This was originally posted on another forum, but the owners seem to be scared of me so I'm not allowed to post on there any more.

Day 1:

March 2012

The builder who is putting the posts up comes round to give the final quote for this part of the build. After a few misunderstandings by the Midget thinking she can think, we get a price (20% more than the original 'rough' quote given a few weeks ago).

Then we get a phone call saying that the price of rebar is more than he quoted so he'll need a bit more. I tell him that he should pay for it as it's his fault his quote is ----. He brings the money back and then I realise that I was being an arse and he's still more reliable than most of the other pricks (and cheaper as he is the Midget's uncle and he's doing it on the cheap due to family (his wife mainly) pressuring him).

I have to go over and apologise tonight and hope he doesn't tell me to piss off.

****** day one and it's doing my nut in. I think I'll just leave it to the Midget to sort out

If you get stuck then call me, I have a great builder who I've used a few times, he's really reliable and does a good job 091 057 5550

OK - We're all chums now.

There are actually 2 uncles who work together. 1 is cool and didn't get pissed off, but the other one is jai rawn maak. He's OK now.

They had made an effort to organise taking all the stuff to site for me, but now I will have to pay to get it delivered, so it serves me right.

Their fee is 20k on top of the cost of materials, so I know exactly how much them and their crew will make (10k less than they would normally charge).

It should all be back on before the weekend; as soon as the steel and shuttering is bought and delivered.

Ground Floor - 4 m grid. Some minor things have been changed.

Ist Floor

Post layout & heights

Side elevation

Got a lovely font view too

vincemunday wrote:If you get stuck then call me, I have a great builder who I've used a few times, he's really reliable and does a good job 091 057 5550

Hi Vince,

This project has finished now, but I will be starting another one in about 2 years time.

Good tradesmen are valuable here, so if you post gets a good guy some work and we get to use a decent builder, then it's all good.

Looking eastwards

Looking westwards

One of the uncles. Dad's got his gut out in the background.


The land is about 100tw. You can probably see that the land has been significantly raised and towards the end of the project we will waste money building a small retaining wall.

OK, got some more photos of them making the posts.

This has some leaves in it (can't remember which plant) which will bring good luck. I did ask why but was met with contemptuous stare.

More luck being heaped on the house. We apparently had some Brahmin chaps over to perform the ceremony, but strangely, I didn't get an invite. I said that her Grandma would've scared all the ghosts away when she opened her gob, and was met with another contemptuous stare.

Carefully pouring the cement for one of the pads.

After pouring.

Wiring together the rebar for the posts.

And Uncle Jai Rawn bending the ends of the rebar.

They started shuttering the posts. They bought enough wood to do about half of them and then they'll do the other half. This is because they know how tight I am and wanted to save a few baht. The order was placed for the cement.

Then they propped them up to ensure they were straight.

Blurred caterpillars.

All nice and straight(ish).

We got some child labour in to keep costs down.

We still have wild monkeys out here.

Waiting for the cement truck. The useless pricks twice let the guys down, so they decided to do it by hand. We will now use Siam City Cement (the one with the Eagle motif) even though it's 300B a cubic metre more expensive.

The ingredients for the cement arrive.

Here is the other uncle (Khun Jai Dee) filling up the posts by hand.

By the end of March all the posts and ground level beams were done. Cost a lot more than I was told it would.

This is after the ground level beams have been done. They've since filled up all the inside of the areas with soil, which they'll have to take out again as I want concrete floors downstairs, not dirt. We have to put the drains in, so it'll be all dig up any way.

We had the old well enlarged and done better with a new pump and filter stones. I think this was 18k with the pump. They broke 2 of their state-of-the-art machines doing our hole.

Sadly, we didn't strike oil, only muddy water.

There was an 8 month delay after the posts were put in, as I needed to save up some more cash to do phase 2 - The roof.

In the meantime, the Midget had an epiphany and realised that if we lived in the village full time a number of things would happen:

1 - Her family would be murdered for being such an annoying bunch or idiots (they're great in small doses though)

2 - Our lad would grow up retarded

3 - She'd get fed up living in a dust bowl

4 - I'd go on a killing spree or the village would lynch me

So... she said why don't we scale back a bit and have a smaller gaff on the land where Mum & Dad can live and we can use once or twice a year? It'll eventually be inherited to one of the boys.

Grand idea, I thought.

Based upon the posts that are already there (although 6 will have to come down), I have a new set of plans. We should be able to get the roof on and the walls up in the New Year as long as the price is around what we expect.

3 bedrooms, living area and outside kitchen/acting like a sloth area. Only need one shower room as we'll not be there 99.9% of the time. There will be a big folding steel gate, not a door into the Al Fresco area, so Dad can park his tuk tuk in there at night along with a motorbike or two.

I will have to get 3 trenched dug out and pout some more footings and I think the front of Bedroom 1 will need a couple of steel posts or similar to tie that part of the roof to. Otherwise, we're good to go.

