 
> in spite of my not having the first clue about what I'm doing...
> 
> 
> I don't see why that should be a hindrance.


Actually I think it's probably been a vast help...

Ignorance is bliss.

----------


## Marmite the Dog

> .......
> 
> *nigelandjan*
> 
> ......."  it is unfortunate how these guys treat our homes "
> 
> _I don't understand that ._
> 
>  How these guys treat our homes ............... _ I think these guys are always trying to get it right !
> ...


I think they do as good a job as any 7 year old child could do.

----------


## Wasp

......

*Roobarb* ............


I think you're not keen on questions but may I ask you 2 questions please ?

Not about houses but about Sketchup .

So do you mind ?

Dammit that's 2 questions !!!!!!!!!!!

OK forget it .


.............. *Wasp*
............

----------


## Wasp

Marmite the Dog;

_I think they do as good a job as any 7 year old child could do._


Think about what you're saying here Marm .

Do you truly believe a 7 year old could put down foundations , bend rebar , construct a house , plumb it , Power it , Drain it and put a roof on ?

You don't do you ?


So you needs withdraw the comment .

It's just silly .


 ...................  W

..................

----------


## Roobarb

> ......
> 
> *Roobarb* ............
> 
> 
> I think you're not keen on questions but may I ask you 2 questions please ?
> 
> Not about houses but about Sketchup .
> 
> ...


Ask another one if you want Wasp.  Can't promise I'll know the answer but I think there are a few folks on TD who know Sketchup well so they may be able to help.

----------


## Wasp

..............

Just a simple one Roobarb . 

 I'm going to look at Youtube explanations et cetera because I fancy getting a hang of this .

But 1. 
      If you want to start with a base line of say 12 meters how do you set that ?

     A base line of 1200 units of anything will help but can you specifically put down 1200 cm ?  

..... and 2 .   I'm getting frustrated because I make a simple box ( I'm not far into this yet ) and when I try to draw a rectangular roof on the box it is drawing down inside the box on one of the walls .

I know I have to do the work and read some stuff on the internet but this would propel me along .

And your housebuild ?     I do love it .  Sometimes it looks as capacious as Terminal 5 but I very much like that .

Reading several Threads I've come across a few people who regret building as large as they did ............. And you would hardly believe _this_ but my little Missy wishes her redevelopment was not so big too !!!!!!! 

I mean it must be 20% of your place . It was never a huge place ... just bigger than the former shack .

Stressing that I do very much like your development - do you have any doubts about the capaciousness ?

    With my Thanks .

.................. *Wasp*

.................

----------


## Wasp

........

Ignore me *Roobarb* .

I was being lazy .   The first Youtube clip that I chose showed me this in 4 minutes .

Feel ashamed to have asked .

But lovely house !


.....................*W*

----------


## Roobarb

Wasp

Sketchup - 

1. Choose the metric template



2.  Begin to draw your line in the direction you want it to go in.  You see the little box on the bottom right of the screen on the picture below (it says Length 4.85m)?  That gives you the length of the line you are drawing.  Rather then try to draw to an accurate length all you need to do is type in the length you want the line to be, so in your example type in 12 (don't 'finish' your line before you do this, just start the line then type the length).  You will see the end of the line advance to 12 metres.  Click your mouse to confirm and you have a 12 metre long line.



With regards to the roof - I'm not too sure what the problem is, but do this:

Draw a cube.  



Run your mouse along the length of one of the lines on the top.  At the midway point you will get a little blue circle appear.  Click that, then start to draw a line upwards (vertical lines are blue ones).  



Go as high as you want to take the roof.  This gives you the equivalent of a pillar.  Then take a line from that to each corner of the line that your 'pillar' started from.  You have the start of a roof.  



You can delete the pillar after that.

Repeat at the opposite end, draw a ridge beam and you have a roof.

On the other point, is the house too big?  Dunno.  I like a bit of space and it's nice to be able to invite friends to join us when we head up there.  We've got kids so space is a good thing.

----------


## Roobarb

> ........
> 
> Ignore me *Roobarb* .
> 
> I was being lazy .   The first Youtube clip that I chose showed me this in 4 minutes .
> 
> Feel ashamed to have asked .
> 
> But lovely house !
> ...


No worries...   :Smile: 

There's a lot on Youtube so it's a good place to learn about Sketchup.

----------


## Wasp

I was just musing *Roob* .

Don't misunderstand that .  I don't think it's too big .

I really _really_ would love that house for myself too .

Just a bit of musing while I get annoyed at the criticism of Thai workers 


 .............  *Wasp*

..... and thank you for the time you obviously took on Sketchup. 

 I got the measuring OK but your help on the roof was timely.

----------


## Roobarb

A bit of an update for you on the front door area, and given some of the recent discussion, possibly a timely post too...  :Smile: 

Other than saying that the inside bit of the front-door extension should be about 10 feet long by whatever the width of the pillars on the existing house was and that the porch bit over the front door should overhang by about five feet, we sort of left the builder to come up with what he felt was the best solution.

I reckon he did a good job of it:



However I was especially pleased, bordering on rather impressed, to see that he had decided to line the part underneath the roof with wood as he reckoned it would look good:



I think it looks great.

Throughout the build there has been a large amount of detail where the builder has used his imagination and gone the extra mile.  He's had to as there has been little guidance from us.  This is an example of it and to me shows the pride he's taken in the work.  There have been a few screw ups by him or his workers along the way, and as it makes for a more entertaining tale I've been highlighting them.  Credit where it's due though, there is a massive amount that he's done right which far outweighs anything that I might be critical of.

----------


## Marmite the Dog

> Marmite the Dog;
> 
> _I think they do as good a job as any 7 year old child could do._
> 
> 
> Think about what you're saying here Marm .
> 
> Do you truly believe a 7 year old could put down foundations , bend rebar , construct a house , plumb it , Power it , Drain it and put a roof on ?
> 
> ...


OK. Thai male adults are stronger than a western 7 year old.

Happy now?

----------


## Bettyboo

That is the most impressive and over-built porch roof I have ever seen (on a house); akin to a large temple or palace entrance. That porch roof is more impressive than 95% of house roofs in the world. Quite a statement of power and intent!  :Smile:

----------


## Roobarb

> That is the most impressive and over-built porch roof I have ever seen (on a house); akin to a large temple or palace entrance. That porch roof is more impressive than 95% of house roofs in the world. Quite a statement of power and intent!


Why thank you Betty.  Should help me to intimidate the villagers as I walk down the road dreaming up which of their houses I need for my next project.



I can sense them running for the hills as I type. 

You don't think the roof looks a bit, um:

 ?

----------


## bankao dreamer

It looks absolutely splendid.

----------


## Roobarb

Thanks BD  :Smile:

----------


## Wasp

[QUOTE=Marmite the Dog;2661928]


> Marmite the Dog;
> 
> _I think they do as good a job as any 7 year old child could do._
> 
> 
> Think about what you're saying here Marm .
> 
> OK. Thai male adults are stronger than a western 7 year old."
> 
> Happy now?




No I'm not happy now .

I mean what's wrong with you Marm ?   You seem unable to give any credit to these folks and their work .

Roobarb and sabang and hillbilly and koman and others are much further along with their builds and they give good credit to their workers for what they've done .
Look at what Roobarb has to say here about his guys .

You seem just completely determined to malign them when many find them to be good .

Not faultless .... not perfect ..... but definitely not deserving of the negative comment you seem to enjoy giving .

You're plain wrong on this marm .

Lighten up .


.............  *Wasp*

..................

----------


## Wasp

I've said for a while now I love this building , Roob .

And now I look at the entrance porch .

Bloody Nora !!!

It's great - all of it - but just as a holiday or casual getaway ?????

It's surely too good for that .

................  W

.......................

----------


## Marmite the Dog

> You seem just completely determined to malign them when many find them to be good .


You think they're good - I think they're retarded. I'm not going to lose any sleep over it.

----------


## Wasp

> Originally Posted by Wasp
> 
> You seem just completely determined to malign them when many find them to be good .
> 
> 
> You think they're good - I think they're retarded. I'm not going to lose any sleep over it.



And do you tell them you think they are retarded ?


...*W*

----------


## helge

> I mean what's wrong with you Marm ?


He is a teacher !

Don't argue construction with'em.

A teacher who's experience is limited to once having painted his aunt's garden gate, will think he is an expert in most trades :Smile: 

An he's an Aussie aswell, I think

----------


## laymond

> Originally Posted by Wasp
> 
> I mean what's wrong with you Marm ?
> 
> 
> He is a teacher !
> 
> Don't argue construction with'em.
> 
> ...


think again helge,marmers an aussie??just because marmers and terry57 are great mates,that doesn't make him an aussie ffs. :Smile: 

great thread and shack roo,all the best champ. :Smile:

----------


## Roobarb

> think again helge,marmers an aussie??just because marmers and terry57 are great mates,that doesn't make him an aussie ffs.


Yes, "Vegemite the Dog" somehow lacks the same ring  :Smile: 




> great thread and shack roo,all the best champ.


Cheers Laymond, thanks.

----------


## Wasp

.................

I think enough now on the subject of folks criticizing the Thai workers .

Roobarb's home and koman's build testify these guys ( and ladies ) can work up to a very high standard .

Enough .

...... and *Roobarb* - this Sketchup is damned addictive !

Wasp 
........

----------


## nigelandjan

So pray tell us about your happy experiences on your build Jaspa with your highly rated Thai crew

----------


## Roobarb

Well on the happy note of peace and accord that seems to have been struck, now is perhaps an interesting time to get back into the subject of tiling.

The upstairs bathrooms were beginning to get some tiles applied.  

The shower area in the ensuite bathroom:

 

And looking in to the spare bathroom:



Bit of a close up in case the workmanship needs further scrutiny:

----------


## Roobarb

We'd opted to go for plain white tiles for a couple of reasons: 

1)  If we tried to do anything interesting like have borders of the like and  were not there to keep an eye on things then there would be a chance,  infinitesimally small albeit, that they might misinterpret our wishes  and do something different.  Not wrong mind you, but different.   

I know it's unlikely given the quality of the plans I'd sent them (see below) but  nonetheless that chance remained.



2)  I was worried that the bathrooms were already so small that trying to  introduce any colour might just turn them into glorified cupboards.

3)  Whilst never in fashion, white also never really goes out of date.  Until I see  something I like then white will do, we can re-tile them later.

Apart from in the shower areas we left the tiling in the bathrooms deliberately low so that we could do something else, such as add a border or paint the walls a brighter colour, at a later stage.

----------


## Roobarb

The floor tiling downstairs was also getting there too:



They seemed to have worked out the dark border position pretty well too:



The little study area has been nearly done, albeit a bit to go but they had run out of tiles by this stage and I had said we would buy another box rather than using offcuts...



Bless 'em, they even (rather nervously) sent a pic of how the border crosses the front door in case, like with the kitchen, I took an irrational dislike to it:



Not terribly clean, but otherwise it met with approval.

----------


## Roobarb

Whilst the tilers had been tiling, the carpenter fellow had been knocking up some, I don't know what they are called, banisters/balustrades?  Anyway, the fence things to stop people falling off the mezzanine levels. 



And also one above the front bedroom:



This banister over this bedroom is really more to visually balance the one that's at the other end of the room than to provide any realistic living space on top of the bedroom.

----------


## Roobarb

The gypsum folks had also been busy lining the inside of the upstairs walls:



Inside the front bedroom:



One area that had been forgotten about was discussing the electrical wiring.  The builder's assumption was that the wiring would be outside the gypsum so could be done afterwards.  My thoughts were that it should be done beforehand and so become hidden behind the gypsum.

A discussion was had and a solution found:



I don't have any pictures of the actual wiring, or come to think about it, even know if the plug sockets are connected to wires at all.  Anyway, the wiring looks better for being concealed (or possibly absent?) I think.

If you want to see how I would like to imagine that my wiring had been done, but know that it probably wasn't, then have a quick look at Koman's thread.

----------


## Bettyboo

Beautiful, not much more to say.

If I had the choice of walking around this house or having a roll in the hay with Monica Bellucci, it'd be close.



or



Having said that, the tiling needs a mention. At the back left, in the corner, why are there 2 tile cuts, 2 skinny strips? Not very brave with the colour...



&, shouldn't your team be working instead of drawing on the walls like 5 year olds???

----------


## Roobarb

> If I had the choice of walking around this house or having a roll in the hay with Monica Bellucci, it'd be close.


Having walked around the house already I suspect I know the direction I would favour...




> Having said that, the tiling needs a mention. At the back left, in the corner, why are there 2 tile cuts, 2 skinny strips? Not very brave with the colour...


There are two tile cuts because it seems it has to go around a concrete pillar.  More to the point, why is there a concrete pillar?   It's because I didn't specify using thick enough bricks to lose the pillars in the walls so we are stuck with them, ugly horrible things that they are too...

I wasn't brave at all on the tile colour.  We had half a day to choose tiles and having finally got the floor tiles sorted out I'd really ran out of inspiration by the time it came to the bathrooms.  Keep it simple and we'll change it later.  Dull white tiles work for now.

----------


## Bettyboo

^sorry, don't accept that excuse! Why not just cut one tile into the corner - would look much nicer...  :Smile: 

This tiling lark really is the troublesomest area.

I've thought about the choice I outlined above, and I now agree with you.

The wood is starting to look really nice, and the space, light and views are excellent. Who designed this place?

----------


## Wasp

Roobarb :: 

" There are two tile cuts because it seems it has to go around a concrete pillar.  More to the point, why is there a concrete pillar?  "


*Roobs* ........  

Re; That corner .    It's only the corner of that column .

A brave decision would be to tell your guy to get a stone disc on his big grinder and he could cut that offending column back to the wall .

It would not lead to any significant loss of strength in the column .

Cut it back and then tile flat . 

...............  *Wasp*

..................

----------


## Roobarb

> ^sorry, don't accept that excuse! Why not just cut one tile into the corner - would look much nicer...


Ah yes, I get what you mean, I was being a bit thick.  Ummm, probably would look nicer, you're right. 




> This tiling lark really is the troublesomest area.  
> 
> I've thought about the choice I outlined above, and I now agree with you.


Darn, some competition.  Would it have helped divert your attention if I had nicer tiling?




> The wood is starting to look really nice, and the space, light and views are excellent.


Thanks




> Who designed this place?


Some dumb prick with no idea of what it would cost I reckon.

----------


## Roobarb

> Roobarb :: 
> 
> " There are two tile cuts because it seems it has to go around a concrete pillar.  More to the point, why is there a concrete pillar?  "
> 
> 
> *Roobs* ........  
> 
> Re; That corner .    It's only the corner of that column .
> 
> ...


You may well be right Wasp, but I think it will remain.  I'm not too sure about the quality of the concrete posts, certainly not sure enough to reduce the cross sectional area of one of them by 20% or so.  The more strength the better I think.

My main aesthetic concern is actually the pillars downstairs, and I'm certainly not going to attack them with an angle grinder.

They're rustic, a bit like the rest of the place.  I'm sure I'll come to love them in time...

----------


## Wasp

*W* ........ "  A brave decision would be to tell your guy to get a stone disc on his big grinder and he could cut that offending column back to the wall . "

*Roob* not sure enough to reduce the cross sectional area of one of them by 20% or so.  


*........................................*

_It's just one of those small items that becomes majorly annoying because every time you are there you see it .

My guess is that you would reduce it maybe 8% .......... but I concede to your greater knowledge ._


    ................          *W.*

.........................................

----------


## Roobarb

Perhaps in the longer term if it continued to annoy me I think I would build the wall out a bit with another layer of bricks rather than cut into any of the columns, but I appreciate he suggestion as it hadn't occurred to me as an option.  

The tiling in the bathroom is not a permanent solution so it would be easy enough to fix as and when we we get around to changing the tiles.

----------


## Bettyboo

> cut into any of the column


What could possibly go wrong?

"No it'll be alright Ethel, trust me, I'm just gonna shave a couple of inches off the column."

----------


## Roobarb

> Originally Posted by Roobarb
> 
> cut into any of the column
> 
> 
> What could possibly go wrong?
> 
> "No it'll be alright Ethel, trust me, I'm just gonna shave a couple of inches off the column."


^  :rofl:  

I'm already half expecting that to happen anyway, cutting back the columns would only make it more likely...

----------


## helge

> think again helge,marmers an aussie?





> Yes, "Vegemite the Dog" somehow lacks the same ring


Sorry

To all aussies

----------


## helge

> We'd opted to go for plain white tiles for a couple of reasons:  1) If we tried to do anything .....................


2)
To be honest I kind of get off taking a dumb in small rooms having that morque atmosphere

Hmm

----------


## Roobarb

> To be honest I kind of get off taking a dumb in small rooms having that morque atmosphere


Que...?

Ah, got it.




> To be honest I kind of get off talking dumb in small rooms...




----

To your point - at least I think it's to your point - it hadn't occurred to me that it would look morgue-like Helge.  As mentioned earlier the white tiles are not a permanent solution.

Looking on the bright side though, now whenever I take a dump there it will remind me of you...   :rofl: 

It's a kind of immortality, at least until I change the tiles.  Some people strive for a lifetime to achieve that.  Congratulations   :Smile:

----------


## helge

I'm honoured, Sir

 :Smile:

----------


## Roobarb

There are many odd features to this house, but perhaps one of the more peculiar is the upstairs mezzanine floor.

This came about for several reasons.  I do like ceilings that go up into the roof space, and initially wanted to do this for the bedrooms as well as the 1st floor living room area, but realised that if I did then we would end up with a series of very tall rooms, each on a fairly small footprint which could seem proportionally wrong.  There would also be the issue of the front bedroom and upstairs bathrooms which would require large walls going up to the ridgebeam of the main roof.  No problem with constructing it, but I reckoned that the scale of the walls would seem a bit overbearing from the 1st floor living room.

