Renovating an old rural village house.

[Faz]

Whilst they completed the window installations, I got stuck into fitting the new rear door and bathroom door, as well as a further 4 internal frames and doors and cracking on with my electrical installation.

 

 

The house in its original form had a rear single side door, single front door and 3 internal doors.
With the rear extension and internal alterations, we now have 6 internal doors, a rear single door and a new double entrance door.

Originally 10 window frames.
The front entrance having 4, 2 at the front, two at the side. We blocked up the two side windows and installed triple windows to the front. The kitchen also had a triple frame fitted, a small bathroom window and the remaining 6 all double windows.

[DwizzleyMatthews]

After the demise/completion of GMoney’s house building topic it’s great to have another one to follow.

I was looking forward to assisting my bil, Brother John, in a well overdue renovation of the mil’s house in a rural town near Nakhon Sawan. Many years have passed since the renovation was promised , that project turned into a promised new house build on the large family plot but is still no nearer breaking soil and I suspect will never happen.

Large family, 10 children, politics is complicated and unfortunately, as in this case, often makes for a divided rather than united family unit, jealousy often hinders any progress in family growth and usually the elderly and their grandchildren suffer the most.

So, without a project of my own am happy to follow the ups, the downs, the frustrations and the satisfactions of Faz’s building project.

[Faz]

For the electrical installation, the wife was quite content to just 'clip' the cables down the wall, as is the case in many older Thai properties, however I wasn't comfortable with that idea, but then neither was I enthralled at the prospect of grinding out some 32 channels to house conduit and fix inset back boxes.

Plastic surface trunking became the solution, except for the new build kitchen, where thinking ahead to fitting kitchen wall cupboards, I didn't want any obstructions, so grinding out for conduit and fitting recessed back boxes for just 5 sockets and a switch was a no-brainer.

To each of the 3 bedrooms, I allocated 2 double sockets each, 8 double sockets to the front (work) area, 10 double sockets to the living area, 5 double sockets to the kitchen, and 2 double external sockets, one front, one rear. In relation to fitting external sockets, although it's possible to purchase these with a weatherproof cover, we'd already experience one drawback to that idea.

When the wife rented a shop for her hairdressing salon, it came with an external weatherproof double socket already fitted at the front and rear. However, early morning when she went to open, she found numerous students, nurses and other civilians sat on the steps charging their mobiles and laptops.
I had to remove the sockets, fit a lockable box, and reinstall the sockets within the housings to stop the 'free' to charge appliances feature.

I therefore thought it wise and good practice to do the same at the house.

[Faz]

4 hours ago, DwizzleyMatthews said:

So, without a project of my own am happy to follow the ups, the downs, the frustrations and the satisfactions of Faz’s building project.

Plenty of ups and downs ...... and neighbours!

The house to the left is owned and occupied by an elderly Thai couple, no children or grandchildren, and they'd already erected a boundary wall between them and ourselves.
The house to the right is also owned by an elderly Thai couple, no boundary wall, 2 live at home daughters, one married, 3 children, 2 cows, numerous chickens. One of the daughters lives in the house, as do the grandchildren. The other daughter and her husband live in a make shift 4 metre x 4 metre separate rear building with a cheap tin roof, apparently, no more than a bedroom and shower/toilet area.

When the builders started digging for the external wall footings to the right-hand side, the neighbour to the left questioned the boundary, claiming we may be pinching land from the neighbour to the right.
WTF has it got to do with him, well it turns out they are family, cousins to be exact.
For those who perhaps are not aware, when the land registry office mark land boundaries, they drive concrete plugs into the ground to mark the boundary. These are easily uncovered between 6 and 12 inches underground.

The builders had already uncovered these and marked lines from front to rear and across the rear where the boundary lines lay, but the neighbour to the left still wasn't happy and wanted us to pay for a land surveyor to double-check the boundaries ...... enter the BIL, my wife's brother at this point.
We offered to get a surveyor, but if the builders had correctly marked the boundary, he pay any fee, if they were wrong then we'd pay the fee, but the BIL also insisted the surveyor should check the positioning of his boundary wall, which he'd erected since our property had been left vacant (the builder had already uncovered the boundary line to our left and his wall was OK), but he wasn't sure and declined, whilst his cousin to the right, which was where we were erecting the new wall, was perfectly happy with the boundary line markings.