It'll have the same insulated, lightweight steel roof as before, but will use whatever the cheapest type of block/brick is available. Rendered all round, all leccy wires tacked to the wall and the water pipes affixed to the outside of the house as I'll be buggered if I'm digging up concrete floors after Somchai has forgotten to glue a water pipe joint.

We've spent about 100k on the posts and well, so lets see if I can get it all done for under 500k.

We've made a small change to the plans. I'm not happy because it'll cost me another shower room and a few more blocks, but it makes more sense as we can utilise 2 more existing posts that I don't need to remove (which also costs money).

So we will move bedroom 1 out by 2m and add an en-suite. This will be our room on the one or two times a year we will stay there. Looks like Mum & Dad will doss in Bedroom 3 and bedroom 2 will have 2 single beds in it for the kids. there will only be AC in bedroom 1, as the old folks don't like it.

The dotted line/shaded area is the roof overhang.

A couple of 80% accurate renderings. The roof material is wrong and the outdoor kitchen, not quite right.

Work started up again just before Christmas...

We paid the first 50k to the roof guy today, so there should be some activity soon. He's also going to take down the redundant posts FOC, but will reuse the rebar on other builds in the future.

We're going to get a quote for the walls off him too. Shouldn't be too much as we're going to use the 65mm wide concrete blocks. They're way better thermally than the silly little red bricks and they're quick and cheap to buy and use.

Then we'll do the first fix plumbing/wiring, then the floor pour and then we'll see how much money I can save on finishing materials and 2nd fix items.

We popped up to site today to check on progress and am fairly pleased with things so far. The welding looked reasonable and the design was as I wanted.

They still have to add the bracing to the structure, but it will be done over the next few days. I am never convinced that a whole roof can be supported properly by a few bits of rebar, but it seems to work.

Despite being just over a quarter of the size of the original design, it's still a well sized house. Just as well 2 bedrooms will be kept locked or the MiL would have to much to clean (if she knew what cleaning was).

So, I popped over to the site a wee while ago. The crew had knocked off for a late lunch so I couldn't ask 'Wtf have you done it like that for?"

Here's the front of the house from the road. The 'master suite' is on the left, the living room on the right.

A closer look at the main bedroom showing the Shera sofits and roof trim.

The roof has the insulation pre-fixed.

This is how they fixed the Shera to finish the roof.

And last one for today. I'm not convinced that concreting is up to the job, but bpor bpen yang. I also asked why there was no structural bracing to stiffen the structure. Not needed on a light roof like this according to cousin Dta.

I wasn't happy with the lack of triangulation, or any bracing, so the family hounded cousin Dta until he strengthened it. The welds have also now been painted. I think he was hoping for an easy botch job, but forgot that he was dealing with my SiL and the rest of the family. Everything will be completed tomorrow according to him, but I have been given the go-ahead to snag the work before payment is made, so I think Saturday or Sunday is more realistic.

OK - the roof is 'done'. Por is happy and the SiL has retracted her claws. One thing most have neglected to understand is that the roof panels are part of the structure so will add a significant amount of rigidity to the roof (like aluminium or dope & paper wings/fuselage on a plane) unlike roof tiles.

We will continue with the build either in the New Year or Feb 2015 depending on a couple of factors. If we have to wait a year, I guess it gives us a chance to find out just how strong the roof really is.

Por & Cousin Dta (the Midget is hidden behind a post) inspecting the finished structure.

Another one of the Midget's relatives agreed to finish the build and in Spring 2015 the mothballs were removed and the project started up again.

I don't understand the fascination Thais have with the odour of things rotting, so I educated Uncle Maimeesamong on one of these bad boys:
Unfortunately, this one didn't last too long as the quality of work was so bad even my FiL could see it.

Builder #4 was installed (Uncle Meegikyuuk) and the house was finally finished. All in, I have paid somewhere around 680k, so am pretty happy.

Elder son's bedroom:

Master bedroom:

... and khazi:

Kitchen:

Living room:

A poor photo of the outside just after the lawn was laid:

And lastly, my very recently departed FiL closing the gate:

How tall is a midget?
Does that rebar get the rust cleaned off and painted?
So where will you live for 98% of the time? Plan went from you living there to in laws?

It's a new thing for Thai.the u bend or trap as we all know it.im in the middle of building and they think the trap is installed to make it look pretty..we've had it for over 150years and it's just starting to be fashionable to fit them in issan....Randall it should be how short is a midget,I thought all Thai were midgets.

Randall wrote:How tall is a midget?
Does that rebar get the rust cleaned off and painted?
So where will you live for 98% of the time? Plan went from you living there to in laws?

Hi Randall. My midget is 5' 1/2".

The rebar was cleaned up but not painted as per every other structure here.

We're living in Chiang Mai at the moment unfortunately and have just bought 22 rai a bit further out where we will build another place in a couple of years time.

Hi Marmite, are you he same marmite on TD? I used to enjoy your posts until you disappeared. I just discovered this forum as I am prob going to move to Udon (from Oz ) soon. I find it to be by far the best Thai forum so far.Hopefully I ca get to meet some of the mad farangs one day soon.