Day 1: Udon Thani

[rickschoppers]

^
David,

They may just fly over to the next property to be trapped again. I used to chuckle at my crew catching large lizards on the construction site and then cook them up for lunch. Tastes like chicken according to them, but I never did try.

[davidbyron]

As we have written earlier, we originally dreamed of a traditional teak house but felt cost of wood, quality of wood and maintenance of wood was beyond us.

One area we have decided to use wood though is in the floorboards of the main bedrooms.

We went to Dong Wai Village in Banphue District where there is a road with 30-40 reclaimed wood shops along both sides. Sadly not cheap...in fact the cheapest we could negotiate works out just a fraction cheaper than conwood and that is before we add in the cost of cutting, sanding and treating.

My PM did ask why don't we just use conwood but I am bit of a wood snob and even if no one else noticed I would know.

Virtually all the shops just sell the raw wood through these are a couple who will turn the wood into doors, windows and so on. Not the cheapest option though but suspect you are getting a different product to what they sell in Global House.

Anyway the place we ended up buying from is the last one on the RHS as you head north.





We selected this one as it met all three of our criteria and because they had a cute cat.



We have ordered one inch thick planks of between 3m and 3.5m and around 30cm wide so not too dissimilar to these



So at the moment quite pleased - it will be good to get some genuine wood into the house and we have seen plank floors laid by our builders in other villas so quite confident of a good result here.

[davidbyron]

We had hoped to be finished by Chinese New Year (which is end of January beginning of February) making this an 8 month build. Now the dry season is here we are making much better progress but I am not sure we will be finished by then.

Below are some pictures of where we were about 1 week ago.

The roof structures over the two main bedrooms are just about finished and looking good.

The roof on the left is the second bedroom which will become our kids bedroom (and will have the latest in kids monitoring devices from hidden cameras, sound sensors, motion detectors as well as CIA style internet monitoring).

The middle roof is the main bedroom which is designed to be a bedroom / living room area and where I imagine us to spend most of our time. Underneath that will be the living room, TV watching area, indoor dinning space.

The roof to the right is over what will be the study / Buddha room / kids play room / occasional bedroom and which is over the kitchen.



Here you can see the roof beams on the right hand side roof look a bit like a girls eyelash extensions. That's because the people we bought the roof beams off didn't cut them all to exact length which was a bit lazy and a bit wasteful on metal as well as time as our builders need to cut the ends off to the right length. Not what we asked for but no long term harm done so we move on.



Originally the plan was to have the kitchen upstairs with the idea being that nearly all of the living could be on the second floor without the need to go up and down stairs. My project manager though had issues with a kitchen on the second floor so that went downstairs and we added the second staircase in to make the journey easier. This front part will be an outdoor cooking / my barbecue area with the indoor area being for storage, food prep and a kids breakfast area.




Here is a full picture of the main house and the guesthouse. We are starting to get the columns up on the second floor.



Some details on the guest house below. This is how it looks from the terrace of the main bedroom. This will be quite a simple structure - just two bedrooms with bathrooms. The ground floor will be left open and will become a play area with a pool table, some casual couches and a beer fridge. (My project manager doesn't know this but the main purpose of the guest house was to create a beer and pool area).

We plan to use this as a guest house obviously but we separated it out so we could rent out the rooms from time to time should we ever need the cash.



Most of the plumbing is in place now and the columns are going up so still some way to go here.

[davidbyron]

One thing we are pleased with is our roofs which are looking superb to us...just how we imagined. These are some details from inside the main bedroom / upstairs living area. We will put terracotta tiles on the outside and then line the inside. I wanted to keep the inside unlined so the details of the roof would not be lost but the advice we had was that this would just make us defenseless to rats, gecko poo and any insect able to squeeze through. So we will line these but still keeping them open.

We are also glad we removed the concrete beams the builders put across the room as the impression of space that these roofs give is really wonderful.










The c-section that goes from the centre of the roof to the floor is only temporarily and will go once the roof is finished.





This is the detail on the second bedroom looking from the balcony to the where the bathroom will go. If the walls look like they are falling inwards...they are not. Its just the cheap camera phone distorting the angles.

[davidbyron]

Now the second floor is up we can see what the land around us looks like and what our views will be like. Sadly we doubt it will stay like this for long.

When we bought the land - two years ago now - we were quite remote. Since then both sides of the road out to us from town have been developed with houses, factories and small resorts; all going up at speed. We are now the last house out and prepared to be swamped by progress.

In the last year all the land around us has also changed hands - as we understand most of it being bought on speculation of rising land prices - so we do not know how our landscape will change from now. Most likely the land will change hands several times over the next few years and we do not know who the ultimate developers will be and what they will do with it.

