Thread: A New Village House

This weekend we have the Tam Boon for our New Village House in Tak Province.

I have been a lurker on TD, CTH and TV getting useful ideas and information, and feel I should repay by describing our experiences in building the house. Since the work is complete, I propose to post pictures, with explanations, of the various stages. It has taken a fair bit of time working out how to post pictures, but I think I know how now. Since I will be posting from work, postings will depend on time available.

I am in full-time employment in Bangkok and my wife (the Manager) has been supervising the work. I designed the house, but the Manager and Builder took the final decisions. So it was a very off-hands input from me. I would have phonecalls asking for decisions, not always knowing the full story.

The reason for the new house was that since my wife inherited the old family wooden house after her mother died, it has been deteriorating. To save the wood it was decided to build A New Village House of brick and timber - using as much as we could of the timber from the old house. The house is on half a rai owned by my wife. The rai plot is shared with her sister who has her own house there. I guess when I retire we will share time in our house in Bangkok and in the village.

The arrangement with the Builder is that we buy all materials, and only pay him for labour. The Manager has kept detailed records of all expenditure, and when I get the items translated into English and onto a spreadsheet, will be able to give actual costs, and the time for construction.

You are off to a very good start by using the wood from an older house. This will save you money and it is nice to hear there are no issues with worrying about "ghosts." The other great decision you made is to buy all the materials yourself and to pay the builder for his labor. May I ask what will be your payment arrangement for this labor? Is it a flat fee or by the day?

By following this site and others to see what it takes to build a house in Thailand, you have also saved a lot of time and headaches. This is the best advice I can give anyone thinking about building a house in Thailand. Do not rush into anything and learn as much as you can from others.

I look forward to your pics.

Thanks for posting !
Looking to a great build thread.
Mark

The old house

Another view, showing the two houses joined by a deck

yes, it looks tatty but may have a treasure load of great wood inside

It is amazing what can be salvaged from what looks a very poor house

Decent size.
I'm annoyed that all the old wood houses in my family that are left are tiny.

Ooops, I think I posted the thumbnail.

The foundations. Note the mixture of concrete and timber posts

The basic idea was to construct a simple small cheap house. It did not turn out that way.

Since there was not enough wood from the old house, a combined brick (ground floor) and a timber (first floor) design was planned. The first floor would be timber. After several layouts were considered, a simple 9 m x 9 m layout was chosen. The 6 m concrete columns are at 3 m centers and the vertical distance between floors 3 m. The 3 m span was chosen to allow for poor concreting workmanship. There was a simple outside stairway in the front (facing north) of the house and an interior stairway. The outside stairway was changed by Variation 1. See later.

Downstairs there was planned a 6 x 6 m living area, storeroom, kitchen and Thai open-sided kitchen. Later the Thai kitchen was changed to a downstairs toilet/bathroom. See Variation 3.

Upstairs there are 3 bedrooms, one 6 x 3 m and two 3 x 3 m, a toilet/bathroom and a spare room/study. The toilet/bathrooms are in the same corner. I had arguments with the family who said that the rooms were too small. Now there are complaints that the house is too big.

Windows are large - generally 2.0 m x 1.2 m high. Downstairs aluminium frame and upstairs timber frame.

The roof to be coloured concrete sheets. The chosen colour was mangkhut (a mauve/brownish colour). At first I did not want a colourful roof but after seeing houses with it, I felt it would complement the timber.

Now we had to find a builder. This delayed the start of the house. Eventually my wife's sister found a builder who was local and available. So we went to look at a house he had recently completed. I was impressed with the workmanship. The detailing was good. The front gothic stairway was something else, and we agreed that we did not want that. Note the manghkut roof colour.

This is the ceiling of the gothic stairway !!

I think it looks fine except for the lamp

Setting out the house. Note the red string. I planned to have a 4 m gap to the neighbour's wall. They chose 2m - the legal minimum.

The Kuen Baan Mai ceremony

The first post. Wife, SIL and BIL.

Pom, do you have any floor plans?

Very impressive work by your builder, can't wait to see pics of yours during construction.

The house your builder showed you is similar to what I would have liked, except to have it more open on the first floor. Finding a good builder is the most difficult step in any house build IMO.

If he is that good at the woodwork, or at least knows someone who is, your outcome should be very nice and the quality what you expect.

Good luck with your mission....I eagerly follow your construct as I am wanting to do a Thai style wood house out back in the future so am currently in the looking and learning mode

The weekend was successful. The Rot Nam Dam Hua, the traditional payimg respect to the elders was on Monday, and the Tam Boon the following day.

To give some idea how informal the design was, here are the first sketches of the house. The sketches were initially to get the family to agree to the design, and then given to local draughtsman to develop them into a standard good enough to get planning permission.

Initially the house was to have two pitched roofs with an open space between on the 1st floor. The wife wanted an open Thai style kitchen and balcony for drying the washing. The balconies could alsdo hold the A/C compressors. A deck at the front of the house allowed access to the first floor.





To g

Good luck Pom will be back later off to work now cheers mate we love these threads