I like the idea of opening up the house during the daytime so the breeze can blow through, and wanted ready access to the roof space that we could easily open up windows there during the day to ventilate the top of the house.

And so the mezzanine idea sort of gelled.  Good ventilation during the day should keep the roof space relatively cool (as opposed to having a 'sealed' roof area).  That in turn should keep the bedrooms below from getting too hot.  Whilst it's not designed to be living space, the cost of putting a proper floor up there was not that much and ultimately allowing it to be a sort of extra space if needed.

Picture of the main mezzanine area taken from the roof of the front bedroom:



The lower section of the roof in the picture above is about 9 feet high at peak, so there is room to walk fully upright underneath the central section.

----------


## Roobarb

And so, having crawled up the near vertical staircase that's not a ladder but should have been to the main mezzanine area, a few photos from up there.

The roof space above the master bedroom:



And then standing in that roof space looking back along the house:



The floorboards in the centre of this section of the roof were new.  We had run out of old ones and, as much as the idea of going and felling another village house for them appealed, common sense dictated that it was probably not a viable option for about 15 sq.m of floorboards.

The problem was that, being relatively new wood, it clearly hadn't been dried out for long enough, so gaps began to appear between the planks fairly shortly after the floor had been laid.  As it's nothing more than a glorified attic space then I'm not going to lose sleep over it.

Looking down into the roof space over the back bedroom:



It's more narrow than the roofspace above the master bedroom, but I can still walk upright down there without worrying about hitting my head (I'm 6'2").

----------


## Roobarb

Finally, looking along to the roof space above the front bedroom.  Not sure what it will actually be used for, but it's there if we need it I guess.



... from the same vantage point, and looking into the 1st floor living area and out onto the balcony:



They've managed to sneak some tiling in on the balcony without us getting any pictures of it.

It's still missing a handrail at the end though...?

----------


## Roobarb

Quick view looking into the house from the downstairs terrace:



The door apertures are meant to be getting bi-fold doors in them - these sort of things:



It was becoming apparent that the builder was getting a bit stumped by these, not having come across them before.

The frame thing he had just installed was not a good start so we decided that rather than go to the expense of having doors made up that either wouldn't fit or wouldn't do what we wanted them to do, we would ask the builder to leave it until we got out there.  If these sort of doors are badly installed then you can end up with them not opening properly.

----------


## Roobarb

The other area that seemed to be a concern was getting the windows made to go in the roof eaves.





Again there was a fair amount of discussion on the phone about this.  I was getting worried as the gypsum was up inside, as you can see from the photo above the exterior walls were beginning to be painted and yet there was no real commitment to getting started on this other than 'we need to find a carpenter'.



They are rather large holes to have left open to the elements...

As with everything it was a matter of 'pick your battles', so the bi-fold doors would be shelved for later, but getting the under-eaves windows and window frames sorted out was a priority.

----------


## Roobarb

A bit more of a wander around the house...

Front door:



Finally my upstairs loo window frame has been sorted out.



Like with the floorboards, we ran out of wood for the exterior planking so the last bit to the left of the front door as you look at the picture was new wood and hence is a rather nicer colour than the wood that came from the old houses.  They should have done a bit more sanding on the older stuff.  Something for next time.

----------


## koman

Great place Roobarb.  Really funky and interesting.   I have no idea how the hell you manage to get anything done without actually being there, but you seem to be doing something right.  

 I'm past the funky and interesting kind of house now, but I've had a couple in the past that I've renovated an upgraded.   I'm getting to that time of life now when stairs become more and more of a challenge so it's a one storey, low maintenance place for me now.  I do like your Mezzanine and your exotic stairs.... :Smile:     Takes some balls to go with wood these days....well done.

----------


## Roobarb

^ Cheers Koman, I reckon that not being there has probably helped a great deal...!

I've still got some years before stairs become a problem, at least I hope I have.  By then I'd imagine that the top floor would have either rotted away or been eaten by termites, so it's just a matter of getting rid of the wooden bits and then bolting the roof to the top of the ground floor walls.

Hey presto, the small single-storey retirement home is then sorted out...  :Smile:

----------


## bankao dreamer

Roobs it is looking amazing. I have the same mind set as you when it comes to old age stairs and termites, when the top bit has been eaten I will get someone to bang on some tin sheets and if I drink enough Lao khaeo I wont notice the difference. 

I am envious of your upstairs loo window I didn't think that far forward but if I leave the door open then the view whilst using said room is very nice although the natives tending there fields may hold a different opinion.

----------


## Roobarb

> I am envious of your upstairs loo window I didn't think that far forward but if I leave the door open then the view whilst using said room is very nice although the natives tending there fields may hold a different opinion.


I tend to take the approach that it simply serves them right for looking.  Do it enough times and they'll soon learn to look elsewhere...

----------


## Bettyboo

> the upstairs mezzanine floor


I like that, very cool. You'll be needing a comfy chair, a small fridge, a small book cabinet and maybe a stereo with some nice speakers up there. You'll end up spending most of your time up there (shame about the stairs, but you can change that to an iron swirly number quite cheaply and easily). Don't forget to run some powerpoints up there, and lights.




> I like the idea of opening up the house during the daytime so the breeze can blow through, and wanted ready access to the roof space that we could easily open up windows there during the day to ventilate the top of the house.


Interesting solution. Hope it works well for you; should do.




> It's still missing a handrail at the end though...?


Don't worry about that, it'll be alright and adds character...  :Smile: 

All in all, it's looking really nice. Your extra time and effort is paying dividends. The inside looks great, very nice space indeed, and the outside certainly has character aswellas being imposing in an awkward kinda way. Very nice house. Thanks for rubbing in how shite mine is with all these lovely pics, you utter bastard!

----------


## stevefarang

I got to chime in too about that roof space. I really like it. If nothing else, it will be great storage space.

Great looking job Roobarb !!

Steve

----------


## Roobarb

^ & ^^ Thanks fellas!

----------


## Wasp

Hi Roobs .


I've said all along that I admire this place a lot .
And it's looking great .

I have 2 suggestions ... maybe 3 .... though nobody ever took up any suggestion of mine !

That area above the front bedroom - that you say you don't know what to do with ........

SUGGESTION 1.    Lift the wood up from there . Use it on the only new section that you have on the outside ( the loo ) and also use it to replace that new stuff in the main mezzanine .



SUGGESTION 2.   Then take the new stuff from the mezz to replace the area  you just lifted .

.......and Suggestion 3.    What to do with that area ? What to put there ?  Kids !! You'll have visitors . You'll have kids there . In the evening tell them there's a secret hidey place for kids alone .  Some bean bags ... power point for a TV or a computer . A tent . They would love it .  Bettyboo could sleep there when he comes !!!!


*Wasp*

..............................

----------


## Roobarb

Hello Wasp.  Thanks for chipping in a few ideas.

The planking on the outside of the house is pretty thin stuff, maybe 7 or 8 mm thick, whereas floorboards are maybe 2 cm thick so no dice there.  Swapping the floorboards about is a decent wheeze though, except I think that all the sort of stumpy, mis-sharpen offcuts ended up above the front bedroom so the main mezzanine area is probably better off in the longer-term with the new boards.

I'm sure it will end up being an overflow area for stuff.  Kids seem to like the concept, my four year old son has already referred to the top of the house as being a pirate ship.  

At least I rather hope that's what he said...  :Confused:

----------


## BigRed

> There are two tile cuts because it seems it has to go around a concrete pillar.  More to the point, why is there a concrete pillar?   It's because I didn't specify using thick enough bricks to lose the pillars in the walls so we are stuck with them, ugly horrible things that they are too...


Having got pillars, make them a feature. Don't tile them, paint them an accent colour or clad them in wood if they are in a dry area.

----------


## Roobarb

> Having got pillars, make them a feature. Don't tile them, paint them an accent colour or clad them in wood if they are in a dry area.


You know what, that's actually not a bad thought.  I especially like the wood cladding idea.  

Thanks BigRed.  :Smile:

----------


## Wasp

A 4 year old boy !  His own private pirate ship / hidey hole / clubhouse / space ship / batman cave !!!!

What a lucky lad .  He'll love it .

*W.*

----------


## Roobarb

^ I really do hope so Wasp.  A part of the reason for building this place is to give the kids somewhere that they can always think of as home whilst the turbulent winds of corporate life blow our little family from port to port.

I have fond memories of childhood summers spent exploring and imagining wonderful things at my grandparent's place in the countryside.  I'd like to recreate some of those halcyon days for my kids to store away as their childhood memories too.

----------


## Dillinger

Looking good Roobarb.

On a serious note, I hear there's a lot of lightning strikes up in North Thailand, with thousands being hit a year.

Have you taken any additional measures to prevent your house being struck, bearing in mind the 12 arcs that are the sum of the build ?  :Smile:

----------


## Wasp

> A part of the reason for building this place is to give the kids somewhere that they can always think of as home whilst the turbulent winds of corporate life blow our little family from port to port.
> 
> I have fond memories of childhood summers spent exploring and imagining wonderful things at my grandparent's place in the countryside.  I'd like to recreate some of those halcyon days for my kids to store away as their childhood memories too.


Put a hoist on that pirate's den so he can heave away ho when he wants a snack or a drink without climbing down !   Make a crow's nest up there .  He'll disappear up there and you won't see him again 'til he's 11 .


Wasp

----------


## Roobarb

> Looking good Roobarb.
> 
> On a serious note, I hear there's a lot of lightning strikes up in North Thailand, with thousands being hit a year.
> 
> Have you taken any additional measures to prevent your house being struck, bearing in mind the 12 arcs that are the sum of the build ?


It's a really good point Dill, and it has sort of slipped my mind.  I did see some massive copper lightning rod things in Global House the last time I was there (the six foot long ones that you bury in the ground) but I'm really not too sure how to go about doing the other bits - i.e. the thing that sticks up from the roof, and what sort of cable do you use to attach the two?

I seem to remember something about having three rods in the ground and trying to ensure that the cabling has a straight run???

Any advice on what I should be doing here would be great... 

Many thanks for pointing it out.

----------


## koman

> Originally Posted by Roobarb
> 
> 
>  A part of the reason for building this place is to give the kids somewhere that they can always think of as home whilst the turbulent winds of corporate life blow our little family from port to port.
> 
> I have fond memories of childhood summers spent exploring and imagining wonderful things at my grandparent's place in the countryside.  I'd like to recreate some of those halcyon days for my kids to store away as their childhood memories too.
> 
> 
> Put a hoist on that pirate's den so he can heave away ho when he wants a snack or a drink without climbing down !   Make a crow's nest up there .  He'll disappear up there and you won't see him again 'til he's 11 .
> ...



You also need cannons.......and of course ball and powder... :Smile:

----------


## nigelandjan

Looking good RB,  I'm not gonna be rude like Betty and mention your unbalanced tile cuts,  being far less than equidistant from each corner.

I'll leave that for the tile police when they arrive BTW where are they?  If they're still sniffing round my disaster they're wasting time,  we're done and dusted

----------


## Roobarb

> Originally Posted by Wasp
> 
> 
> 
> Put a hoist on that pirate's den so he can heave away ho when he wants a snack or a drink without climbing down !   Make a crow's nest up there .  He'll disappear up there and you won't see him again 'til he's 11 .
> 
> 
> Wasp
> 
> ...


Actually, it's not a bad idea at all.

Somehow I'm reminded of Monty Python's 'Crimson Permanent Assurance' sketch from 'The Meaning of Life'.  

In case you don't know it:


You're never too old to let your imagination run riot...  :Smile:

----------


## Roobarb

> Looking good RB,  I'm not gonna be rude like Betty and mention your unbalanced tile cuts,  being far less than equidistant from each corner.
> 
> I'll leave that for the tile police when they arrive BTW where are they?  If they're still sniffing round my disaster they're wasting time,  we're done and dusted


I reckon I may have limped through relatively unnoticed.  Perhaps the  generally low quality of the rest of the house was not dragged down much  further by the tiling? 

Of course, they may be keeping their powder dry in anticipation of a massive victory on Betty's thread...?

----------


## Roobarb

Looking into the kitchen, a bit more wiring clearly about to happen:



Quite why they get close to finishing the wall then hack into it afterwards to install wiring I don't know.  It seems quite prevalent in Thailand - apart from on Koman's build which I suspect may actually be taking place in Singapore  :Smile: 

Making the same mess to install a power point on the downstairs terrace:



They do have some of the yellow pipe for the wiring, so that's at least one similarity to Koman's...

Whether it was used in the wall or not...?

----------


## Roobarb

Now the next bit is one of those things that happen because nobody is there to ensure it is done right.

On the original plan, we had a small outside kitchen area (terrace really) at the back of the house, with a door leading to the inside kitchen.  It's the bit under the little roof thing (below the master bedroom):



This turned out to be a bit of a poor idea as it is south facing.  Whilst a 'sun trap' is a lovely thing to have in the UK it's not so great in Thailand.  I reckoned we would probably need to make a much bigger roof/canopy over this area.  

Coupled with that, the interpretation the builder had made, quite logically it has to be said given the tiling plan I sent him (below), was that the terrace for the outside kitchen was not actually joined to the one for the main terrace.  



This would mean stepping down then up each time you walked between the two which seemed silly.

A phone call was made to join the two, but to curve the edge around rather than having another square shape.

----------


## Roobarb

... and so that's what he did.

Not the smoothest of curves it has to be said:



But by and large he had done what I'd wanted, except...



He's laid the cement base to the same height as the top of the existing tiles, which means that we can't tile this portion without there being an odd sort of bump thing, not to mention a nice water trap by the kitchen door.

Unfortunately because the photos were coming through quite a bit after things were actually happening, there was not a lot we could do short of digging it out and starting again.

It'll have to do for now.  Anyway, I would have liked the curve to be a bit bolder, i.e. to have a bit more 'belly' to it, so we'll re-do it when we get around to doing the canopy bit, whenever that will be.

I'm leaning towards trying to get a local welder to knock up a curved steel version of one of these sort of French colonial style wrought iron verandahs, then stick a canopy roof on it.



A bit less heavy-looking than the one in the pic, and without the banisters. but you get the idea.

I think I need to be there for this...

----------


## Bettyboo

^could look nice, but you'll have to change the name...  :Smile: 




> Koman's build which I suspect may actually be taking place in Singapore


Excellent point; it all seems so obvious now.




> He's laid the cement base to the same height as the top of the existing tiles


 :smiley laughing: 

(sorry, I'm not laughing in a cruel way...)

Nice big kitchen you have there, plenty of space.

----------


## Roobarb

> ^could look nice, but you'll have to change the name...


Good god, you're right.  What was I thinking?

'Louisiana style'.




> (sorry, I'm not laughing in a cruel way...)




It's such a stupid screw up it is actually quite funny  :Smile: 




> Nice big kitchen you have there, plenty of space.


Ah, yes.  All is not entirely as it seems, but it is a decent size.  Two people can happily crash about in there with pots and pans and things without tripping over each other.

----------


## Bettyboo

There's a lot to like about your house, Roobarb; it has been a great success, and at only 4.5 million baht, money very well spent...  :Smile:

----------


## Roobarb

^  Don't keep doing that.  It's costing me a fortune  :Smile: 

First you said it would be two million and I said not a chance in hell, only to find myself now closing in on that number.

Then you said 3 million and I guffawed with laughter, only for you to get me to add the land etc and, um, well, I didn't actually add it up but only because it looked like it was going that way.

I can't afford 4.5 million.  I'm broke.  The place will never be finished...

----------


## Roobarb

Dr Evil was the wrong picture.  Try this one:

Ernst Bettyfeld posing with one of his cats as he plots to bankrupt Roobarb so he can finish his build first...

----------


## helge

> He's laid the cement base to the same height as the top of the existing tiles


You are a man of great patience

----------


## koman

> I think I need to be there for this...


I think you have must managed the understatement of the year so far thee Roobarb.... :Smile: 

Your kitchen looks spectacular and those wood doors look suspiciously like mine.....I wonder if my shipment went astray because mine haven't arrive yet????   Actually your whole bloody kitchen looks a lot like mine.....am I in the right thread....?

Don't let them fill those grooves in the wall back in when they install the wiring....it will spoil the Thainess effect of the whole installation.   They have ruined mine with all that conduit inside the wall nonsense.... :Smile:

----------


## Roobarb

> Originally Posted by Roobarb
> 
>  He's laid the cement base to the same height as the top of the existing tiles
> 
> 
> You are a man of great patience


... or with remarkably low standards?  :Smile:

----------


## Roobarb

> Your kitchen looks spectacular


Why, thank you.




> those wood doors look suspiciously like mine.....I wonder if my shipment went astray because mine haven't arrive yet


If I knew where your site was I would have been around there in the dead of night, but only to nick some of your workers...




> Actually your whole bloody kitchen looks a lot like mine.




 :Sad: 




> Don't let them fill those grooves in the wall back in when they install the wiring....it will spoil the Thainess effect of the whole installation. They have ruined mine with all that conduit inside the wall nonsense....


Too late - but fear not Koman, all is not lost.

They have overfilled the grooves with some lumpy render, presumably with the idea that like soil it will subside over time and become flush with the wall.  

The building remains true to its origins, wherever you look the quality craftsmanship shines through.

----------


## Bettyboo

:smiley laughing: 

The monstrosity is back!