Sometimes it's best not be first to quick draw and start shooting, for fear of shooting oneself in the foot!
In the case of the neighbour to the left, that's exactly what he did.
When the builders had inspected his boundary wall between us, they made a startling discovery.
At the rear of his elevated house he'd installed a septic tank at the rear, sat at ground level, not for his toilet, which was separate and underground, but to catch rain water from his rear extension. It had a 4-inch outlet pipe that ran toward the boundary wall, with his kitchen and bathroom waste water teed into it.
On reaching the boundary wall it tuned 90 degrees and ran along the wall, with a number of tees, with holes for pipes knocked through the wall, so his waste water was in effect being dumped onto our land.

I don't speak fluent Thai, so I'm not sure what the BIL said to him, but the wife stated it wasn't for repeating . We removed the offending pipes through the wall and cemented the holes.
He hasn't spoken to us since!

[Faz]

We've also had an issue with the son-in-law living with his wife to the right-hand side.

After the boundary wall was erected, he extended their roof on their little outbuilding, which then protruded level with the wall. When it rained heavy, it was like having our own waterfall and just flooding down the side of our house.
The wife also caught him hopping over the wall to visit the relative on the other side, a shortcut rather than walking around the front ............ no, you can't do that either, sunshine!
So he was spoken to as well and quickly shortened his roof extension. The old guy on the right is a pleasant enough, happy chap, and he and his wife regularly speaks to us. They both despise their son-in-law as a total waste of space.

The elderly couple are retired, but neither of their 2 daughters or the son-in-law appear to work.
When we were first starting work on the house, there was a brand-new Toyota pickup in their drive, supposedly belong to their SIL, but after a couple of months that vanished from the scene, and he now rides an old motorcycle ........ sound familiar!

[Faz]

Internal conduit for surface mounted sockets and switches, so you get the idea.

 

[Faz]

I used a laser line to first install all the conduit, running cables and fitting the sockets/switches.

 

But, as already mentioned, the kitchen sockets were recessed for cupboards and tiling purposes.

[Faz]

The front porch extension finally gets concreted to it's 4 metre length.

And between the rain showers, the septic tank is installed.

[Faz]

With my electrical installation all but complete, my next step was to start some plumbing.
The rear porch was to house the water tank and pump and other than a water feed to the front work area where the wife required a hand held shower for washing hair, and an external tap for convenience, the rest of the plumbing work was at the rear, kitchen and bathroom.

I'd already put a 4-inch toilet waste and 1 1/2 inch shower waste water pipes in situ prior to them concreting the extended rear extension.

 

 

 

However, before I started installing the tank, pump and running pipes, I needed the builder to finish rendering the rear external walls as I first wanted to paint the rear walls, rather than try to paint around and in-between tanks and pipes at a later date.
So the next task I set him was to finish the external rendering and board the external porch ceiling.
We went with the plain 2.4 metre x 60 cm gyproc boards, which come in a variety of sizes, thicknesses and designs, for the external ceilings and soffits, which is fairly standard throughout Thailand.

Rendering complete (plastering to Thais) I start with a base white primer coat especially developed to seal newly rendered walls and help further coat adhesion.

 

[Faz]

They'd already started fixing the soffits to the sides and under roof areas, and up to this point I had little to complain about their work ethic, however that was about to change .......................

For fixing off these external boards, it's standard to first install galvanized strips at intervals to give a fixing to screw the boards to. These strips are 4 metre in length, approx 3 cm wide, as pictured here;

The usual Thai way of installing these on ceiling areas is to space them at 60 cm intervals, so two boards overlap one strip.
The sole purpose of doing this is to save on material costs, IMO. However, in many instances I've witnessed where the fixing screws are so close to the edge, the board cracks, but they hope the paint will hide these imperfections.

I expressly requested they fix the galvanized strips at 30 cm intervals, so each board had a full width strip along the edge and a centre strip to prevent any sagging. I even drew a diagram to be perfectly clear.
Example;

[Faz]

On our next visit the following weekend, they'd fitted the external ceiling boards on the rear extension as requested, but the boards were uneven with gaps where they met and holes galore where they obviously attempted to put screws, but nothing was underneath. 