Just to the south one of the local politicians has bought a huge area and turned it into a pig farm. This we do not mind as its too just too far away for smell or noise to get to us and we prefer a farm to factory or a resort.

We do know that there is a mini resort developer looking to buy some of the land adjacent to us though for now the present owner is not selling.

We never really expected the area around us to stay as it is. We bought a bigger piece of land then we needed just so we had some protection plus we have the river on two sides. And we deliberately placed the house so that we can screen off unsightly objects with trees and still maintain space and sense of sanctuary around the house.

My project manager thinks this is great as it will protect our investment. Personally I am disappointed. I wanted to enjoy the nature for a while but it seems hard to complain about others developing land when we are doing the same.

So for now....this is our view starting from the view from the front of the house looking North and moving clockwise. This first picture is from the main bedroom's bathroom down a bend in the river. Our builders fish this quite often and tell us that it is quite well stocked though only with smaller fish.



Moving clockwise...this is the view looking to the North East where the labour camp presently is. The silver tent is the painting tent we built so metal pieces could be painted and dried even during rain. The structures to the right are where people generally sleep. The silver tin box at the top center is the toilet. The buildings to the left of that are the dry hut for storing cement and then the moped shelter. The area to the left of that (by the the pick up truck) is the metal cutting area where rebar is cut to size. There is also a second toilet there - I think they use one for men and one for women or at least that's what I assume.



A little but further clockwise to the east now and this is the view from the master bedroom balcony.



A little bit further clockwise and this is the view from the back of the house on the terrace where most of our meals will be eaten.



And taken directly underneath this is the view from the outdoor kitchen level where I will be heroically barbecuing or at least heroically micromanaging someone else doing the barbecuing.




Looking south and taken from the guest house this picture shows our lake. This is what was created when we dug up the soil to develop the land. The lake is 4m deep and filled up during the rainy season. There are already some things living in it though not sure what as the water is very cloudy. We plan to put a fountain in it not so much for fountain sake but to see if we can aerate the water enough to fill it with fish for us to farm. After that we will eventually build a little walk way and a hut for nice lunches (my idea) or meditation (my project manager's idea). This being a very good potential child death pit...there will also be a huge fence around it.

In the back ground you can see the pig farm that sprang up a few months ago. Its not such an eye sore but we will add some trees at the back of the lake so that it is out of sight and mind.



Moving nearly full circle this is the view south west from the main house over to the guest house. In the background is our neighbor's mushroom farm which is wonderfully quiet and peaceful. And our neighbor is a very good neighbor and now friend. Still we tactically positioned the guest house to block it out of site.



So for now that's what we have to look at. originally we were a little island in a sea of rice fields. Hopefully we will have a little time to enjoy the scenery before somebody does something ugly with it.

[rickschoppers]

David, the roofs are looking great. I would really like to come over in a few weeks to pick your brain a little since I am still needing to build my entry. I do want the curved roof, but it will be on a much smaller scale.

Looks good so far!!

[davidbyron]

These weeks we let most of workers go back home to harvest the rice from their fields so progress slowed a little but we still reached a landmark with the first of the roof tiles going up on the main house.

For us this is very satisfying to see as the roof was one thing we wanted to get just as we wanted it.

Its still a little worrying, that despite all my protests, the only safety device our workers are using are still just their flipflops! Fortunately we are still accident free.







I really like the detail of these tiles. Whenever we have roof over a veranda like this we will leave it open to keep the colour and design visible.

[davidbyron]

The guest house also tool a leap forward over the last couple of weeks. As this is happening a couple of stages behind the main house, we have learnt all the lessons with our builders so we seem to getting everything done quickly and easily with no need for any corrections. Also probably helps that this is going up in perfect weather.

[davidbyron]

Now that we are nearing the end of the hard construction part, our attention is turning to the inside and getting all the lights and fittings bought. This week we bought baths, shower drains, kitchen and bathrooms taps.

So far we have found all of these on taobao.com which, for those yet to become economic migrants to China, is the Chinese equivalent of ebay though has the benefit of an escrow payment system making a safe way to shop.

We love taobao more than life itself. Whatever you want to buy you can find it on taobao at a fraction of the price you would pay anywhere else. Stuff you thought you could never afford suddenly becomes cheap. So do check it out. Its all in Chinese but google chrome and google translate generally do an OK job of converting it to English. You do also need a Chinese bank account, alipay account or a Chinese friend to shop it, which can be a hurdle, but after that it is wonderful.

Chinese people here are crazy for it too: On November 11th, which is National Single's day and has become a spontaneous day of unrestricted shopping, it did 3.5bn USD of sales in 24 hours including my couple of dollars on shower drains.