Out of all the building threads over the last few months that is, by some distance (if we ignore Nigel's tiles...  :Smile:  Hope he doesn't read this or I'm in trouble - only kidding, Nige...  :Smile: ), the worst pile of concrete abuse that I've seen. It's so bad, it should probably be left like that as a feature...

----------


## Roobarb

So, in today's update a giant leap forwards, at least I think it's a giant leap forwards.

We're getting window frames installed:



Not only that, but they've started work on making the window frames for the sections at the roof ends:



All in all it's beginning to look a bit more like the finished product now

----------


## Bettyboo

^with reference to the centre pic: that mezzanine gallery is gonna be spectacular, cathedralesque... 

Ikea Daphnne:



Ikea Monaco:



Ikea California:



Ikea Somchai:



 :rofl:

----------


## Koetjeka

Ikea meatballs:






On topic: I really like that Ikea Monaco but I guess it's pretty expensive here in Thailand (as opposed to in the Netherlands where Ikea is super cheap).

----------


## Roobarb

There's not a great deal in the way of decent photos in this batch, but I'll post what I have as, well, I've got a few minutes spare at the moment.  Skip on past them if they are a bit repetitive...

First up, windows in I think the front bedroom:



Nice to see that the pillar in the corner has (I think) escaped being entombed in gypsum.

Looking out to the front of the front bedroom:

----------


## Roobarb

^^ & ^^^

 :smiley laughing:

----------


## Bettyboo

The pictures are very nice, Roobarb. Don't sell yeeself short.

This next pic shows very well (the best of the ones I've seen so far) the country feel that the place will have. Once the floor, beam and window frames are varnished, it's gonna look lovely. One might even, if one felt generous, suggest: classy (in a Thatcheresque 1980s kinda way...  :Smile: ).

----------


## Roobarb

> that mezzanine gallery is gonna be spectacular, cathedralesque...






Actually, I am feeling more than a little chipper about how it's all turning out.  I really think they've done a decent job of it.  Hallelujah indeed...

Some crap kwality pictures from the inside:

----------


## Roobarb

> classy


Gosh...




> (in a Thatcheresque 1980s kinda way... ).


Ah, I bailed out of the UK when it all went tits up in '91 so, in mitigation M'lud, I'd ask you to take into consideration that I know no better (or worse...?)

----------


## Bettyboo

> Actually, I am feeling more than a little chipper about how it's all turning out. I really think they've done a decent job of it.


& so you should be, it's spectacular, all the hard work, by yourself, the inlaws, Somchai and Somsak is really bearing fruit now. Superb. But, for 4+ million baht, you'd expect nothing less...  :Smile:  Seriously though, I've spent under 1 million, and the house looks like that! I've seen houses around Thailand (yes, in different areas...) for 10 million+ (baht, not $$$) that are nowhere near as nice as yours...

It looks a bit unusual from the outside from certain angles, but you have some excellent features; I love the mezzanine; glorious...

----------


## koman

That mezzanine is really excellent.... a great feature in a house full of features.

I would break my neck getting up and down to it unfortunately so mezzanines are out for me.    

I've made up for my lack of a mezzanine however, but building the object d' art in my kitchen that Betty finds so amusing..... :Smile:  

Very interesting house you have Roobarb.... excellent job.

----------


## Roobarb

Thanks Betty.  I'm pretty pleased with the amount of volume we've created for the price (4 million Indian Rupees... :Smile: ).

----------


## Roobarb

> I would break my neck getting up and down to it unfortunately


I'm hoping I won't do the same...




> building the object d' art in my kitchen that Betty finds so amusing.....


_A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness... etc etc (Keats)_

I hope you're not planning on tiling it?  You'll regret it in the long run you know.

----------


## Roobarb

> I hope you're not planning on tiling it? You'll regret it in the long run you know.


Oh dear, I've just seen that you've updated your thread and said that you will be tiling it.

Pity.

On a positive note the photos will live on in your thread.  Those who take the trouble to look will soon realise the monster that lurks below.

----------


## Roobarb

A few more pics of me inside windows...

The master bedroom:



The back bedroom (side window)



And looking out of the window in the 1st floor living room to the window at the front of the master bedroom:



I like having windows.  No glass yet, but I'm not complaining.

----------


## Roobarb

One slight concern though...

OK, so I know that the blue plastic pipes from the bathrooms upstairs do need to go somewhere, and we will eventually stick up a gypsum ceiling to cover them, but they do lower the ceiling that little bit more.  



I guess I'll have to go for one of those trendy coffered ceiling things like the ones that seem to be sprouting in Koman's pad.

The main issue with the blue pipes though is actually on the outside:



This is entirely my fault as I couldn't work out if I wanted the pipes taking up space inside or going outside and messing up the symmetry of the front of the house.  I just sort of left the builder to work it out.

Given he didn't make the house very symmetrical anyway, I suppose he did actually make the right choice.

We'll get him to knock up a little house thing (what do you call it - trunking, duct???) to hide the pipes away later on.

----------


## Bettyboo

Very nice window frames. Not only do I like them, the mozzies are gonna love them!



It's a shame about those unsightly blue pipes because it may have been an option to have those beams exposed - could've been a very attractive feature in tune with the general feel of your country estate.

& yes, you'll need a nice little wooden house to hide those ugly outside pipes; maybe you could build it into a feature, functional feature? (Probably only take one small village abode, so well worth the sacrifice...)

----------


## BKKBILL

> It's a shame about those unsightly blue pipes because it may have been an option to have those beams exposed - could've been a very attractive feature in tune with the general feel of your country estate.


Roobarb if you do box in the blue pipes be sure to wrap them with insulation it's surprising the sound that comes from them when toilets are flushed.

----------


## Wasp

............ Just a thought Roobarb .
Would it be possible to access the mezzanine from the balcony using a spiral staircase ?

*Wasp*
...........................

----------


## Roobarb

> Very nice window frames. Not only do I like them, the mozzies are gonna love them!


I'm reasonably confident that at the first sign of rain the window frames will swell up enough to seal themselves permanently shut thus preventing the ingress of mozzies  :Smile: 

The thing is though, during the daytime I tend to like to leave doors and windows open.  Keeps places relatively cool.  The problem I've always struggled with, and it is a thorny issue as I think many will agree with, that at about the time that all the doors and windows should be closed to stop the evening mozzies from moving indoors, one is reaching for one's second or third little evening snifter and the whole thing seems a bit of a faff.  

I simply continue to fortify myself, taking great pleasure in the knowledge that any misguided mosquito that decides to exercise its little gnashers on me at night is likely to die shortly afterwards of alcohol poisoning.  

A few gaps in the windows won't make much difference to the mozzie population.




> It's a shame about those unsightly blue pipes because it may have been an option to have those beams exposed - could've been a very attractive feature in tune with the general feel of your country estate.


Actually perhaps the blue pipes are not a bad feature: a sort of Isaan take on a New York loft style...?




> & yes, you'll need a nice little wooden house to hide those ugly outside pipes; maybe you could build it into a feature, functional feature? (Probably only take one small village abode, so well worth the sacrifice...)


As I previously confessed, I'm a product of the Thatcher years.  



I do like your thinking Betty.  

I'll turf another village family out of their home ...

----------


## Roobarb

> Roobarb if you do box in the blue pipes be sure to wrap them with insulation it's surprising the sound that comes from them when toilets are flushed.


Great suggestion Bill.  It hadn't occurred to me but thinking about it it makes absolute sense.  Many thanks indeed. 




> ............ Just a thought Roobarb . Would it be possible to access the mezzanine from the balcony using a spiral staircase ?


Yup, it's a good thought Wasp.  I might well do that but I think I need to be there to explain what I want.  I reckon my builder could struggle with the concept.

Buckaroo Banzai did a rather good post about these on Betty's thread, and as Betty's clearly not using it I've nicked it in its entirety and pasted it below:

________________________




> Originally Posted by Bettyboo
> 
> 
> 
> With this quite high looking ceiling, I'm starting to wonder if I could  get a little mezzanine style study area in there somehow...
> ...
> 
> 
> You could easily construct a loft area, I did in my first home back in  the US. I solved the problem of the stairs, by building a circular stair  case, it only takes less than 2 meter of space,
> ...



Taken (without permission, and damn the consequences) from: https://teakdoor.com/2652218-post291.html

----------


## Wasp

Buckaroo Banzai did a rather good post about these on Betty's thread, and as Betty's clearly not using it I've nicked it in its entirety and pasted it below:


Yes I read this too .

I do love his words ....

".....now all you need are some spindles and a  hand rail and you are done. Any metal shop  can do that for you."

There are no metal shops that I know of that could do this quite as easily as he says !


Taken (without permission, and damn the consequences) from: https://teakdoor.com/2652218-post291.html

----------


## nigelandjan

All looking good RB 

Don't worry bout those pipes. 

I would just box right across the ceiling area where those pipes are then put your ceiling at full height.

 The ones coming out the wall,  simple, , two pieces of wood either side of the pipes just slightly proud of the pipes,  then tongue and groove your wood all over to hide and make a feature,  would look nice a strip of wood going down the wall.
 If it's not been done by when I get back here in November and you would like it done I'll come and do it for free for you,  make a nice job of it.

----------


## Roobarb

> The ones coming out the wall, simple, , two pieces of wood either side of the pipes just slightly proud of the pipes, then tongue and groove your wood all over to hide and make a feature, would look nice a strip of wood going down the wall. If it's not been done by when I get back here in November and you would like it done I'll come and do it for free for you, make a nice job of it.


Nigel, that's extraordinarily kind of you to offer.  If we are in Thailand in November then it would be a real pleasure to have you over.  Plenty of room in the place.  Drop me a PM nearer the time.

I think my wife told the builder to brick the pipework in so let's see what happens there.  That aside though I'm sure there will still be plenty of things that will need doing.  

I'd imagine that by then you'll be longing to get back to life on a Thai construction site...  :Smile:

----------


## nigelandjan

No probs mate , will always help if I can .

Busy looking to buy either land or suitable property in a certain area in Cha am and Charley is being very kind and most helpfull to us , it's good to have an ear on the ground.

We've just spent a though rally enjoyable 4 days with him .

----------


## bankao dreamer

Roobs I see nothing wrong with leaving the blue pipes as they are just think of the clothes hanging possibilities

----------


## Roobarb

> We've just spent a though rally enjoyable 4 days with him .


Good on yer fella, you deserved a break after the trials of building your place.




> Roobs I see nothing wrong with leaving the blue pipes as they are just think of the clothes hanging possibilities


Good idea.  I was actually thinking of adding some more, then painting them all a bright colour and pretending that they were centralised a/c ducts:



Much cheaper than installing actual A/C in the house and it allows for more clothes hanging possibilities too.

Actually, one of those deer head things could be useful for drying my socks...?

----------


## bankao dreamer

:smiley laughing:  :smiley laughing:  :smiley laughing: ^^^^

I shall start looking out for Deer heads although in Thailand supply may be somewhat limited and Buffalo horns are useless you can only hang one sock on each horn.

----------


## Roobarb

OK, another batch of photos.  Things are still moving on.

A bit of a blurry one which I think shows the two opening window frames have been installed in the roof-end window.  



I hadn't really thought this out too well, but it would have been good if the opening parts of the window frames were not quite so thick, indeed even better if they were in line with the fixed frame.  

Ah well, we're on the home straight now.  Let 'em do their worst...

A couple of other random shots.

The end balcony railing has now been installed - why it wasn't done at the same time as the front bit I neither know nor care.



Still a little bit of gypsum to go on the bit above the front door.  I should have got them to put some fixed glass windows in here, it really would look a lot better:

----------


## Roobarb

Going for a wander around downstairs now.  Good to see that they've got the windows in here too:

From the front door looking through the house:



Going in a bit further:



Looking into the kitchen to the left:



It was about this time that I was beginning to harbour some doubts about the height of the kitchen cabinets.

But the thing is this, I know the bottom of the window frame is 95 centimetres off the ground as it was checked by me many times before they finalised the window positions specifically so we could get some proper height counters built underneath.  

It's just an illusion.  I'm sure they haven't cocked it up.

----------


## Roobarb

Continuing the tour of downstairs...

Directly opposite the kitchen is the little study area.  Looks like they have finished the tiling (I hope they did buy another box of tiles rather than using the broken offcuts):



... and then looking back at the front door:



Still no start being made on the window above the front door.

----------


## Roobarb

For some reason there are quite a few pics of the stairs.  I'll chuck some up here as pics are generally thought of as being a good thing.



I know there was some concern earlier that the stairs were not straight.  I think they run pretty parallel to the wall...



... albeit the wall is probably not square with anything else in the house

It may just be the photo, but the stair treads do seem to be listing gently to starboard though?



Ah well, so long as they work as stairs then we're good to go.

----------


## Sailing into trouble

It may just be the photo, but the stair treads do seem to be listing gently to starboard though?



Ah well, so long as they work as stairs then we're good to go.[/QUOTE]

As long as the window in the bottom of the picture is not also listing you should be OK. :Smile:  Amazing build.

----------


## Roobarb

> As long as the window in the bottom of the picture is not also listing you should be OK.


 :smiley laughing:  - You're right SIT.  Who knows what's straight in this place...




> Amazing build.


Thanks, much appreciated  :Smile:

----------


## Roobarb

Heading outside...

Things are looking a bit better out here now there's a bit of paint going on the place:



Another view of the same activity (this thread has been short of action shots).



Eventually we'll get the gypsum men to come and sort our the ceilings out here, but for now I'm just going to leave it to see what cracks or falls apart before we cover it all up.

----------


## Roobarb

Looking at progress from the outside.

Most of the windows seem to be in now, just need to get the glass fellow out to put the panes in:



The outside loo has been tiled, at least I think that's what it is.



When I said that we might consider having this one as a 'hole in the ground' affair rather than installing a 'farang throne' it seems that they may have taken me at my word.

Actually a door might me useful too.

I'm assuming it's not finished yet.

----------


## Roobarb

What else - a bit of a look at the other two roof windows that they've been doing perhaps?

The one above the master bedroom:



Again, the fixed window panes are going to be bigger than the opening ones, which does look a bit odd, but it's an easy enough fix at a later stage (just add a bit of wooden trim to the fixed panes to reduce their size a little).

The window over the back bedroom:



I do like the way that they have planked up the central column between the windows in the same way as the rest of the house.  It would have been much easier to leave it as the post, or stick a single vertical plank there.  

It's a nice attention to detail, and it's stuff like that that shows the guys do mean well, even if the results are sometimes less than perfect.  

They've made the effort to do things right and, as an absentee builder, it's all I can ask of them.

----------


## Roobarb

What other pics have I got here......

Couple of the front door area:



The actual door and door size is a bit of a mess really.  On the trip when I bought all the tiles, we also bought a lot of the other things like doors, door frames, windows etc.

As at the time we had not really started to even think about how the front door extension would look like I simply plumped for 1m X 2m frame for the front door with a fairly inoffensive door.

I think we may well change this to a double door at some stage.  Either that or we'll put a narrow, full height window on each side of the door.  It just needs a bit more there I think.  

Like with many of the other details, I really need to be there to decide.  At the moment we are just getting the house to a weatherproof and lock-up stage, so the existing door and frame will do for now.

Another view of the front door area:



Nice waterfall of blue pipes on the side still, plus they've added a little blue one.

Actually I was a bit irritated with that little blue pipe (I have no idea what it's for) as, rather than following the other ones and then coming up through the bathroom floor, they continued up the outside and drilled through the wooden wall as it was probably easier than drilling the concrete floor.

It's just a bit of a bodge job really.

Still no bathroom window...

----------


## Roobarb

Just two more pics for now:

The outside of the balcony railings - looks like they will need a bit of a sanding, and I have no idea how they are planning on finishing the concrete edge just below the railings. 

Looks like the painter wasn't sure either, but I guess that's a good thing as he didn't simply paint over it.



The builder is probably paying him by the day so perhaps he's leaving it to paint over later instead?

A shot of the windows looking onto the downstairs verandah thing:



If you remember a while back, they dug out a trench to put the wiring for an external power point between the windows.

Now they've nailed a conduit directly above that trench which carries the wiring for the ceiling fans' switch.

I asked why they didn't also install that wiring in the wall and was told that it was better that ceiling fan wiring was external as it gets hot.  I would have thought that using thicker wire may have solved this but apparently ceiling fan wiring is best left on the outside...?

I'm just rolling with it at this stage, we are close to the finish line  :Smile:

----------


## Roobarb

OK, last pic.

It seems a bit out of synch with the other ones so I'm not too sure what it's doing in this batch, but it gives a better sense of proportion than the other photos which are all a bit close to the building (and also looks like a half decent quality photo)



Nice clean building site too  :Smile:

----------


## bankao dreamer

^^^^^^^^  
Like it like it.

----------


## Bettyboo

I'm not coming to this thread any more.  :Sad:  The build just gets better and better.

The outside is nice, interesting, eclectic, but the inside is really special; some lovely areas. I suppose it helps being an internationally renowned architect...




> outside loo


Posh git. Here's a picture of my outside loo:



These are the kinda areas I really like:





&, of course, everything about the mezzanine.

I spoke to the missus last night when she had her dad on the other line; asked a couple of simple questions, simple alterations, but the grief I got...  :Sad:

----------


## Roobarb

> I'm not coming to this thread any more.


Sometimes I get the feeling you are not the only one...




> Posh git. Here's a picture of my outside loo:


Oi, Betty, I'm not going to whop out my todger anywhere near that bamboo thicket.  I can see you have one of your vicious guard geese lurking in the background, licking his little beak at the anticipation of a bit of gentleman's sausage for lunch (OK, possibly a chipolata for elevenses, but the loss would no less felt by me).  