I could automatically see that regardless of my instructions, they'd failed to put a centre strip at 30 cm - no screws. To discover what was going on, I removed some fixing screws from the centre board to gain a viewing access. Well the reason for the gaps was obvious, where they'd attempted to join 4 metre together by placing another short length across the joints, on the underside, so the boards bulged out at these points.
The second fault was they must have been using an English tape measure and a Thai tape measure, because 60 cm at one end of the 2.4 metre board length, became 62 cm at the other end, so in places the boards were barely resting on the strips, and where the strips should have been for fixing screws, became thin air.

I pointed out the mistakes, and left them to it while I continued with other jobs. I also requested they fill any holes and handed them a tub of Polyfilla and scraper. A couple of hours later they announced it was fixed.
They'd obviously straightened the galvanized strips to be more inline, but humps and gaps still appeared in the middle and oh FFS, they were only spreading large lumps of Polyfilla to cover the screw heads - stop, stop, stop!

The centre board was now such a mess that I said they'd have to replace it, to which they disagreed and stated it could be filled, at which point I lost it and stuck a hammer through the board, to get the message home. Once they removed that board completely, I was able to show them how to join 2 4 metre strips without any protrusions affecting the boards lying flat - jeez, half a day wasted.

This was after they'd replaced the centre board (the one with the cable hanging through).

They didn't spread the Polyfilla, rather lumping it, stating they'd never before used it.
Where they'd already gone over screw heads, I had to first remove the screw, sand it flat, then replace the screws. I also bought 8 tubes of decorators caulk, as we know it by in the UK, or flexible filler in Thailand, for edges where the boards met walls. They went through 2 tubes along the wall and where the ceiling boards met apex boarding. It was laid on 1/2 inch thick, which I had to scrape off and redo.

Being conscientious and the finished appearance is not unfortunately a strong point with Thai workers.
If the ceiling stays up, it's fine, the overall appearance doesn't matter.
Another half day wasted snagging their work.

At least having learnt a lesson from fixing the rear porch ceiling, they couldn't possibly make similar mistakes covering the much larger front porch ceiling area ................. would they

[Faz]

By the following weekend, they'd finish installing all the soffits around the roofing eves of the house and surprisingly made a start erecting posts and footings for the front wall, but not started fixing  boards to the front porch ceiling area.

One reason being, at the time of installing the new cables from the metre to the consumer unit, the front extension hadn't even been started, so the cables were temporarily passed under the old roof and over the side wall of the house to supply power.
With the front extension completed and front fascias now in place, I was able to put another fixing clamp in place and run the cables through and under the porch ceiling, which would be their permanent position.

 

 

[Faz]

Painting.

Since being built 40 years ago, not a drop of paint had been applied anywhere in the house.
Not to walls, window frames, door frames, or doors.

First we had to agree on a colour scheme.
Externally, the wife wanted all the soffits and supporting concrete posts to be paint white.
The external fascias and any exposed metal brown, whilst the walls and gable ends were painted lemon.
I had no issue with her choice of colours, provided she allowed me to make the choice of paint.

I went for (1 litre) Delta red oxide as an undercoat for any exposed metal and (2 1/2 litre) Delta brown gloss for the fascias and finishing coat of any exposed metal.
2 x 20 litre tubs of TOA Supershield exterior, a white undercoat for firstly sealing the external walls

2 x 9 litre tubs of Dulux weathershield Ultima (white)
2 x 9 litre tubs of Dulux weathershield Ultima (Lemon)

 

Plus an assortment of trays, rollers and brushes + turpentine.

For the front wooden frames, I chose a large (clear) tin of wood treatment and insect repellant and literally gave both frames a double liberal coating before installing.
The doors I intend to clear varnish (not paint) so went for a large tin of TOA clear Yacht varnish and each door and frame will receive at least 4 coats.

The above is just to get me started externally 

Eventually, when we get to painting internally, white matt Dulux EasyCare for the ceilings, and white silk Dulux Easy Care for the walls.

