Thread: Crazy Horse Ranch

My wife bought this land back in 2010, she may have paid too much but I do like the view to the north. There is an old concrete block house of no value and a separate toilet of no value either but at least I think know where to have the well dug.

I've been cutting my teeth on this forum and thinking of the day I would start building on this 15 rai of orchard land. In six months I'll be 59.5 years old and able to start taking out money from my 401k which I'll use to pay on the mortgage on our home in Maryland. It looks like I will be in Thailand while my wife continues to work Maryland. She loves her job and wants to work until she is 65, go figure. My Thai language skills are lacking but living abroad is not new for me. I'm retired navy so I have a steady income and nice medical benefits to get me by.

The orchard has not be properly cared for and many of the trees will need to be removed. I'll replant with fruit I enjoy eating.

My plan is to build a small guesthouse first and if everything goes well I'll stay in that until the wife retires too. The area for the main house is up the slope from the pond (mud hole). I have not done any sort of soil test but appears to be rocky and undisturbed. I don't want to build on a slab but prefer building on a raised foundation of two or three feet. Single story design, planning for ease of getting around in my old age.

I'll post photos of the land next time.

Good luck with your plans, runker...

Look forward to the pics...

Originally Posted by runker

I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. Can't seem to get the photos to post.

WOW ... 15 rai ... that's a decent size parcel of land.

Good luck with the build.

How have you got your photos stored?

Are they already on the Internet, or are you using a hosting site like Photo Bucket/imjur/FaceBook or are they just on your computer?

I will look forward to following your project. Sounds like you have a nice piece of land. And welcome to another Marylander.

Originally Posted by David48atTD

Good luck with the build.

Heh...Good luck with the pictures, first...If you can solve that problem, it may prove to be a fair introduction to your build...

Cheers...

Originally Posted by runker

I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. Can't seem to get the photos to post.

What browser are you using? I had trouble posting pics after I changed to Chrome, but now sorted.

Hi F,

Good to hear you are thinking about possibly, maybe, sort-of, getting around to putting a house on your land, I'll have to pop over and take a look (I think I know where you are), not far anyhow..

The place I am renting at the moment has Mango and Lamyai trees all around near the house and it's a nightmare for insects, rats, rotting fruit, leaves, damp. I'd stick to more ornamental trees nearest to the house for shade and greenery (apart from the 'lucky' ones of course!).

Obviously, you are welcome to come over and have a look at my build when you are in Baanpong next, we could have a beer at the Baanpong Lodge too!

I had problems uploading pics at one point too.. and was kindly given a link by FatOne which is pretty easy to follow: https://teakdoor.com/how-to-use-stuff...d-gallery.html

Chok dee, JE

Good luck with the build.

Hi F,

Almost there! You are copying the thumbnail address though, not the larger sized images.. it's best to open this thread in one browser window, then open another web browser window with your gallery in that, then do the following:

Nice plot of land you have there! Is that mountain the one with the temple and monkeys on top, with Muang On cave underneath it?

I never saw any monkeys up there but yes that is the place you are refering to JonnyE. I wont have time to fart around on the computor today but I will delve into Sunday night before Game of Thrones comes on.
These photos were taken in 2010 and I think the pond has been taken over by brush you see in the forground. We don't get back there as often as we would like and Google Earth is my only source of information on the property. My wife is a manager at TARGET so we don't travel during the big holiday seasons and my job is busy right after that. But I already purchased tickets for 2018 for the Thai New Year.

We start clearing out the small trees that have taken over the pond and removing trees and brush. Our old barbed wire fence is being fixed in some places and replaced with something else in areas that matter.

Our friend who lives close to our property has a friend and former class mate who builds houses one at a time and just wrapped up job. After checking out his work we decided to give him a go with our small house. I had floor plans on my tablet laid out in feet and we started from there. I converted the measurements to metric but still had problems when the measurement were 6.678 meters for example. So, a lot of rounding up to keep things simple.

With some help from Johnny English and his gf we were able to get things moving along. I flipped the layout and that was another headache for awhile. Then we rushed around homepro to pick out tiles and bathroom fixtures. It didn't matteer if they did not have what i was looking for at this point my wife was just wanting to be done with it. The kitchen area was left blank, I will do this on my own.

My wife transferred 1 million baht to her brother's accou t and he will be the pay master. This will also go towads a used car when i return in August. If everything goes as hoped for, I should have a roof over my head when I get back. Yea, I know nothing ever goes as planned.

Good Luck there, Runker.... its a good feeling when you finally start and even better one when you can actually see the design becoming reality.

I am no expert but my only advice is... plan and research thoroughly! You can never do enough, even when you think you have, something unexpected pops up. Just be prepared for that and , unless its absolutely mission-critical, be flexible!!

Looking forward to following yours... I was gettin' a bit lonely here on the building forum!!

My BIL was able to negotiate 40k off the cost of clearing the property. It is nice having a lawyer in the family.

More Beer Tokens!

nice land. Good luck with it all.
Keep us posted.
I built one about 13 years ago in Chaiyaphum that turned out pretty good.
I ended up building a model out of cardboard where you could lift the roof off and see all the rooms inside.
It was all to scale so, they could easily figure out where I wanted the walls, hallways, bathroom (drew pictures of toilet and shower and sink)
I too added the kitchen later and pretty much did it myself.
Brother in law lives in it now and pretty much screwed it up (broken windows, no paint, sold the furniture. Oh well, house is still ok basically.
Good luck living out there. With that much land, I'm sure you can stay as busy as you want.

Here is the floor plan for this guest house.

I'm enlarging the bathroom a little to give more space between the shower and sink. The counter top next to the lounge area will wide enough to serve as a eating area. They started clearing the property and restoring the pond two days ago.

Good luck with your plans, hope you don't need it.