> I spoke to the missus last night when she had her dad on the other line; asked a couple of simple questions, simple alterations, but the grief I got...


 :Smile:   Oh yes, been there and done that.  

Puns of gentleman's sausages not being allowed near to the bamboo bush aside, these women-folk do seem to get a bit stressed when they are managing a build.  It appears that our helpful suggestions are often not appreciated in the way they are meant...  

It seemed so unfair that my missus was doing something that I would have loved to have done whilst I was stuck sitting in an office (which I hated).  All things being equal I'm sure we would have swapped in a heartbeat, but alas they are not.

I simply resigned myself to having to work for another couple of months to cover the cost of re-doing things the way I'd initially wanted them done, and saved my arguments for when I really need them...

----------


## BKKBILL

Keep your powder dry roobarb  :Smile: , like betty said it just gets better and better.

----------


## Roobarb

> Keep your powder dry roobarb ,


Wise words Bill.




> like betty said it just gets better and better.


Wot, marriage?   :Confused: 

Oh, the build...  Thanks  :Smile: .  

It does seems to be turning out to be roughly as planned, if you could describe the project as being planned in the first place...  I'm happy with the place.  There are a few goofy bits but we weren't aiming for perfection here, just a rambling sort of country retreat that will give me plenty to potter about fixing (or breaking and then have someone else come and fix) in the years to come.

----------


## FatOne

Beautiful looking home Roo, I would love to see it one day when finished, I think the Thai builders do a fantastic job, albeit with a few minor concerns, but the overall feel of your home is looking very comfortable and unique. To build something like this in Oz would cost the national debt!

----------


## Marmite the Dog

> But the thing is this, I know the bottom of the window frame is 95 centimetres off the ground as it was checked by me many times before they finalised the window positions specifically so we could get some proper height counters built underneath.


Not any more it isn't. They use shit loads of cement when laying tiles. I'm sure the cabinets are OK though.

----------


## Roobarb

> Beautiful looking home Roo, I would love to see it one day when finished, I think the Thai builders do a fantastic job, albeit with a few minor concerns, but the overall feel of your home is looking very comfortable and unique. To build something like this in Oz would cost the national debt!


Thanks for your comments FatOne, and welcome to Teakdoor too BTW.

Just last night my wife and I were trying to work out what we'd paid the builders for labour on this place.  I reckoned it was Baht 465k and immediately got a 'No way, it was muuuch more than that' answer.  After a bit of effort trying to get her to quantify her claim, she eventually said she reckoned it was more like Baht 485k (accompanied with sharp inhales of breath and 'Paaang Maak' noises..  Either way I doubt we would have got much for that in Oz.

I see from some of your other posts you are planning a build yourself.  Tell us more...

What?

Where?

When? 

Start a thread on it when you're ready to.  Everyone loves a good building tale and there would be plenty of advice from folks here, some of whom do actually know what they are talking about... as should be clear by now, I'm not one of them.

Good luck with it mate, and thanks for joining in...

----------


## Roobarb

> Originally Posted by Roobarb
> 
> But the thing is this, I know the bottom of the window frame is 95 centimetres off the ground as it was checked by me many times before they finalised the window positions specifically so we could get some proper height counters built underneath.
> 
> 
> Not any more it isn't. They use shit loads of cement when laying tiles. I'm sure the cabinets are OK though.


Yup, you're partially right Marmite.  They lost about 5 cms on the tiling cement.  It also transpired that when they were pouring the slab there was a bit of extra in the truck so reckoned no harm would be done by making the slab about 5cms thicker too...

At no point did anyone stop to think that the windows, and more amusingly, the door frames, had already been fixed in place.

The floor height to the top of the bottom bit of the window frames is 85 cm, which is just enough height to make a reasonable kitchen counter, albeit with no form of backsplash or ledge when the windows are open.  As I'm not that enamoured with the tiled counter tops then sticking a new counter top directly on top at a later stage shouldn't be a major challenge.

The positive side is that having grumbled a bit about it being back-breaking working in the kitchen at 'local height', I'm excused most kitchen duties much beyond opening a beer.   :Smile:

----------


## koman

> I'm excused most kitchen duties much beyond opening a beer.


I got out of kitchen duties after I decided to treat the wife to her first hamburger a few years ago.   I bought a pack of frozen ones in Tesco and cooked up a couple.   She seemed to be chewing a lot when she tried her's.....at which point I discovered that I had not taken off the waxed paper used to separate them in the package..... :rofl: 

Whatever works I always say...... :Smile:

----------


## Roobarb

That's an inspired solution Koman, well done I say!

----------


## bankao dreamer

I bought some Chinese chicken cheese sausage from Lotus and popped a couple in our halogen oven thingy. I thought as they cooked they look kind of shiny. You have left the plastic on Dear she informs me.

----------


## Roobarb

> I bought some Chinese chicken cheese sausage


Well done BD, that in itself would have deserved a ban from the kitchen.  It also should have scored the beneficial side effect of her doubting the value of sending you on any future grocery errands.

I always wondered what those sausages were actually for, now I know.  :Smile: 




> You have left the plastic on Dear she informs me.


Full respect fellow, you're clearly not a man for half measures.  The message was nailed home well and truly on that one!

----------


## FatOne

> Originally Posted by FatOne
> 
> 
> Beautiful looking home Roo, I would love to see it one day when finished, I think the Thai builders do a fantastic job, albeit with a few minor concerns, but the overall feel of your home is looking very comfortable and unique. To build something like this in Oz would cost the national debt!
> 
> 
> Thanks for your comments FatOne, and welcome to Teakdoor too BTW.
> 
> Just last night my wife and I were trying to work out what we'd paid the builders for labour on this place.  I reckoned it was Baht 465k and immediately got a 'No way, it was muuuch more than that' answer.  After a bit of effort trying to get her to quantify her claim, she eventually said she reckoned it was more like Baht 485k (accompanied with sharp inhales of breath and 'Paaang Maak' noises..  Either way I doubt we would have got much for that in Oz.
> ...



Thanks very much Roo, 

My darling wife is over in the village now and has organised the builder. We are building in her village, Namjan, near Seka in Bung Khan province. She has designed the house and after a few alterations we have had a thai guy do the drawings, it will be a 3 bedroom with ensuite and large lounge/dining/kitchen area, block ( Q Con of course ) and tile construction. She paid the deposit yesterday and construction should be starting as I write this. Current quote is 1,230,000b after I insisted on a number of things all picked up from Teak Door. As soon as I have my 10 posts up I'll try and start a new thread and post the plans and hopefully some early pictures.

----------


## Roobarb

Great stuff FatOne, it sounds like a good price.

You're on seven posts already, three more and you're away.

Where is Bung Khan province?

----------


## FatOne

Hi Roo,

I've been working on getting my posts up so I can start!! Bung Khan is right up the North East near the Laos border, on the meekog river about 3 hours drive from Udon. I'll be there at the end of next month to sort out colours, kitchens and bathrooms. And of course just to kick back in the wonderful, peaceful countryside that will one day be my home when I retire.

----------


## Roobarb

Look at that, 10 posts already...!

Wow, you're way up north.  It's nice up there, at least from what I remember of that part of Thailand from many years ago and I doubt it's changed much.

Right, looking forward to seeing that thread starting.

Good luck...!

----------


## Roobarb

Well, I'm coming up to my final batch of photos so far on the build.

We made a trip out to see where things were at during the week before Christmas.  My wife had gone a few days earlier and had mentioned that things were a bit cold in Thailand.

Her idea of cold seems to work on a different scale from mine so I ignored what she was saying, slung a pair of shorts and a few T shirts in a bag and hopped on the plane to come over, full of excitement at what I would find. 

The first thing I found was that it was utterly freezing.  Making use of the prevailing winds to aid natural ventilation in a house is all very well when it's warm, but it's miserable when its wet and cold.

My wife and kids had been staying at her parents' nice, warm, sheltered place down the road.  More out of wishful thinking than any expectation that I would agree to it, my wife asked if perhaps we might all continue to stay at her parents' place this time around too.

Pah, we've not built a house for us not to stay in it, we're moving in for the week.

... and so we did.

Not all the windows had been glazed, there was no form of hot water in the house, no furniture (other than two garden chairs I'd bought in Ikea on the way through Bangkok and a couple of mattresses we nicked from the in-laws house) and there was no means of cooking other than a 45 gallon drum barbeque (also lifted from the in-laws).

I only mention this as whilst some of the photos may look as if they were taken on a balmy summer's afternoon, the conditions were rather arctic.

I also mention it in explanation of why some of the photos may show the debris of a temporary encampment in what is still a building site.

----------


## Roobarb

So, where to start.

First view of the place from half way down the drive - OK, it's not the actual first view as the car is parked outside the house already, but that aside...



We will build a wall just behind the trees then (in line with where the bamboo posts are if you can make them out) then fill the land behind the wall near to the house.  It will give a bit of separation between the trees and the house/garden.

Coming in a bit closer...



With all the recent rain things were a bit muddy, especially as the land had been filled in a fairly haphazard fashion rather than thinking about drainage.  The bottom of the slope to the house had become something of a thick, gloppy clay-like bog.

Luckily Budget Rent-a-car had sorted me out with one of these this time as all the 2WD stuff was getting stuck at the bottom of the slope.



Saved me getting my feet too dirty (unless helping to dig out the other vehicles).

We're going to have to get a bit more soil in before the next rainy season, but landscaping will have to wait for now.

----------


## bankao dreamer

When we moved into our place there was no lights. We used extension leads and a table lamp. A torch was needed to use the loo, any cooking was done on a charcoal burner as the kitchen didn't exist. But it felt so good being in our home rather than stuck at the Inlaws.

I really like your place Roob I had a similar design on paper myself, but struggled to find anyone to build it. Thats why we went for the knock downs. I also love the location you have some nice views there.

----------


## Roobarb

So, making our muddy way to the front door:



A few areas that need taking care of here.

First up, and as Marmite pointed out earlier, they were more than a little generous with the cement layer that they applied for laying the tiles.  My 2 metre x 1 metre front door now seems to have shrunk to about 1.9 metres by 1 meter.  I've not measured it, but just looking at the door it seems they have shaved off about 5 cms from each end.

As I think I mentioned much earlier in the thread I was never really happy with this front door.  I suspect that we will change it to a double door thing, probably with some glass in it, before too long.  For the time being it serves the purpose of us being able to shut the house up.

They've done a nice job of the window above the front door though:



It's an example of one of the areas where I think the builder has done a great job by improving on what I'd asked for.  When I sent him the picture there was a vertical central pillar running dividing the window in two (below).



He instead had the window made without the central pillar and put in the kite shaped piece of glass instead, which I think is much better looking.

----------


## Roobarb

> When we moved into our place there was no lights. We used extension leads and a table lamp. A torch was needed to use the loo, any cooking was done on a charcoal burner as the kitchen didn't exist. But it felt so good being in our home rather than stuck at the Inlaws.


Yup, as you'll probably see we were much the same, a few clip on lamps from Homepro or Ikea with extension leads was about as far as our lighting went.  As you say though, we're living (OK, camping) in our own home, we're not simply staying at the in-laws.  It makes a huge difference.




> I really like your place Roob I had a similar design on paper myself, but struggled to find anyone to build it. Thats why we went for the knock downs.


Ha, the funny thing is that if I had the imagination to come up with a solution like yours then I probably wouldn't have bothered to build this one.  :Smile: 

I guess we were just really lucky to find a builder who felt like taking on the challenge without wanting to fleece us in the process.  Our decision to use him was really driven through necessity as we had already bought and knocked down the old houses without really planning what we were going to do with them.  We soon realised that we needed to get the wood up off the ground before the termites got at it.  The builder was chosen largely because he was available, willing and his price was reasonable.




> I also love the location you have some nice views there.


Thanks, yes, it's the location that I love most about the place, the house is really just a glorified viewing platform.

----------


## Roobarb

Wandering inside, and looking towards the kitchen:



The main priority on this trip was to work out what we needed to get the builder to do in order to finish off his part of the work.

There was a need to get a few basics though for living there and so we went into town to buy a fridge.  Whilst we were standing there, caked in mud and wearing our only set of warmish clothes we realised that a washing machine was going to also be a necessary addition to the shopping list.  Looking muddy in the village was fine, indeed seemed to be quite fashionable, however we did feel a bit conspicuous standing amongst the beautifully groomed cosmopolitan types shopping at Big C Chaiyaphum...

As an aside, we arranged for the washing machine and the fridge to be delivered the next day.  The truck hove into view at the end of the drive and I lay in wait at a decent vantage point, camera at the ready, waiting for it to plough into the bog below the house and get well and truly stuck.

Unfortunately from an entertainment perspective, it bounced happily through the mud on its skinny little tyres and stopped right in front of the house which meant I got no photos of the delivery.  Anyway, who wants to see pics of a fridge delivery going well?

For what it's worth though, on the Roobarb off-road proving ground I reckon that in the number 1 slot is a rental car (probably just about any will probably do so long as its fully insured) and then, surprisingly, in number 2 is one of these:



The washing machine will eventually go in the corner of the kitchen where the two plastic tubs are.  The builder was summoned to get some plumbing sorted out for us, hence it sitting in the middle of the floor in the pic above.

----------


## Roobarb

To the right is the little study area with the door to the downstairs loo on the wall opposite the far window:



Sorry, I've just noticed that the bog brush still needs putting away...

Anyway, the hope is that there is just enough room for a thinnish desk and chair in there.  Once we get the gypsum ceiling people in we'll probably get them to do a sort of arch thing between the pillars on the far side of the stairs just to give a bit of separation from the hallway.

Looking back at the front door.  I do like what they've done with that window:



We still need to get some gypsum up around the insides of the top window, and cover up the wiring conduits.

A view from the front door looking through the house towards the downstairs terrace:



Leaning against the far wall is a new door which will go on to the soon to be constructed water tank room next to the kitchen (more on this later).

Lying on the floor in front of it is a new kitchen door.  The original one had started out at 2 metres tall, but like the front door had been bodged to fit into what ended up being a 185 cm high doorway (I didn't ask why this door frame ended up lower than the front door one).  The funny thing is that none of the Thais noticed that the kitchen door was a bit low.  I'm a bit taller so I most certainly did notice it straight away.

What's annoying is that if someone had called up and said that there was a problem I would have happily paid for a new door frame so that the door remained the right height.  Because they sliced bits off the door now the frame needed replacing AND I had to buy a new door.  I'm not going to lose sleep over the cost, but it's an annoying waste of money nonetheless.  What I'm more pissed off about is that I rather liked the door, and as I couldn't find a similar one I ended up having to get one something I was not as happy with...

Grrrr.

Whilst we're here, this is a photo looking in through the front door:



Initially I had quite liked the idea being able to see upstairs and out through the windows leading onto the first floor balcony when coming through the front door.

Once we started building the house though we realised that in the late afternoon it would become like standing at the receiving end of some type of death ray, so practicality gave way to aesthetics and we stuck a roof on the balcony.

----------


## Roobarb

We did have the electricity connected, but as yet have not got around to fitting any lights.

Well, sort of, I tried my hand at getting some lighting up.  



The builders, who let's face it are a pretty inventive bunch when it comes to taking shortcuts and hoping to get away with stuff, were rather impressed with the lengths, or depths, of shoddiness I'd gone to with this particular installation.

It's important to earn the respect of these people.  So long as they know that anything they can do I can do even worse then it may concentrate their minds a bit.

Unfortunately I'd forgot to buy a lighter for the candle so, like with much of the rest in the build, it was another solution that had not been terribly well though through.

----------


## Bettyboo

> I got out of kitchen duties after I decided to treat the wife to her first hamburger a few years ago. I bought a pack of frozen ones in Tesco and cooked up a couple. She seemed to be chewing a lot when she tried her's.....at which point I discovered that I had not taken off the waxed paper used to separate them in the package...


There seems to be a pattern developing here Dr Frankenkitchen...  :Smile: 

I can't see these pics on my work connection, so I'm gonna have to hurry home on time, excitedly, to see them.

Anyways, I might have some nice wooden effect tiles for sale, cheap, which'd look lovely covering those nasty wooden floors in the mezzanine.  :Smile:

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## Roobarb

> Quote: Originally Posted by koman I got out of kitchen duties after I decided to treat the wife to her first hamburger a few years ago. I bought a pack of frozen ones in Tesco and cooked up a couple. She seemed to be chewing a lot when she tried her's.....at which point I discovered that I had not taken off the waxed paper used to separate them in the package... There seems to be a patter developing here Dr Frankenkitchen...


The words "Koman", "Kitchen" and "Disaster" do seem to be increasingly associated with each other...  :Smile:  




> I can't see these pics on my work connection, so I'm gonna have to hurry home on time, excitedly, to see them.


Hey, don't rush home, you're about to have a new truck to pay for.  I'd stick in a bit of overtime if I were you...




> Anyways, I might have some nice wooden effect tiles for sale, cheap, which'd look lovely covering those nasty wooden floors in the mezzanine.


Damn, just seen that your missus, quite unbelievably, has missed the opportunity to buy those beautiful tiles.  

Where did she find them?  I might nip over there before someone else gets their hands on them...   :Smile:

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## Roobarb

As we are inside we'll take a wander up to the first floor.  

Apologies if any of these photos lack continuity (i.e. a discarded T-shirt in one may not be in the next).  They were taken over the course of three days and rather than jumping about the place, I've sort of mixed them together to make the tour of the place seem a bit clearer.

I do like being able to see a glimpse of the upper floor as you walk up the stairs:



It's a bit like seeing the first floor as you walk through the front door, you sort of realise that there's more to explore before you get to the bit you were aiming for.

