Monsoon, Termites, but Progress Still

We are up in the village more than we are in Chiang Mai, these days. But there is a lot going on up there. The workers have been making up for lost time and their part of the project is nearly done.

Anchalee and I have been putting many kilometers on borrowed vehicles, last week we hauled another 2000kg of materials up the mountain. Much of it coming from 3 hours away in Chiang Mai. And when we are back in town we spend a lot of time searching for deals and alternatives to keep the cost down. I have become a regular at the weekend flea market and second hand shops.

Most of the first floor walls are up now, with a little concrete work to be done on the front side. And I anticipate the lumber will arrive some time today. Now I need to rip out some of the second floor's outer walls, put down floors on the new areas, and make new exterior walls. I hope to do all of that this week. I don't want to have the walls open for any longer than necessary. We prefer to keep out thieves, rain, and the majority of critters.

Speaking of rain, we have gotten our share of it up there; it is rainy season after all. This is a bit of a problem because to ensure a comfortable ceiling height on the lower floor we needed to dig down about a foot lower than ground level. To keep the water out, what I need to do is a little landscaping, but the workers have made their gravel and sand pile in such a way that it funnels all the water directly into the house and there is no landscaping possible until the piles are gone. So we do get flooded occasionally.

We had a particularly large storm a couple of days ago. The wind knocked over a cart onto the truck we borrowed. The cart had been carelessly stood on end; resting on a bush near the truck. When it came down it punched a hole in the driver side door. We will have to pay for that. It is Anchalee's sister's truck and we already spent a bunch of money replacing that truck's suspension so it could handle hauling stuff up the mountain. Fortunately auto body work is very inexpensive here. But we dream of a truck of our own.

Because we have been tearing out the wooden pillars that hold up the front of the house, we discovered this building was in some serious trouble. The termites have been busy and only one of the posts was strong enough to survive a firm kick. Now everything will be concrete on the ground level, but we will be treating all the new wood with anti termite preservative as an extra precaution.

Anyhow the amount of progress so far is amazing, and we are thrilled with the quality of work. The cinder block walls are so straight they could have been cut by laser. I really have a lot more to say but right now I need to load up the truck again for what should be a really big week. Thanks for following our blog, check out our website here

It is on!

We are back from the first week of renovations and I am amazed at the progress so far. The crew arrived at 8:AM and by 10:00 we had deconstructed and removed everything from under the house, laid out the grid for the new columns, did all the measuring, and began digging the holes for the columns. Then it got hot and things slowed down. The next three days things continued at a predictable pace; heavy in the morning and methodical for the rest of the day with frequent conversation breaks. Or maybe they were safety meetings; no one works, no one gets hurt right?. It is not quite the way things are done in the west, but no one is making western wages here either. I think the extra guys the builder brought in are making about five bucks a day. We expect that by the time we return on Wednesday, we will see that some cement has already been poured and that is good enough for us.

We are not concerned about the pace because we have been given a price for the completed work. So it is up to them to be efficient with their time. We have about ten weeks before we head to Canada, and we will be happy if the place is walled in and secure before we leave. I think we will be at that stage (what we call phase one) by early August.

Anchalee and I find the builders are very easy to work with and our communication is going well. One reason for the clarity is the whole house is already laid out in Google Sketchup and any time we want to discuss something specific, we just go to the laptop and check out the 3D version, complete with measurements. This is the first time these guys have been able to work from a computer and they appreciate it. Sketchup also helps for estimating materials because the program works it out by the square meter.

There have been a few snags however. When we made the plan there were some things we couldn't price out before we had discussed them with the builder. It turns out we were optimistic about how far our budget would go, so now we are trimming some fat from the project. We had underestimated the amount of re-bar that was needed, and also the cost of wood. So now we are working on alternatives like second hand wood and non wood items like cement board for siding.

The hardest part so far has been leaving the kids at home with Ying, Pat, and the extra helpers. We aren't used to being without them and I was surprised at how badly I missed having them around. Hopefully we can make the building site a little safer and then we can have Genesis and Gideon join us for a few days. Shiloh we could bring any time because she is world's most sleepingest non-crying baby ever, and if she is wrapped up tight, she is happy anywhere.

That's all for now, look for our next blog which will be in a couple of weeks. Please visit our site