Most of the companies selling there are the same factories exporting to Europe and the US. So you can buy the exact same product on taobao as you can buy in the US/UK shops for a fraction of the price as there hasn't been any import/export tax, shipping, profit markups etc added into the price yet. Generally we find if we see an item we like in a western website we can track back through taobao to find the factory that originally made it and buy it for around a 1/10th to 1/30th of the price.

There is a challenge in making sure that you only buy from manufacturers that are building for western export and not local/Asian consumption as the standard is very different...but with the escrow system if we don't like something we bought then we just send it back.

Being China there are also lot of fakes especially when it comes to fashion items like sungalsses, clothes, handbags which sell for about 1/100th of the price of the original. I have learnt to happily live with the idea of 'why pay over the odds for the original when there is a perfectly good fake available for near nothing'. Sadly the present Chinese government is cracking down on fakes so we are rapidly buying up all our sunglasses (me) and handbags (project manager) before they disappear from e-commerce for ever.

The things we will be buying from taobao and shipping over will be items where there is a big price and/or style difference between here and Thailand. Mainly bathroom and kitchen stuff though indoor lamps as well since what is available here is extensive compared to what we see in UT. Outdoor lamps are near identical in price and style so those we will buy in UT. We would stock up on wooden furniture but that seems to be the one difficult item to ship across due to both Thai government import law and Chinese government export law.

So far we have bought from taobao:

We wanted standalone baths mainly because we just didn't want to have to plan in building bath surrounds and also because we like standalones. My wife likes the modern looking style and I like the french style slipper baths so we bought one of each for about the 250USD each including taps and drains. The french slipper bath is for sale in UT in Home Pro for 2,500USD excluding the tap and the more modern bath is for sale is Global House for about 2,000USD so shows the mark up people are charging.






One pet hate is dirty ugly shower drains that ruin a nice clean bathroom. So I did spend some time looking for shower drains that were a little different and came across these at 2USD each:








They even have a valve to stop smells and animals coming back up. Not sure how long the spring will last but initial testing in my present bathroom shows it works well so far.








I also really like the kitchen taps with the spray nozzles not least as my first salaried job as a 16 year old was as a dishwasher. So I had to use one of these for about 14 hours a day. Here is the one we bought being modeled in a disused corner of my office. This one was 22USD where the equivalent in IKEA is about 220USD.








And we found these bathroom taps for between 10USD to 15USD each and a little bit different from whats available in Home Pro and Global House.











So we love taobao as we can buy stuff, like the baths, that we simply wouldn't be able to consider otherwise but which we hope will give the house a nice twist and character. Next to buy will be bathroom basin, showers, and all the indoor lamps.

[Roobarb]

David - the roof looks even better now it's getting some roof tiles on it. I bet you're looking forward to seeing it finished.

It's a good call buying the fixtures and fittings in China, I'd guess you have a lot more choice as well as cutting out many of the middlemen.

Thanks for the updates, it's great to see the progress.

[Dandyhole]

Nice project you are taking on there mate.

Just wondering how the curved roof is likely to react to high winds

[peterpan]

Good point, where Dave lives there is little wind but very occasionally a big storm blows in as it did with me a couple of years ago.
It lifted a few roof tiles and allowed water ingress in the children bedroom and ultimately roof collapse.
As luck would have it, Kids where in Our bedroom at the time.
I wondered why the wind would facilitate the tiles lifting.

Conclusion:The dynamics of the wind speed over our angular roof.
Resulting in a low pressure on the lee ward side, a bit like a sail effect creating a vacuum in one area of the roof, enough to lift 20 heavy roof tiles.

[sabang]

Not much to say or add db, you've clearly done your homework.
A beaut place- I look forward to seeing it all come together.

[peterpan]

I just wanted to add to the thread, that with a high roof and contours, there are unforeseen dangers, particularly if you use a dodgy roof builder who doesn't tie the tiles down, as with the builder of the house i live in.

I didn't build my house it by the way.
Nice tap fittings by the way, i was about to say where in Udon? until I caught on, you work in China.

[ShilohJim]

Looks like hard work by you PM will result in a beautiful home. You mention kids but no ages, teach them to swim. Then you don't have to worry about the "pond".

ShilohJim

[thaicbr]

Gotta say a nice build.. question how are you going to get the bath etc to Thailand?

[michaleo]

Next to buy will be bathroom basin, showers, and all the indoor lamps.

So how did it go on with the housebuilding, davidbyron?

[Wasp]

Well that's an unpleasant shock!

An interesting house-build and it stops just as david is looking at taps !!!!!

What happened next Mister B ?

Photos please !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



Wasp