Going a few more steps up and this is the view you get as you begin to reach the top of the staircase:



As will be seen, there's still loads of finishing off to do, as well as tidying up bits that have not worked out that well (stuff like the line in the gypsum in the top photo on this post), but the house is now physically complete.  

It's nearly all just cosmetics from now onwards.

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## Roobarb

Once up the stairs we get to the first floor living room area.  It's really more of an over-sized landing, but the idea is that we will have full height glass bi-fold doors opening onto the balcony (more on that later) with a sofa or two up here:



Then looking back the other way towards the master bedroom:



The floorboards still need a final sanding and then varnishing.  I reckon they'll come up a treat when that happens.  I like it that they are all different widths, it's in keeping with the character of the place.

OK, for 'character', you could read 'lack of attention to detail', but still, I like it.

At the end of the room on the right there is a large fixed window.  I wasn't too sure on this as every other window in the house is split into either three or six panes, but I actually really like it as it does become, almost literally, a picture window that frames the wall and window frame for the master bedroom as you walk past the mezzanine's (vertical) staircase:



Unfortunately the picture doesn't really capture the richness of the browns and greens, but I'm glad we didn't try to complicate things by making it an opening window and with separated panes similar to the other windows in the house.

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## Roobarb

^ Forgot to mention, more 'inspired' lighting solutions in the middle picture using the "Bankao Dreamer" method of extension leads etc.

The next phase of the build will be working out where the ceiling lights will go, getting the wiring in place and then putting the ceilings up.  Only then will we install the lights and ceiling fans.

For now I'm happy to leave it so we can see where the leaks are and let the house settle.  I'm hoping that any settlement will be minimal but as we are in no rush to move in to the place I reckon it's worth waiting a few months first.

----------


## Roobarb

Whilst we're at this end of the house we may as well have a quick look in the master bedroom:





Again, still loads to do (ceiling, varnish the floors etc) but it now definitely feels like a proper room.

----------


## Roobarb

Bathrooms:

Next to the master bedroom is an ensuite bathroom.  



In truth I'm not that enamoured with quite a few aspects of how this has turned out, but it's easy enough to fix when we get around to it:

For a start the basin mount thing is all bricked in which means we can't reach the plumbing.  As this was an afterthought it will be easy enough to knock out again.

The loo cistern doesn't back up against the wall, but I reckon we'll make a little counter thing on top of it with some shelves underneath so that's not really an issue.

The reason some shelves would be useful is for books and magazines, so I can sit on my throne and read them, occasionally glancing up to admire this view:



Notice how the colours are so much richer on this side of the house than there were looking through the picture window on the other side?

There's a reason for that...

... the window fellow had forgotten to install the window: 



... and it was bloody freezing in there.

Being an ensuite, the lack of a window pane did nothing to help keep the bedroom from becoming distinctly chilly at night too.

The misery was compounded by there being no hot water in the house, and me being too lazy to go downstairs to boil a kettle.

The icy shower:



I'm not sure that the curved lip thing on the floor will remain.  We had asked that the builder do a straight one so we could install some glass shower doors, but I think he may of got a bit carried away.  You win some, you lose some.  We did OK on the front door window and this water break thing is just stuck onto the floor tiles so will be easy enough to remove.

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## Roobarb

Darn, I thought I'd got these photos in order.

Anyway, coming back out of the ensuite bathroom to the master bedroom, this is the view out of the master bedroom window looking across the paddy field in the foreground, and then the lake after that.



The back bedroom is on the right.

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## Roobarb

And so, having seen the back bedroom from the outside, here's a picture of it from the inside:



... and another pic from inside the back bedroom looking out of the side window towards the master bedroom.



It's a nice, light room this one, I do like it.

----------


## Roobarb

OK, just a couple more pictures of this floor.

First up the guest bathroom.

It was initially a bit of a disaster really.  I think I mentioned earlier that the bathroom ended up being a bit less than 5 feet across, and because of having a window at one end of the room and the door at the other end, it needed to have the shower placed rather inconveniently in the middle.

It's actually turned out OK.  Not a lot of spare room in there, but for what it is it'll be fine.



Same issue with the curved lip thing for the shower in this bathroom too.  We'll probably work out a way of squaring that off and enclosing the shower, even just a bit, to keep water from splashing everywhere.

I quite rightly took some flak for going with plain white tiles in the bathrooms, but I think that doing so has kept it clean and simple and therefore helped to make the bathrooms seem a little bigger.  

We'll stick a tiled border above the half height tiles and then paint the rest of the walls a cheery colour of some sort to brighten things up a bit.  We may also stick a fairly large mirror on the left had wall as you look in through the door which again should buy us some space.

----------


## Bettyboo

> Hey, don't rush home, you're about to have a new truck to pay for.


Funny you should say that, the missus has informed me it'll cost me 20,000 per month to pay my bills in Nakhon Nayok; this includes: MiL fees, lecci, water, our car payments (still 8k per month), food, and the payments on the missus' new pick up truck...




> Damn, just seen that your missus, quite unbelievably, has missed the opportunity to buy those beautiful tiles. 
> 
> Where did she find them? I might nip over there before someone else gets their hands on them...


I don't think she really wanted to upset me today, as today was the day she sorted the pick-up truck out. She informs me the new wheels were 20,000 baht, and the surround sound system was 20,000 baht. I obviously informed her of their actual worth...



Bloody hell, that's nice that is.



Jesus, that's a nice view and a lovely big balcony.



Fuk me sideways with a bargepole, that is lovely.



My jealous side is kinda hoping that flooding comes over this way and puts the property underwater, but I'm trying to keep these thoughts in check and just wonder at how well this house has come together. Very very nice indeedy. You, Koman and BD are really pissing me orf at this precise moment in time...

Bastard. Lovely house you have there.

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## Roobarb

OK, what else have I got for this bit of the house?

First up - looking from the master bedroom through the vertical mezzanine stairs, past the quality light fitting and to the other end of the upstairs living room:



... and then  from in front of the stairs looking down toward the front door:



... and finally a peek into the front bedroom at the end on the right:



The ladder thing attached to the wall is a temporary lash-up job just to give us access to the roof area above the bedroom and also to allow us to open the windows in the large window below the roof.

I'd hope it's not going to be a permanent solution, but like much of the rest of things in the house, it'll do for now.

----------


## Roobarb

> My jealous side is kinda hoping that flooding comes over this way and puts the property underwater, but I'm trying to keep these thoughts in check and just wonder at how well this house has come together. Very very nice indeedy.


Actually, flooding is a bit of a concern.  We filled our land to be the highest thing around, then the reservoir company (who own the lake) filled a whole load of land over on the other side.  From my very basic measurements I reckon my fill and theirs is about the same height above the current water level.

It's one of the reasons that I'm not that fussed about the builders screwing up and making the floor too thick.  An extra 10 cms of height might come in handy one day...  :Smile: 




> You, Koman and BD are really pissing me orf at this precise moment in time...


Delighted to be considered to be in such illustrious company (Koman will be pissed though).  




> Bastard. Lovely house you have there.


Thanks

----------


## koman

> You, Koman and BD are really pissing me orf at this precise moment in time...


Hey, what did I do?  I'm just building a normal little house with cement and stuff....  Roobarb is all about this wood art thing with funky rooms and impossible stairs.....   It will all fall down I tell ya.... and BD's will just blow away....thatched roof FFS.... :Smile: 

Your solid concrete and steel, along with mine will be open to visitors in a thousand years....as prime examples of 21st century building excellence..... :Smile: 

I have to admit I really like that weird triangular window thing of Roobarbs......but don't say anything.....we can quietly promote the hell out of our normal rectangular windows if we just ignore it.... :Smile: ....but then there's that big deck thing and.....

----------


## Roobarb

Sorry, just saw the top bit of your post




> Quote: Originally Posted by Roobarb Hey, don't rush home, you're about to have a new truck to pay for. Funny you should say that, the missus has informed me it'll cost me 20,000 per month to pay my bills in Nakhon Nayok; this includes: MiL fees, lecci, water, our car payments (still 8k per month), food, and the payments on the missus' new pick up truck...


Very HiSo Betty, two cars now.  I say...

I'd suggest that you mention that economies need to be made.  Either the car or the MIL must go...




> I don't think she really wanted to upset me today, as today was the day she sorted the pick-up truck out. She informs me the new wheels were 20,000 baht, and the surround sound system was 20,000 baht. I obviously informed her of their actual worth...


... and how did she take it?

It is amazing how, because the amount of cash sloshing around is so much greater when you are building a house than they normally see, they can lose perspective of the value of money.  It has to be the best time for all sorts of snake oil salesmen to tap up the suggestible.   

I guess it's all a part of the show really.

----------


## Roobarb

> Hey, what did I do? I'm just building a normal little house with cement and stuff.... Roobarb is all about this wood art thing with funky rooms and impossible stairs..... It will all fall down I tell ya.... and BD's will just blow away....thatched roof FFS....


 :rofl: 

The thing is Koman, I can't disagree with you here  :Smile: 




> Your solid concrete and steel, along with mine will be open to visitors in a thousand years....as prime examples of 21st century building excellence.....


OK, having just read this I could disagree with you, but we've agreed to be nice to Betty as he's just found out that he will need to spend another five years amongst the goat herders in Oman to pay for the mini economic boom that seems to be taking place in Nakhorn Nayok at the moment...

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## koman

> OK, having just read this I could disagree with you, but we've agreed to be nice to Betty as he's just found out that he will need to spend another five years amongst the goat herders in Oman to pay for the mini economic boom that seems to be taking place in Nakhorn Nayok at the moment...


Yes we should comfort Betty and show appreciation for his generous contributions to the Nakhorn Nayok economy; especially with all the storm clouds of economic melt-down gathering around the rice payment deficit and all that sort of thing.....  5 years more in the sand box though....that's pretty harsh.... :Smile:

----------


## Roobarb

Back to the house, I want to get this floor finished off before I head home for the day...

Directly opposite the front bedroom is the balcony.  Wandering out onto that, looking at the back bedroom wall on the left (this is the one where they cocked up the varnishing a few pages back):



... then looking in the other direction:



... and the view from the side:



We will fill in this bit of the paddy field.  The tall trees in the top centre of the photo mark the far corner of our land.  It runs across where the broken fence thing runs to the right between the two paddies, and down the pathway with the little tree to the left of the tall trees.

The idea is to fill all the way past the back of the house.  More pics on this later.

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## Roobarb

Now.  All is not as wonderful as it seems.

As mentioned  previously we want to get glass bi-fold doors on both the balcony and  the downstairs terrace openings, so that during the day the house is  open to the breeze and mozzies, and then in the evenings we can close  the mozzies in and let them feast on us.

These are the sort of things that I'm after:



The thing is that it was  clear that this was going to take our presence to sort this out as  nobody we spoke to in Chaiyaphum had a clue about what a bi-fold door  was so, purely as a temporary measure, I'm embarrassed to say that we  did this:



Yes, they are steel roller shutters.

...

Exactly.  Just like the ones you get on a shop.

...

No, they are not pretty at all, I know that.   


We also did the same downstairs, and we'll probably keep those ones up as a security thing (we can hide the downstairs ones above the gypsum ceilings so that all you see is the tracks running down the pillars, and we'll work out a way of hiding them too)

These balcony ones will not be a permanent feature.  The thing is that having spent Baht 20K on them it's a shame to see them go to waste.

What I need is a big garage/man cave, which means I can then transfer the roller shutters to that once we have sorted out the proper doors.

As I stand on the balcony the perfect place for this double garage/workshop thing presents itself...



Yup, over against that fence by the trees.  I reckon you could get a double garage and a sort of workshop thing in there, maybe even with a Bankao Dreamer pool in front of it.

Stay tuned, this may well become the next project...

Oddly enough, this is actually what the purpose of the house is all about, pottering about and working out what the next thing to do is. I doubt it will ever be finished.

Anyway, back to the balcony roller shutters, they keep the house secure for now.  The upstairs ones are definitely not permanent as, aesthetics aside, they rattle horribly in the wind.

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## Bettyboo

I haven't seen this angle before. I like it. A nice vegetable garden and orchard area - shade and home produce; I hope to have something similar.

You need a gun to protect that land, and your balcony is perfect for a big bluderbuster. If I ever make it out of the sandpit then we can meet up in Bkk for gun shopping...  :Smile:  (I've always thought, it's  the way to end it all; make sure I've paid all the bills, given the missus everything she wants then buy meself a gun that she can shoot me with. Have to make sure I have 100,000 or so in the bank for her to pay the BiB.)

I'm liking this, from your balcony, some nice fruit trees, a few strategic gaps in the fence to encourage some local thieves in (do many Aussies live in that area?)...



As for the Nakhon Nayok economy, I've worked out that from Feb 16th I will be better  off financially before the missus recalculated; rental of a Bangkok property will disappear, and the pick-up will be coming out of the missus' monthly allowance...  :Smile:

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## Roobarb

Last pic for now.

Looking back towards the boggy area at the front of the house:



That will need filling.  Whilst we're at it the light coloured soil the car is sitting on is pretty crappy with lost of stones and stuff so we'll scrape that off and chuck it in the paddy field, then get some better quality topsoil to finish off that area instead.

In the background around the trees you can see some bamboo sticks.  We're aiming to build a 3 foot high wall around there which will separate the garden area from the trees.  By extending the garden area out at the back of the house (by filling the paddy field) the the house will appear to be a bit more centred on the land...

... or at least that's the plan.

Right. more later, time to head home.

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## Roobarb

> I haven't seen this angle before. I like it. A nice vegetable garden and orchard area - shade and home produce; I hope to have something similar.


I like the vegetable garden too.  I reckon I may move it onto where the filled bit of paddy field will be so I can build my garage.  Something along the lines of a Victorian walled garden perhaps, but with lower walls.  Anyway, it's a long way off for now.  Finish the house first...




> As for the Nakhon Nayok economy, I've worked out that from Feb 16th I will be better off financially before the missus recalculated; rental of a Bangkok property will disappear, and the pick-up will be coming out of the missus' monthly allowance...


 :Smile: 

Well done.  Are her calculations similar or do they miss out the losing the apartment and paying for the truck out of her allowance bit?  I only mention it as I know that it would be something my missus would tend to skate over.

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## Marmite the Dog

> The ladder thing attached to the wall is a temporary lash-up job just to give us access to the roof area above the bedroom and also to allow us to open the windows in the large window below the roof.  I'd hope it's not going to be a permanent solution, but like much of the rest of things in the house, it'll do for now.


Do you have the room to put that useless near-vertical staircase there?

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## Roobarb

> You need a gun to protect that land, and your balcony is perfect for a big bluderbuster. If I ever make it out of the sandpit then we can meet up in Bkk for gun shopping...


You're on.

I always quite liked those rail guns that you got on pirate ships, like the Lantaka cannon things the savages used in Borneo:



A few of those mounted on the balcony railings would be ideal for protecting me veggies.




> (I've always thought, it's the way to end it all; make sure I've paid all the bills, given the missus everything she wants then buy meself a gun that she can shoot me with. Have to make sure I have 100,000 or so in the bank for her to pay the BiB.)


Good God man, you've been spending far too long on your own in Oman.  Take a holiday or something...

Hell, if it's that bad come out to Delhi for the weekend and I'll shout you some beers...  :Smile: 




> I'm liking this, from your balcony, some nice fruit trees, a few strategic gaps in the fence to encourage some local thieves in (do many Aussies live in that area?)...


Good question.  Not sure on the Aussies, but as a bit of a treat for you I do have a French brother-in-law who makes himself known up there from time to time.

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## Roobarb

> Do you have the room to put that useless near-vertical staircase there?


It's a good thought Marmite.  I may have to chop back into the bedroom wall a bit but hell it's only gypsum and wood.  Thinking about it, I was planning on sticking a built-in cupboard on the inside (bedroom side) of that wall at some stage so it can disappear into that.

Yup, that's probably the solution.   

I'm enjoying this place immensely now.  So much to do when before this I had nothing...  :Smile:

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## Marmite the Dog

At least all the 'anomalies' have added some real character to the place - it looks really good.

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## BKKBILL

Roobarb excellent set of pictures showing the house can see why the roller shutters were posted last. At least they seem to be the right colour. :Smile:

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## Roobarb

> At least all the 'anomalies' have added some real character to the place - it looks really good.



Thanks Marmite

I seem to have created the equivalent of a ramshacle eighteenth century English farmhouse complete with sloping floors, leaning walls, dodgy plumbing and, on the evidence of my last visit, cold and draughty rooms, by the simple expedient of being a mean bastard and not paying enough to do the job properly or bothering to turn up and supervise.

It's win/win for me  :Smile:

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## Roobarb

> Roobarb excellent set of pictures showing the house can see why the roller shutters were posted last. At least they seem to be the right colour.


Well, yes, at least the colour is not desperately out of keeping with the rest of the place.

It was a decision made after trying every which way to get the folding doors done properly, but I knew in my heart that it would be a monstrous cock up if we pushed the builders into trying it and attempts at getting Mrs Roobarb to phone a Bangkok/Korat company to go and sort it out were dismissed as 'Paaang Maak'.  I was a desperate man and roller shutters seemed to be the quickest and simplest fix in order to be allow us to close the house up.  My worry was that with gaping doors left open it would only be a matter of time before birds started nesting in the place, rain would get in and before long we would be back to square one.

At least when the shutters are fully open (which they are all day) I don't really notice them.

----------


## Roobarb

OK, back again.  Time to continue the tour.

Heading up the vertical staircase that's decidedly not a ladder we get to the mezzanine level (second floor I guess).

For those that missed it earlier I may as well explain what the problem is with this staircase.  It's been built as a staircase with normal stair treads, but because the thing is nearly vertical you want to climb it like a ladder, and there is nothing really for your hands to grab hold of (older pic of it below).  



Practically speaking its probably just like walking up a normal staircase, but it feels odd having the stair treads so close to your face, and without having anything to grip it feels a bit unsafe if you treat it as a ladder.  Bannisters would probably help I guess although I think it will end up being replaced with a spiral staircase (eventually...).

Anyway, having negotiated this thing, here's a picture looking back at the front bedroom from the mezzanine:



Per Marmite's earlier suggestion, the vertical staircase may eventually replace the ladder which gives access to the front bedroom roof.  It'll probably need to be inset into the bedroom wall a bit at the top, but that will make it seem a bit safer to climb I think.

Looking down to the ground floor:



... still loads of sanding and varnishing to get done.

Another view of the front bedroom roof area:

----------


## Roobarb

As we're up here we may as well have a bit of a poke around.

There are two areas to the main part of the mezzanine, the bit above the back bedroom and the bit above the master bedroom.

Standing roughly where the last photo was taken from, this is a picture looking into the part above the back bedroom:



The top of the staircase is at the left hand end of the railings.

This section had the new floorboards (in the foreground).  Sanded down and varnished they will look fine.  My only slight concern is the amount that they have contracted so far as I don't think that they were fully dried out when they were laid.  It's up in the roof so a few gaps between the boards is not a major worry though.

Looking in to the area above the back bedroom:



I'm a bit over 6 feet tall, and took the photo standing up, so there is reasonable headroom in the centre section, enough to walk down to open and close the windows.

An idea of the view out of these windows:



I reckon I'll need to get some form of guard rails put up to stop the kids falling out.

----------


## Roobarb

Spinning around to the left we can then look into the bit over the master bedroom:



The floor area is a bit bigger here (about 5 metres by 4 metres) and so there is more usable space.

I know it's a similar picture, but I'm just bunging them up as I find them...

 

A bit of a close up of this window:



Out of all the roof areas I like the wood on this window the best:



Still plenty of finishing off to do but it has a good feel to it.

I reckon it's probably going to get a bit hot up here during the daytime which is a shame, as it would make a great little study area.  It's almost like being on an old sailing ship with all the rough-hewn timbers.

The floorboards even creak like an old ship too...  :Smile: 

I'll have to see how it turns out after we have put some insulation and gypsum up on the insides of the roof before I decide if this is a kids area or Daddy's refuge.

----------


## Roobarb

As mentioned earlier we've been pretty lucky with all the tradesmen who have worked on the house, I think in no small part because of my MIL who has kept a close eye on proceedings.

The one person who obviously had no real interest in completing his work was the glazier.

After a fair amount of screwing about he eventually showed up and a price was agreed. The next day all seemed fine, he brought a whole lot of glass and fitted a few window panes.  He then made the mistake of asking my MIL for a 50% deposit up front and said that he would come back a week later to finish it all off.

Now my MIL was not born yesterday and saw through this immediately, so told him that he could store his glass on site for free and that he would get paid per completed window.  She then worked out the total number of windows and divided it by his total quote.

Needless to say the guy was a bit miffed by this rather equitable approach, but drifted on and off the site over the next week or so when time permitted him to earn an honest wage as opposed to his primary occupation of earning a dishonest one.

He completed all the windows apart from three, which were the ensuite bathroom window and also the top two panes of glass in the roof 'step' window (the bit between the main roof and the roof over the master bedroom).  Mysteriously then the price went up to make a trip especially to finish this off, much to the annoyance of my MIL.

As I was only going to be there for a week my main priority was to make the place bird and weather proof.  Not having window panes was a bit of an issue.  This glazing lark couldn't be that difficult.  I decided to take matters into my own hands. 

1) On the next trip to Global House I shelled out 65 Baht for one of these:



2) I cut out a cardboard template from the box the washing machine came in.

3) I then nicked some of the glazier's glass that he'd left lying around and scored it in the shape of the template.

4) Now the dodgy bit, I broke the glass along the scored lines

5) Remarkably enough it fitted in the window opening.  

I've never done this before so was rather amazed to find out that it not only worked without needing to call for an ambulance, but was quite easy too.

The first window pane:



Now this one was a bit of a stuff up as I was very excited to get it fitted and see the results of my handiwork.  In doing so I forgot to clean all my dirty fingerprints off the outside of the glass and I couldn't be bothered to take it out again to do it properly, so the thing does look a bit grubby.

The second window.  I learned my lesson from the first and so did clean this one, a bit anyway:



There was not enough glass to do the bathroom window, nor was there a ready frame for it to go into, so I had to leave that one.

The following day, miracle upon miracles, the glazier showed up (in his new Honda Accord).  My wife laid into him big time telling him that 'The Farang' had to do the upstairs windows, and we are all a bit cross about it, and that she would be charging him for my time, and that's going to be a lot, and that unless he sorted out the bathroom window immediately then she would get really, really cross, and that he probably wouldn't like that very much at all etc etc.

Fighting stuff.  Unfortunately I think it lacked the necessary degree of subtlety.  The glazier went and had a look at my 'handiwork' then said he needed to get something from his car. Down he went, he climbed into his car, fired it up and left.  We never saw him again.  

Good riddance to the man, it did mean that we froze our whatnots off each night for the rest of our stay up there but I like to think we did it with dignity  :Smile: 

On saying that though I think the point has been made and I hope the bathroom window has now been fixed.

----------


## BKKBILL

Roobarb if you could get urethane sprayed under your roof tiles that wonderful area would defiantly become Daddy’s refuge.

Great pictures. When this is completed .... well even now it is something to be proud of.

_I see you already have insulation under the tiles so urethane will not stick the the foil so disregard that part. Light coming thru that glass is remarkable._

----------


## Roobarb

Last few pictures from this bit of the mezzanine as we head back downstairs.

Standing above the master bedroom (sorry, it's a bit dark this one):



Looking back down towards the front door:



and a similar view from the top of the vertical staircase:

----------


## Roobarb

Last two of the mezzanine and then it's time to go for a wander outside.

Standing on the roof of the front bedroom:



... the useless glazier didn't clear up his offcuts.

I like all the wood up here so I'm making no apologies for posting another similar view:



Once the floors are properly finished and the roof lining has been done I think it will look really quite good.

I'm beginning to find out thought that the difficulty with building here is getting things finished to a good standard, the Issan standard, half-assed sort of job is going to look awful.  This final stage will take some time I think.

----------


## Roobarb

> Roobarb if you could get urethane sprayed under your roof tiles that wonderful area would defiantly become Daddys refuge.
> 
> Great pictures. When this is completed .... well even now it is something to be proud of.
> 
> _I see you already have insulation under the tiles so urethane will not stick the the foil so disregard that part. Light coming thru that glass is remarkable._


Bill, thanks - I wondered about the spray on stuff, but reckoned that the foil would, er, foil that idea so thanks for confirming my suspicions.

I was thinking of using that fibreglass roll stuff, but I'm not sure if I am better off having a thinnish layer of that between the roof and the gypsum board, or simply leaving an air gap.  I don't really want to make it too thick as I will lose headroom up there, I was thinking maximum 15 cms airgap or insulation.

I know nothing about this, but there is a niggling thought in the back of my mind that, being a steel roof, the fibreglass insulation may serve to keep heat in in the evenings rather than allow it to escape as the steel will rapidly cool when the sun sets.

Any thoughts...???

BTW - Thanks for the comments of the light, I really wanted the place to seem as light and airy as we could make it, hence all the glass.

----------


## Roobarb

Heading back downstairs again.  



One of the things the builder did was to clad the beam at the bottom of the triangle roof bit in the photo above.  The actual beam consists of two planks of wood that sandwich the concrete pillars art each end, and I was pleased to see that the builder had put another bit of wood on the top and the bottom to make the beam appear solid.

Then for some reason he seemed to get a bit carried away and put some extra wood on the side.  



I guess it mirrors the external walls, but I'm not too sure I like the clinker boat effect for beams.  It'll be another project for some stage in the future.  

Having earlier worked out the excuse to build a workshop I'm now imagining I can use it to house a table saw, router and various other woodworking kit.  

The place is beginning to fill up.  

Have to make it a bit bigger I think...  :Smile:

----------


## Roobarb

Looking back into the kitchen, now that the washing machine has been installed you can get an idea of the problem with the height of the kitchen cabinets: 



That aside, it's not a bad sized kitchen really:



Rather amusingly the gas bottle doesn't fit under the kitchen counter.  There was a bit of a council of war on this one and the solution presented to me was: 'We will dig a big hole in the cupboard so that the gas bottle can sit in that.  Then it will fit under the counter.'  Lots of happy smiles and congratulations all round.

I don't know much about gas and stuff, but I do remember from my boating days how it was considered to be quite important that a gas locker is self draining as gas is both heavier than air and a tad explosive.  Gas in the bilges was always deemed to be a bad thing, and I reckoned that it sitting around in kitchen cupboards is likely to be less than ideal too. 

Needless to say the hole in the floor idea was shelved.  We'll get a smaller gas bottle, or better yet we'll stick the gas bottle outside in the soon to be built pump room and pipe it in.  

Looking out of the kitchen into the rest of the house:



Roobarb minor doing a bit of a runner for some reason or another.

----------


## Roobarb

Right, finally time for a bit of a wander around outside I think:



This photo actually shows the sum total of the furniture and cooking/heating devices that we started out with.

Whilst it was never mentioned, it was probably quite clear that my intention was to spend the week sitting on one of the chairs, beer in hand and watching others doing things.  It was sadly not to be.

Another pic of the downstairs terrace:



I had wanted to see if we could build the place without the centre pillar (the one just behind the fold-up table), a bit like the late lamented Dr Andy managed to achieve on his place, but I was told by all and sundry that it was not possible, so dropped the idea.

Anyway, there's tons of space out here so it's not a problem really.

Like with BD's place, we seem to have been adopted by a couple of dogs which is nice.  No idea where they came from but they seem quite happy with the whole arrangement.

----------


## koman

My guess is that Roobarb minor has spotted that gas cylinder.   FFS get it outside into a ventilated locker and pipe it in through the wall.   No way in the world should you have that thing inside the kitchen cupboards.... :Confused:    Propane is lethal stuff and it does not take much of a leak to cause a very dramatic event......  a gas  sniffer under the stove would be a worth while investment too.

----------


## Bettyboo

> Are her calculations similar or do they miss out the losing the apartment and paying for the truck out of her allowance bit? I only mention it as I know that it would be something my missus would tend to skate over.


We both know, there's no way we'll ever come out on top in such calculations. My missus will be sitting there with a calculator, every bit of info she's picked up over the years on a pad, my credit card bills in front of her, working out how much more she can get...




> A few of those mounted on the balcony railings would be ideal for protecting me veggies.


You really should. They'd look great. & if they were functional too...  :Smile: 




> come out to Delhi for the weekend


Do you have many servants to bring beer and food? I wouldn't want to be going out mixing with the masses.




> French brother-in-law


Oh dear...

----------


## Roobarb

> My guess is that Roobarb minor has spotted that gas  cylinder. FFS get it outside into a ventilated locker and pipe it in  through the wall. No way in the world should you have that thing inside  the kitchen cupboards.... Propane is lethal stuff and it does not take  much of a leak to cause a very dramatic event...... a gas sniffer under  the stove would be a worth while investment too.


Thinking about it I reckon you're right.   :rofl: 

What was funny was when I said we'd put the cylinder outside and run a continuous copper pipe to the stove there were lots of sharp inhales of breath and "Anteraii Maak" sorts of noises.

I have no idea what the pipe should actually be made of, but we always used copper ones on boats so I guessed it would work here well enough too. 

It's a different world in Isaan, really it is.

Good call on the gas sniffer thing, I'll get one of those.

----------


## koman

> ^ Thinking about it I reckon you're right.  
> 
> What was funny was when I said we'd put the cylinder outside and run a continuous copper pipe to the stove there were lots of sharp inhales of breath and "Anteraii Maak" sorts of noises.
> 
> I have no idea what the pipe should actually be made of, but we always used copper ones on boats so I guessed it would work here well enough too. 
> 
> It's a different world in Isaan, really it is.
> 
> Good call on the gas sniffer thing, I'll get one of those.


Use armoured plastic pipe and double clamp it both ends.   I used propane on sailboats for many years and always connected with plastic pipe because it's flexible and does not suffer from fatigue the way metal does.   Boats have a terrible tendency to move around a lot when underway, and especially when the wind pipes up..........very hard on pipes that don't flex.   They actually make piping specially for gas connections... which is very safe if installed correctly.....Roobarb minor seems to be way ahead of you on matters of gas safety...... :Smile:

----------


## Bettyboo

Impressed with the architect getting his hands dirty, but not cut. 

The kitchen counter, with the w/m in, does look a bit weird, and the window level too. It's such a lovely place that it's a shame they fuked that up - nice sized kitchen; tiles worked out well too.  :Smile: 

The views all around are very nice. The initial shots showed just a bit of scrum land, but these recent pics out of the window look like an African savana, approaching a watering hole. 

It would be a shame not to live in such a nice property full time. This has been 6 million baht very well spent. Impressed.

----------


## Roobarb

> We both know, there's no way we'll ever come out on top in such calculations. My missus will be sitting there with a calculator, every bit of info she's picked up over the years on a pad, my credit card bills in front of her, working out how much more she can get...


Yes, sadly I reckon you're right.  




> Do you have many servants to bring beer and food? I wouldn't want to be going out mixing with the masses.


I need to be careful how I answer this following the recent plight of that financial blighter in Singapore who went on a train, but lords a lordy Betty, of course you wouldn't be expected to mix with the masses here.  Perish the thought!

I'm sure I could spare you a beer wallah, but it is a tough life out here and we do live in straitened times.  We don't have the numbers of staff we used to.

As an example of how tough things are getting, here's a picture of me having to share the same punkah wallah with a colleague whilst we revise our January sales forecasts, or at least he's working on the revision.  I'm strategising.

----------


## Bettyboo

> I'm strategising.


 :smiley laughing:

----------


## Roobarb

> Use armoured plastic pipe and double clamp it both ends. I used propane on sailboats for many years and always connected with plastic pipe because it's flexible and does not suffer from fatigue the way metal does.


Thanks Koman, good advice.




> Roobarb minor seems to be way ahead of you on matters of gas safety......


When you are only 3 feet tall and you live in a country where curry is the favoured dish I should imagine that you become quite sensitive towards potential gas leaks...  :Smile:

----------


## Roobarb

> The kitchen counter, with the w/m in, does look a bit weird, and the window level too. It's such a lovely place that it's a shame they fuked that up


Yup, it is a bit of a pity.  I'll work something out.




> This has been 6 million baht very well spent. Impressed.


Oh ho ho, richly comic....!

----------


## BKKBILL

> I was thinking of using that fibreglass roll stuff, but I'm not sure if I am better off having a thinnish layer of that between the roof and the gypsum board, or simply leaving an air gap.  I don't really want to make it too thick as I will lose headroom up there, I was thinking maximum 15 cms airgap or insulation.
> 
> I know nothing about this, but there is a niggling thought in the back of my mind that, being a steel roof, the fibreglass insulation may serve to keep heat in in the evenings rather than allow it to escape as the steel will rapidly cool when the sun sets.
> 
> Any thoughts...???


I think using foil wrapped insulation with a small air gap between it and your roofing would keep the space cooler and should help deaden the sound in a storm.

Looking at your pictures thought it would be nice to have a wooden bridge above the bedrooms then you could get rid of the ladder thats against the wall should also save with opening and closing the windows on both sides up there.

----------


## Roobarb

> I think using foil wrapped insulation with a small air gap between it and your roofing would keep the space cooler and should help deaden the sound in a storm.


Thanks Bill, temperature insulation aside, your thoughts on the sound deadening has sold me.  I reckon yours is a good suggestion.




> Looking at your pictures thought it would be nice to have a wooden bridge above the bedrooms then you could get rid of the ladder thats against the wall should also save with opening and closing the windows on both sides up there.


You know what, I toyed with that idea for ages.  My thought was to have a 3 foot wide bridge running along the outside edge, like the orange floored bit in the picture below:



The only thing that put me off is it is actually quite a long way down, about 25 feet or so plus the height of the person:



I'm not too sure that it would feel that safe and secure.  I also didn't like the idea of having a continuous line from the bedroom wall to the bathroom wall as it would sort of divide the house longitudinally.  I'm not sure if it's a bad thing or not but it may make the place seem less open when you enter for the first time.

It actually occurred to me yesterday whilst I was posting the picture below that there may be another solution:



... and that is to fill in a floor from the outside house wall for about 3/4s of the way, then angle off the ends to meet up with the angle of the railings running to the stairs... 

OK, a picture may help I think:





If I also fill in a bit of the floor on the first floor it will both make that room seem bigger and will mean that the mezzanine becomes less vertigo-inducing.  The stairs are already set back a bit it should be easy to fill out the rest of the floor (you can see in the photograph above)

As an added bonus, looking up from the from the ground floor it would create a bit of a gallery effect, which might be visually a bit more interesting than the current set up:



... and help to make the study area a bit more separate feeling, rather than just being under the stairs:



The joys of having a wooden house, it's easy to hack about and change if you want to...  You can see why everyone wanted to keep me off the site  :Smile: 

What do you reckon?  Good plan or is there a better way?

----------


## Roobarb

Sorry, it's been taking a bit long to update this particular batch of photos.

So, heading outside, a few pics of the outside of the house.

Standing by the kitchen looking up at the back bedroom:



Picture of the side of the kitchen:



The builder is about to start building a sort of lean-to shed thing for the water tank and the pump.  We'll also put the gas bottle in there too.

The plumbing is all getting redone, it was cobbled together by FIL the day before I arrived so that we had some running water in the house.

A couple more photos of this side of the house: 



... and a similar view standing at the edge of the paddy field beside the kitchen:

----------


## bankao dreamer

Your water tank pump thing looks just like mine mate well done. But yours is better he has even installed a ladder so you can watch it fill up easier. I unfortunately have to stand on 2 concrete blocks, mind you I did it myself !!

----------


## Roobarb

Moving a bit further around to the front...

It was decided that the water tank needed to be off the ground and that the water pump should go beneath it.  I'm not sure how or why this decision was reached, but it meant that a frame needed to be made to support the water tank.

A whole load of steel then turned up:



... and by the afternoon we had this oddly insect-like frame:



Now that the washing machine was installed, it was realised that we didn't have anything approaching a drying line.  The leftover pile of wood with some strategically placed bamboo seemed to work out pretty well (or so I was told...).

----------


## Roobarb

> Your water tank pump thing looks just like mine mate well done. But yours is better he has even installed a ladder so you can watch it fill up easier. I unfortunately have to stand on 2 concrete blocks, mind you I did it myself !!


Great minds eh BD  :Smile:  (or is it that fools seldom differ...  :Confused: )

They filled the thing with 2,000 litres of water, then had to empty it all out again to put it on its frame thing they had just made.

----------


## bankao dreamer

I think it depends on what type of pump you use. There is a thread on here all about pumps. Mine is a Mitsubishi constant pressure pump and the schematics for it show you don't have to raise the tank it can sit next to it.



Many many moons ago I used to be a plumber so I went for this type of pump because of the ease in installation.

----------


## koman

I don't know why you would place the pump at a lower level than the tank....does not seem to make much sense......but raising the tank on a platform would provide some gravity flow to the house if the pump goes tits up.....which I think makes a little bit of sense....Yes??  No??  am I talking bollocks??

----------


## Roobarb

Standing by the woodpile (continuity experts will note that this photo is a little out of sync with the previous one as Mrs Roobarb's bloomers are nowhere to be seen).



Seems we have gained a chicken as well, or at least someone has as the cage is now empty.

Probably been eaten.  Easy come, easy go:



These wooden bamboo sticks are going to be where we build a wall to separate the trees from the house.  

Actually it reminds me, someone seems to be tapping these trees now.  God knows who it is.  I'll have to remember to ask my missus what the deal is here.

Actually, one of the odd things I found on this trip was that village folks just sort of wander in.  One old crone strolled right by the house and, as she seemed quite friendly, I asked her what she was doing.  

"Oh, I've just come to collect some snails from the paddy field" she said.

_The_ paddy field?

*THE* paddy field??

It's *MY* paddy field that you are stealing *MY* snails from...  

Oh to hell with it, what's the point in getting upset?  Let her have her snails... 

"Righty-ho, help yourself".  

At some point we'll fill the thing in and build a bloody great wall, but for the time being we may as well keep the villagers (pillagers) on side.

----------


## bankao dreamer

I plumbed in a by-pass I open a valve and close another one and hey presto a dribble of slime

Snails your snails surely you could chop off a hand !!  :Smile:

----------


## Roobarb

> I don't know why you would place the pump at a lower level than the tank....does not seem to make much sense......but raising the tank on a platform would provide some gravity flow to the house if the pump goes tits up.....which I think makes a little bit of sense....Yes?? No?? am I talking bollocks??


Well you might be talking bollocks but oddly enough that might well align your thinking with whoever decided to stick the water tank up on a stand.

I did want to keep the shed for the water tank as narrow as we could so it didn't block the view too much from the kitchen window (not that I'll be doing any washing up with the sink that low, but it's the principle of the thing) so in fairness it may be a space-saving design.

I've stopped trying to listen to the logic behind decisions that are being made on this house, but my suspicion was that the real reason behind it was that they had reckoned the pump wouldn't have to work so hard at sucking in water if it was gravity fed, which is both a good Issan way of looking at things as well as being a load bollocks.

So yes, I think you're right, but also quite possibly wrong  :Smile:

----------


## Roobarb

> I plumbed in a by-pass I open a valve and close another one and hey presto a dribble of slime


I've not seen how this has turned out at mine yet.  I wouldn't be surprised if I find the same thing  :Smile: 




> Snails your snails surely you could chop off a hand !!


Thankfully she didn't try this at Betty's place eh?  

Here in India snails are fair game unless you nail 'em down.  Personally I don't bother but of course I'm not French.

----------


## bankao dreamer

> I'm not French.


Thank God for that  :Smile:

----------


## Roobarb

> I think it depends on what type of pump you use. There is a thread on here all about pumps. Mine is a Mitsubishi constant pressure pump and the schematics for it show you don't have to raise the tank it can sit next to it.


You've got a yellow one  :rofl: 

They're rubbish apparently, Marmite said so...




> Many many moons ago I used to be a plumber so I went for this type of pump because of the ease in installation.


Oooops, you may know what you're talking about then...

----------


## Roobarb

OK, continuing the stroll around...

I think I've already posted this one earlier, but here is is again:



... Looking at the outside of the large window at the end of the house.  



Because this window faces north-west I'm not sure that it will ever get any direct sunlight.  I'll have to wait until the summer to find out though.  It certainly doesn't in the winter months anyway.

----------


## bankao dreamer

> You've got a yellow one 
> 
> They're rubbish apparently, Marmite said so...


OOh shite is mine yellow ( I am slightly colour blind ) If I paint it to Marmites specified colour will it be ok I wonder

----------


## Roobarb

And then a few pics from the back.

I still think of this as being the front of the house but I did say earlier on that I would refer to this as being the back of the house for the thread as it's the side opposite the side with the front door:



The back of the house faces south west so gets a lot of sun, but other than the back bedroom, most of the other walls are shaded which should keep the place a bit cooler than it could have been.

I have to admit that this was more through accident than design...

----------


## bankao dreamer

> Because this window faces north-west I'm not sure that it will ever get any direct sunlight. I'll have to wait until the summer to find out though. It certainly doesn't in the winter months anyway


Who cares ? it looks blooming lovely, hats off to your wood bloke. In fact looking at the latest pics of stairs and such like send him my way I have a plan, a very cunning plan my lord regarding my Sala. Its more secret than Komans Franky,

----------


## Roobarb

> OOh shite is mine yellow ( I am slightly colour blind ) If I paint it to Marmites specified colour will it be ok I wonder


 :rofl: 

I was going to paint my white one yellow as I thought they looked a bit more racy. 

Then a discussion started on Betty's thread about the relative merits of white ones and yellow ones.  I soon realised that if I did paint it then there would be a good chance that it would start to leak.

To be on the safe side I've kept mine white and built a little house to hide it in instead.  :Smile:

----------


## bankao dreamer

^
Im not taking any chances Im painting it then hiding it, in fact Im going to brick it in like forgotten Prince's.

----------


## Roobarb

There was a bit of concern earlier that the house would look monstrously out of place and was all a bit too big for its environment, so here's a few photos from a bit further away which may put the place in context:



We'll fill in this paddy field sometime this year so the house doesn't seem to perch quite so precariously on the edge (and to stop the snail woman from nicking me snails).



Thinking about it though, I might only fill some of the paddy field and then stick a sort of mini 'Aircut-like' pond somewhere between the house and where the photo is taken from (you've got to love the Teakdoor pages for ideas).  

I like the reflection of the house and sky in the water, and besides which it will save me on buying lots of extra truckloads of soil.

----------


## Roobarb

> Im not taking any chances Im painting it then hiding it, in fact Im going to brick it in like forgotten Prince's.


Good god, you really were a plumber then  :Smile:

----------


## Roobarb

Dragging out a few more photos....  

If you're bored then skip past this bit.

Another photo from the far end of the land, at least I think it's the far end, somewhere around there anyway:



... and a bit further around:



This is about as far as I can get without falling into the paddy field.

The next photo is taken from the main road which is on the other side of the lake thing.  It's a bit fuzzy as I took it with my phone but it gives you the idea anyway:

----------


## bankao dreamer

^
Comment from my Wife if I may " Beautiful "

----------


## Roobarb

As I mentioned a page or so back, the house is really as much designed to be a glorified viewing platform as a place to live, and so here are a couple of pics of the views:

The rest of the paddy field (looking roughly south):



The land border follows the path with the small green tree on the far  left hand side of the photo, up to the next two (three?) trees and then  back towards the house going past the light green tree thing.

We won't fill all this land, far too expensive, but we will fill the bit closer to the house I think.

From the balcony, roughly facing west:

----------


## Roobarb

> Comment from my Wife if I may " Beautiful "


Thanks BD, I hope you'll all come and visit some time.

(and nice use of a ^ BTW...  :Smile: )

----------


## Roobarb

And so, as the day is drawing in the last photo, and encouraged with BD's kind words, a few more pics as the sun sets on the first phase of the project.

From the edge of the paddy field:



... and then from the balcony:



I'm too lazy to try to splice these together.  Here's the right hand side of the panorama...



Finally, the sun's gone down and what I think is Venus is shining down on us instead (top left):



Time for another beer I think.

Cheers all...  :Smile:

----------


## BKKBILL

Good stuff, The front or err back err ........ as BD said it does look blooming lovely.

Good call on putting your gas bottle behind the kitchen under cover

As for that bridge/passageway by living in the house for awhile the right answer will come.

If there is no fence the snails will never be safe it’s the way in Thailand

----------


## Roobarb

^ Thanks Bill.

I reckon you're right on the bridge.  I'll leave it for a while and, er, cross it later as it were.

One way or another things are not looking good for the snails...  :Smile:

----------


## FatOne

Your place looks really fantastic, love the views too. Looks too far from anyone to have too many locals travelling through! I assume some sort of fence is in the plans?

----------


## splitlid

great stuff, really like the way this has come together. :Smile: 
you will need an army of dusters in that mezzanine area. :bananaman: 
maids outfit. pics required. French preferably. sassas must be worn.

----------


## Sailing into trouble

Well it looks like you have created your own piece of heaven. Great thread and great story. Looks wonderful from the outside, great views and homely from the inside.

----------


## Roobarb

> Your place looks really fantastic, love the views too. Looks too far from anyone to have too many locals travelling through! I assume some sort of fence is in the plans?


Thanks FatOne.  It's on the edge of a village, so there are quite a few people living within about five minutes shuffle.  The thing is that the house is at the end of a road and on a little point of land that sticks out into the lake.  Other than going for a swim in the lake (and there are plenty of better places to do that from than our land), the only reason that someone would enter our land is because they want something from it.

I'd guess that before long we'll wall ourselves off from the 'mainland', but I think we'll start with a small fence and gate and keep increasing the size until eventually they get the idea.  The thing is for years and years snail collectors and the like have been wandering through the land so I guess it will take time for them to break their habits.  

If I'm honest about it, it does seem a bit selfish to stop them when we are hardly ever there.  For now, so long as they don't bother us I'm not going to bother them, and besides that they all know my in-laws and in Issan village style one favour is generally traded for another so it's not a bad thing to have several of the village folks vaguely keep an eye on the place for us too.   

If we were there permanently then it would be different.




> great stuff, really like the way this has come together.


Thanks Splitlid




> you will need an army of dusters in that mezzanine area.


Ummm?




> maids outfit. pics required. French preferably. sassas must be worn.


Ah, got it.  I like your thinking  :Smile: 




> Well it looks like you have created your own piece of heaven. Great thread and great story. Looks wonderful from the outside, great views and homely from the inside.


Thanks SIT - With decent views, the offer of an escape from day-to-day city life to a place where I can be master of all I survey and the likely need for regular maintenance, the house is about as close as I could get to having a boat without having to pay to moor the thing somewhere.

... it's a poor substitute though.

Safe travels.

----------


## Marmite the Dog

Looks smashing, and you've got the correct colour pump. Good job all round, I reckon.

----------


## lom

> If I'm honest about it, it does seem a bit selfish to stop them when we are hardly ever there. For now, so long as they don't bother us I'm not going to bother them, and besides that they all know my in-laws and in Issan village style one favour is generally traded for another so it's not a bad thing to have several of the village folks vaguely keep an eye on the place for us too.


Good thinking!
It will avoid them putting you in the "they think they are better than us - they are isolating themselves from us" box.

----------


## Bettyboo

I'm reading Frankenstein at the moment. I don't know why that thought comes to mind.



I do like the trees. Very nice.



The pump is: 1) too big, overkill; 2) beautifully coloured.



The window frames are very nice indeedy.



For me, the three outstanding features are: 1) the interior use of space and visual aspect; 2) the mezzanine; 3) the balcony, shown well in this picture. It's the best of British Colonialism. You should really be titled.

----------


## Marmite the Dog

> Looks smashing, and you've got the correct colour pump. Good job all round, I reckon.


Bugger! You don't have the correct colour pump!

The sky is falling in, the sky is falling in!

----------


## Roobarb

> Originally Posted by Marmite the Dog
> 
> 
> Looks smashing, and you've got the correct colour pump. Good job all round, I reckon.
> 
> 
> Bugger! You don't have the correct colour pump!
> 
> The sky is falling in, the sky is falling in!


No, no, no, you've got it all wrong.  Betty's nicked a picture of BD's pump.  They both have yellow Mitsubishis.  The bastard's just trying to drag me down to his level.

Mine's a Hitachi, as white as the driven snow...  :Smile:

----------


## Bettyboo

> Mine's a Hitachi


Oh dear...  :Sad:

----------


## Roobarb

> I'm reading Frankenstein at the moment. I don't know why that thought comes to mind.


 :rofl: , I need to keep the place varnished and painted as it could easily become, well:

 




> I do like the trees. Very nice.


Thanks. They came with the land.  There's about 250 rubber trees there.  The guy who sold it to us had just planted them.  Because there had been a chicken farm there before the trees shot up where the chicken sheds had been and they were mature within about four years.  The other ones by and large withered and died as we didn't do anything to look after them.  It worked out rather well as it gives us a tree-lined drive of sorts.




> The pump is: 1) too big, overkill; 2) beautifully coloured.


It's BD's one ya great numpty.  Mine is also too big and overkill, but it's white, so for your purposes it's far from being beautifully coloured  :Smile: 




> The window frames are very nice indeedy.


Ta




> For me, the three outstanding features are: 1) the interior use of space and visual aspect; 2) the mezzanine; 3) the balcony, shown well in this picture. It's the best of British Colonialism. You should really be titled.


Thanks mate.  Whilst there may be a few queens who read TD, sadly I think the important one might pass it by. My efforts to build a small British outpost amongst the heathen masses will I fear be unlikely to see me recognised in the new years honours list.   :Smile: 

Actually, I'd really wanted to try to build something like a colonial Black and White that you get in Singapore.  This sort of thing:



The colonials did know how to build comfortable pads with plenty of shade and breeze so they could get stuck in to their stengahs and pink gins in relative comfort.  

But I reckoned that it would look a bit out of place, bordering on a tad  pompous, and also that by the time it had been built it would end up  looking like a modern concrete house.  I decided to keep the shaded areas but tried to tone down the colonial overtones a little...

Perhaps I've been living in India a bit long?

Well done for picking up on it BTW  :Smile:

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## bankao dreamer

Betty leave my pump alone Im compensating.

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## Wasp

.....

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## Wasp

....

Come on Roobs . You could have moved that bottle !

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## snakeeyes

^
I thought it was a Andy Warhol pic ,  :Smile:

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## Wasp

This is the only thing that I dislike in this terrific build .

That staircase .

Because it dominates that floor area .

So what would I do ? Well Roobs ..... I'd try to attach hinges at the top and raise it out of the way when it's not needed .

But it's a lovely lovely house . The view I've come to love most is that view from the ground floor terrace . It's a little bit staggering.
It looks like A Carnival Cruise ship is going to hove into view at some time soon.

Just all lovely Roobs .


....Wasp

.........

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## Marmite the Dog

> Originally Posted by Marmite the Dog
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>  Originally Posted by Marmite the Dog
> ...


I shall dispatch an immediate red to the swine.

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## Marmite the Dog

> This is the only thing that I dislike in this terrific build .
> 
> That staircase .
> 
> Because it dominates that floor area .
> 
> So what would I do ? Well Roobs ..... I'd try to attach hinges at the top and raise it out of the way when it's not needed .
> 
> But it's a lovely lovely house . The view I've come to love most is that view from the ground floor terrace . It's a little bit staggering.
> ...


I agree. I would have the stars (not those ones though) over to the left hand side, so they don't take up all that space.

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## stevefarang

Why does that ladder or Roobarb's remind me of the Navy days of my youth ?







However, I have seen the following pic, and other variations, before and it would be an interesting alternative, although it would blow the mind of a Thai carpenter. Be careful, you're not drunk and start off on the wrong foot...



The house is looking grand, Roobarb !!  Congrats !!

Steve

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## Bettyboo

> Betty leave my pump alone Im compensating.


Mine is very small, so you're doing better than me...  :Smile:  Presumably, your pump has to also manage the manpool, so it makes sense to go with the extra size, and it is a beautiful colour!

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## Loombucket

The whole thing looks bloody amazing Roobarb! I am well impressed with those upper windows. Jealous even.

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## Roobarb

Sorry guys, things have been a bit fraught over the last few days.  It transpires that my India days are now a little less numbered than I'd thought.  

The upside to this is (amongst many, many things) you may get some updates on the house sooner rather than later  :Smile: 




> Just all lovely Roobs .


Thanks Wasp, much appreciated.




> I agree. I would have the stars (not those ones though) over to the left hand side, so they don't take up all that space.


The only snag is that the downstairs bathroom door gets in the way.  They could still fit but it would mean moving them into the corner ('So what' I hear you say, 'Good riddance to the bladdy things').  

Their positioning is really just a matter of laziness on my part.  Initially I had at first decided to have a small room in the mezzanine above the master bedroom, and needed to keep the stairs a little way back so that there was room to walk out of the door without falling down the stairwell.  So I drew the stairs where they were eventually built. 

As users of Sketchup will know, drawing stairs is a monumental pain in the ass.  A few days later I got rid of the upstairs room so that the mezzanine was all open plan. After that I really couldn't be bothered to draw the stairs again so left it as it was.

They do form a bit of a separation between the living area and the bedrooms - realistically where they are is pretty much dead space anyway, and we are not that short on space either, but on saying that I will have a rethink on them at some point in the future (sooner than I thought as it now appears...).




> Why does that ladder or Roobarb's remind me of the Navy days of my youth ?


Actually, that was exactly what I had in mind for the mezzanine steps, albeit a wooden one as you would get on a yacht.  This was the picture that the carpenter was meant to copy:



Judging by how he built my main staircase I'd say he's a bit of a one-trick pony.




> ... although it would blow the mind of a Thai carpenter.


Yup - see above...  :Smile: 




> The house is looking grand, Roobarb !! Congrats !!


Thanks, It pales in comparison with the quality and detail of your build though Steve...




> The whole thing looks bloody amazing Roobarb! I am well impressed with those upper windows. Jealous even.


Oh no, another one...   :Smile: 

The comments to Steve just above apply to your place too Loomb.   Yours was actually one of the house build threads that initially inspired me to have a crack at it for myself.  

As with Steve's, there was an attention to detail on yours that makes me hesitate with trying to now make any sensible comparisons between it and mine...  

Thanks for the comments everyone.

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## Wasp

Roobarb ........  I don't quite understand your words .

When you say .... :   It transpires that my India days are now a little less numbered than I'd thought. 

That can mean your days are not so numbered now so you are staying there longer .
Or it can mean the number is lower ... so you are staying less .

Are you staying longer or less ?

And when you talk about comparing builds .... funnily enough I bracket yours with splitlid's .
100% different builds in style but both of them I think are very " man " builds .

........

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## Loombucket

> The comments to Steve just above apply to your place too Loomb. Yours was actually one of the house build threads that initially inspired me to have a crack at it for myself.  As with Steve's, there was an attention to detail on yours that makes me hesitate with trying to now make any sensible comparisons between it and mine...


Stop, stop, my head is swelling!  :Smile:  Seriously, every one is different and we have all built different houses. You told a great tale, don't have any doubts now.

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## Roobarb

> Are you staying longer or less ?


Sorry, what I'd written was a little unclear.  I'm leaving India in March instead of later in the year, and will head back to Thailand to finish the house (or at least fiddle around with stuff).




> I bracket yours with splitlid's . 100% different builds in style but both of them I think are very " man " builds


  No idea what this means, but I liked Splitlid's place and it sounds a good compliment  :Smile:

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## Wasp

Yes ..... it's a compliment .

I was saying that if you look at your build and splitlid's you can see right away that it's a man that had the major influence .
Splitlid's is so minimal and clean and clear . You don't imagine a Welsh dresser going in there or any chintz . Just pure lines . No nick-nacks on window ledges.
And yours ..... wide , open , things going on , not designed around a kitchen and then spreading out from that. 
In fact the kitchen seems like an afterthought that's been tacked on . Upstairs you put in a ladder to a mezz and then think " Hmm ... I could get a little study in there " .

When I saw that door with the offset pivots I thought immediately it would appeal to you - but of course it's even more appropriate for splilid's.

Both are very clearly manly in origin .


Wasp

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## Roobarb

> not designed around a kitchen and then spreading out from that


Ah yes, fair point Wasp.  The place was basically designed around a rather good place to sit and drink beer.  The terrace and the first floor balcony formed the starting point.

Most of the rest of the house is only there because women seem to expect a place to live with things like kitchens, bathrooms and the like so, as you have suggested, they are all afterthoughts.  

Mezzanine's and stuff were a development allowing the opportunity to escape the trappings of domesticity should the primary beer-drinking areas ever become overrun.  

Custer's last stand sort of thing...  :Smile:

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## Wasp

R :The place was basically designed around a rather good place to sit and drink beer. 

  This is what I mean . An EXCELLENT attitude . I'm sure we all approve .

R : Most of the rest of the house is only there because women seem to expect a place to live with things like kitchens, bathrooms and the like so.

Perfect priorities. 

R : ... allowing the opportunity to escape domesticity should the primary beer-drinking areas ever become overrun.  

An honest and pinpoint way to approach things .

R : Custer's last stand sort of thing...

We're right behind you !!!!

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## Wasp

You'se very quiet Roobs .

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## Roobarb

We pretty much stopped work at the house at the end of December Wasp.  The aim is to pick it up again when we return to there at the end of next month.

Besides that things have been a little busy as we plan our withdrawal from here.  The natives have been awfully restive of late.

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## Wasp

> We pretty much stopped work at the house at the end of December Wasp.  The aim is to pick it up again when we return to there at the end of next month.
> 
> Besides that things have been a little busy as we plan our withdrawal from here.  The natives have been awfully restive of late.


*****************
.


You know ... I actually feel a bit fawnish to be complimenting that house of yours yet again . But I think it looks just excellent .

You've had an attitude a bit like Betty's all along ... a sort of throwaway " it is what it is " manner . 
 But I look at the Sketchup drawing and then look at the house and it's just a lovely-looking home really . And not even your main house !

While I'm writing this I had an odd realisation Roobs ..... that there always seems to be one ant in the drink .

Your ladder . Koman's Frankenkirchen . My Romans . Bettyboo's oddly placed column .








And very close to the casually constructed Sketchup .

( Then again ... maybe you've got 2 ants in your drink with those blue pipes . )

.
Wasp

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## Wasp

...... and Roobarb - on the tiny chance that you don't know what's going on here ......

This is what's going on here and has been going on for 6 weeks now !













Last night was the worst .



W.

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## FatOne

Feel very sorry for all my friends in the UK, hope you all survive the floods. Maybe escape to Thailand?

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## Wasp

Roobarb ...

It's handy you're about because I want to ask you .

You got me started on that Sketchup and I'm getting quite decent at it now . But I see there are others . 
I started a little bit using SWEET HOME 3D but it's not inspiring me .
I don't know whether or not to persist with it .

Have you used any others that you like ? How about Sweet Home 3D ?

Or anything at all you might have found likeable .... or better in maybe a different way from Sketchup ?



Wasp

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## Roobarb

Wasp!

Whaddayamean I'm about?

This tale was quietly and gently slipping away into oblivion, and with it my sense of guilt at not updating the thread was gently dissipating.

Now you've thrust it into the limelight again, with my faineance there for all to see.

Come on, admit it, you did this on purpose didn't you?

I suppose I'll have to go and take some more photos to update the damn thing.  You complete and utter bastard...

To your question - although I suspect you already know the answer  :Smile:  - I've only ever used Sketchup as it does by and large what I want it to do, it's simple enough for me to use and it's also free.  There could well be better software out there, but I'm a creature of habit.

I did flirt for a time with floorplanner, or at least I think it was called that, which did much better, um, floor plans than Sketchup, but ultimately Sketchup works well enough for me.

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## Wasp

Yes.

Yes I'll confess under your pressure that dragging your sorry tail ..... err I mean tale .... back to the top of the cesspit was a bonus .

Might even produce some up-to-date shots of *Chateau Rhubarbe* .

But it was also a proper enquiry .
 Because I'm getting interested in doing the interiors of some of my Sketchups and when I go inside some pretty nifty-looking pieces of construction I'm finding all sorts of weirdness .

Offsets that look good on the outside but which penetrate 4 feet inside .
And no room to turn around . 

That Sweet Home thing concentrates on interiors .... " so perhaps Rooby has found a more advanced set of Programmes by now " me thinkest to myself .

Acchh well .

And look !!!!!!  You're dragged into the spotlight yet again!!  :Sorry:  :Sorry:  :Sorry: 

Best Wishes.



Wasp

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## Roobarb

^ fairy nuff Wasp old man, can't really argue with any of that.

Offsets in Sketchup do sometimes produce some weird results and I've never really taken the time to figure out why.  I tend to just delete the offending piece and either draw it manually or try again doing it again keeping my fingers crossed/stroke a lucky rabbit's foot etc.

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## Wasp

I've tried that .......... erasing some ridiculous line  ..... only to find when I eliminate a TINY TINY 3 pixel line I pull back and the whole roof has disappeared !

And I've copied a whole window and Pasted it only to find that the " Copy" function goes right through the building and has copied the front door . 
Or deleted it . Or its floating in midair .

I construct something and I'm always running around the whole thing to find if anything different has been evaporated .
So I'm reluctant to erase anything at all .



W.

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## koman

There's a lot to be said for old technology.  You know, things like rulers, protractors, pencils and things like that.   If you mess up;  an eraser (many pencils have them attached) can take care of it without deleting the roof,  doors, or anything else that you don't want to delete..... :Smile: 

I made up my original sketches and plans with such devises,  in a matter of hours. 

 The guy who used all the computer stuff spent days on it; probably because things would keep disappearing when he needed to erase a line here and there.   In the end he did produce better looking plans than mine, but they cost a lot more.... :Smile: 

PS  I also keep candles and oil lamps around,  for those times when the hi-tech power system fails...which it does several times a year.  My oil lamps and candles have never failed to perform as expected.... :Smile:  

Down with computers....bring back pencils......

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## bankao dreamer

^
"Bring back pencils"
Dont forget satchels a pencil collection is nothing if its not kept in a nice satchel.  :Smile:

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## Wasp

> There's a lot to be said for old technology.  You know, things like rulers, protractors, pencils and things like that.   If you mess up;  an eraser (many pencils have them attached) can take care of it without deleting the roof,  doors, or anything else that you don't want to delete.....
> .... 
> Down with computers....bring back pencils......




Yes Mr. O .

I do agree with you . Totally . However once you've drawn it in a programme like Sketchup you can tip the drawing up at a different angle and that would need a whole new drawing if you used a pencil .
Or zoom in and out . Spin around . Change the colours with a click .Construct one feature and then just Double Click to repeat it .

The programme is excellent really and it's free .  Some advances are actually quite good.



Wasp

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## BKKBILL

Talking about pencils "If the #2 pencil is the most popular, why is it still #2"?

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## Bettyboo

> I've only ever used Sketchup as it does by and large what I want it to do


Now, where are those kitchen aspect and cabinet pics (is the back door still 2 foot 6 high?)...  :Smile:

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## Roobarb

> Originally Posted by Roobarb
> 
> I've only ever used Sketchup as it does by and large what I want it to do
> 
> 
> Now, where are those kitchen aspect and cabinet pics (is the back door still 2 foot 6 high?)...




Gosh, hello Betty.  Not seen you for a while.  Good to have you back.

Yes yes, Sketchup does what I want it to do, my bloody builder however does what he wants to do.  The results have not always been in full alignment.

We now have a kitchen door that is 2 metres high.  Well, nearly 2 metres high, they buggered it up the second time around too so had to shave a few cms off the new door I'd bought them.  Anyway I no longer risk braining myself each time I use the kitchen door which is a happy thing.

The kitchen cabinets are still on the stumpy side.  I'm working on a solution for sometime in the future but for now my simple and cheap fix is to just avoid spending much time in that particular part of the house  :Smile:

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## Roobarb

> Talking about pencils "If the #2 pencil is the most popular, why is it still #2"?


Well, if you go for a number 1 then it's just a quick, perfunctory sort of thing you do out of necessity.

A decent number 2 though can be extraordinarily satisfying in the correct environment.  After breakfast, a quiet part of the house, decent crossword for instance.  It brings quality to life.

Probably the same with pencils.

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## FatOne

Come on Roo, stop procrastinating, where are the photos?

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## Roobarb

^ of the pencils or, err?

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## FatOne

Update on how your home is looking -- after following your thread for so long, I wanna know how it all comes out. Garden, furniture etc etc 

and pencils if you must!

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## BKKBILL

Good to see Roobarbs patch ticking along again. Sometimes things get bogged down with all the heights or lack of well ...... doors counters and stuff. Now #1 and #2 that is a whole new kettle of fish or would that be pencils :Smile: .

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## Gnasher

I started reading this build yesterday, having built a number of houses in Greece where they tend to build concrete blocks i was inspired by the design. I liked the mezzanine is really good and I like the idea of extending to join. Thank you for an inspiring build.

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## Wasp

> Talking about pencils "If the #2 pencil is the most popular, why is it still #2"?


Well I gave it some time and I STILL haven't figured it out .

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## BKKBILL

Wasp here are a few more to chew on.

_Back in the '70s, the #2 pencil was #1 in sales and in popularity. In 2014 it's still the hottest-selling pencil. Why after two decades hasn't it been rated #1. It just doesn't make sense at all.

If beauty is only skin deep, I must be inside out!

If I get male pattern baldness, I'd like zig-zags please.

If ignorance is bliss, why aren't more people happy?

If James Bond was an Amish spy, he would drink buttermilk. Shaken not churned.

If swimming is so good for you why are whales so fat?

If the #2 pencil is so popular why is it still #2?

If the human brain was simple enough for us to understand we'd be so simple we couldn't understand.

If the left side of your brain controls the right side of your body, then only left handed people are in their right mind.

If there was any logic in this world, it would be men who ride side-saddle, not women.

If Tiger lost his woods, would that be an example of irony?

If tomorrow never comes, then, you're dead.

If two wrongs don't make a right, try three.

If Wal-Mart is lowering prices every day, how come nothing in the store is free yet?

If you blow in a dog's face-he'll get mad at you, but take him for a ride in the car - the first thing he does is stick his head out of the window!

If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.

Illegal drugs are the chlorine in the gene pool.

It has recently been discovered that research causes cancer in rats.

Life is like stepping onto a boat which is about to sail out to sea and sink. - Shunryu Suzuki Roshi

Long periods of drought are always followed by rain.

Looking for enlightenment is like looking for a flashlight, when all you need the flashlight for is to find the flashlight.

Love letters, business contracts and money always arrive three weeks late, whereas junk mail arrives the day it was sent.

Man is a peculiar creature. He spends a fortune making his home insect-proof and air-conditioned, and then eats in the yard.

Man must exist in a state of balance between risk and safety. Pure risk leads to self-destruction. Pure safety leads to stagnation. In between lies survival and progress.

Most books now say our sun is a star. But it still knows how to change back into a sun in the daytime._

Be warned there are a lot more.

Sorry Roobarb

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## Wasp

With my old man I got no respect. I asked him, "How can I get my kite in the air?" He told me to run off a cliff.

My wife only has sex with me for a purpose. Last night she used me to time an egg.

It's tough to stay married. My wife kisses the dog on the lips, yet she won't drink from my glass!

Last night my wife met me at the front door. She was wearing a sexy negligee. The only trouble was, she was coming home.

A girl phoned me and said, 'Come on over. There's nobody home.' I went over. Nobody was home!

A hooker once told me she had a headache.

If it weren't for pickpockets, I'd have no sex life at all.

I was making love to this girl and she started crying. I said, 'Are you going to hate yourself in the morning?' She said, 'No, I hate myself now.'

I knew a girl so ugly... they use her in prisons to cure sex offenders.

My wife is such a bad cook, if we leave dental floss in the kitchen the roaches hang themselves.

I'm so ugly I stuck my head out the window and got arrested for mooning.

My wife's such a bad cook, the dog begs  for Alka-Seltzer.

My wife is such a bad cook, in my house we pray after the meal.

My wife likes to talk to me during sex; last night she called me from a hotel.

My family was so poor that if I hadn't been born a boy, I wouldn't have had anything to play with.

It's been a rough day. I got up this  morning and put a shirt on and a button fell off. I picked up my  briefcase, and the handle came off.
I'm afraid to go to the bathroom.

I was such an ugly kid!. When I played in the sandbox, the cat kept covering me up.

I could tell my parents hated me. My bath toys were a toaster and radio.

I was such an ugly baby that my mother never breast fed me. She told me that she only liked me as a friend.

When I was born, the doctor came into the waiting room and said to my father, "I'm sorry. We did everything we could, but he pulled through anyway."

I'm so ugly my mother had morning sickness...AFTER I was born.

I remember the time that I was kidnapped and they sent a piece of my finger to my father. He said he wanted more proof.

Once when I was lost, I saw a policeman and asked him to help me find my parents. I said to him, "Do you think we'll ever find them?" He said, "I don't know kid. There's so many places they can hide."

My wife made me join a bridge club. I jump off next Tuesday.

I'm so ugly, I once worked in a pet shop and people kept asking how big I'd get.

I went to see my doctor. "Doctor, every morning when I get up and I look in the mirror I feel like throwing up. What's wrong with me?" He said: "Nothing, your eyesight is perfect."

I went to the doctor because I'd swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills. My doctor told me to have a few drinks and get some rest.

Some dog I got. We call him Egypt because in every room, he leaves a pyramid. His favourite bone is in my arm. Last night he went on the paper four times - three of those times I was reading it.

My uncle's dying wish was to have me sitting in his lap; he was in the electric chair.



Wasp

 ...... and thanks for the laughs !!!

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## BKKBILL

Wasp sounds like a lot of Rodney Dangerfield in those ones. Did enjoy him.

Again sorry Roobarb, where are you?

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## Wasp

ALL is Rodney Dangerfield .


You must be a konnos .... connyser ..... conicalsewer ........


You seem to know your stuff .




Wasp

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