[Rookiescot]

21 minutes ago, Faz said:

Painting.

Since being built 40 years ago, not a drop of paint had been applied anywhere in the house.
Not to walls, window frames, door frames, or doors.

First we had to agree on a colour scheme.
Externally, the wife wanted all the soffits and supporting concrete posts to be paint white.
The external fascias and any exposed metal brown, whilst the walls and gable ends were painted lemon.
I had no issue with her choice of colours, provided she allowed me to make the choice of paint.

I went for (1 litre) Delta red oxide as an undercoat for any exposed metal and (2 1/2 litre) Delta brown gloss for the fascias and finishing coat of any exposed metal.
2 x 20 litre tubs of TOA Supershield exterior, a white undercoat for firstly sealing the external walls

https://www.toagroup.com/storage/products/decorative-coatings/ultra%20premium/3d-supershield_gloss490x490.png

2 x 9 litre tubs of Dulux weathershield Ultima (white)
2 x 9 litre tubs of Dulux weathershield Ultima (Lemon)

https://d1an7elaqzcblb.cloudfront.net/SANTAMARIA-PROD/athdlx/PACKSHOTS/cf212f2e0c926b75d5157c39d1a30d9a.png

Plus an assortment of trays, rollers and brushes + turpentine.

For the front wooden frames, I chose a large (clear) tin of wood treatment and insect repellant and literally gave both frames a double liberal coating before installing.
The doors I intend to clear varnish (not paint) so went for a large tin of TOA clear Yacht varnish and each door and frame will receive at least 4 coats.

The above is just to get me started externally 

Eventually, when we get to painting internally, white matt Dulux EasyCare for the ceilings, and white silk Dulux Easy Care for the walls.

Seems a bit conservative.

Although the lemon would be nice with some purple and orange walls.

And of course a nice tartan carpet 

 

[Faz]

14 minutes ago, Rookiescot said:

Although the lemon would be nice with some purple and orange walls.

Now, now, play nice! 

[Marble-eye]

Is that the first prototype of the Black and Decker Workmate, if so, one sold on the Antiques Roadshow for £50,000 last week.

 

[Faz]

Front wall pillars and footings.

 

[Faz]

And more;

 

Notice the post 18 inches away from the other post.
That's because even though they had a clearly marked plan, they positioned the post where the gateway should be in the wrong position. When coming through the gate in a car, a quick left to avoid the house would have been required.

They had to do the same on the other side to keep the 4-metre specified width.

[Faz]

A week later and we finally have a front wall.

And they've been boarding the front porch ceilings.

[Faz]

This is why it was a bad idea to have it land filled before work commenced, and this was one of the better days. Delivery wagons getting stuck in soft rain soaked mud.

 

[Faz]

Question;
What does a Thai builder do with all his waste?

Answer;
Leaves it where it falls.

 

 

[Faz]

Just the tip of the iceberg.

 

[Faz]

1 hour ago, Marble-eye said:

Is that the first prototype of the Black and Decker Workmate, if so, one sold on the Antiques Roadshow for £50,000 last week.

This is a Thai handmade flat pack version of a work bench.
Easy to assemble and dismantle.
Nails supplied.

Tools required for assembly - 

[DwizzleyMatthews]

A brief interlude as @Faz is taking a break, or maybe has caught up on his project, here’s a little tale of woe from suburban Ayutthaya.

On the subject of neighbours from hell it’s like that saying “ you can pick your friends but you can’t pick your neighbours “ ( ).

I was quite proud to find a house in a moobahn that was quiet, at the end of a sub soi of only 6 houses and only one way in/out of the moobahn so no passing traffic. After about a year the young couple opposite were evicted, along with their pit bull ( hooray ) !! and then followed 3 years of peace and quiet as the , now Bank owned, house fell into disrepair.

A couple of fellas bought it and started a renovation, tiled the outside, fixed the roof where a tree had fallen against it, laid a lawn, installed water pump/tank and gave it a new lick of paint. Actually deferred from the brown and beige moobahn standard to a more modern grey and white. It does look very appealing but there’s no shortage of similar brand new houses in this region and presumably they were asking a steep premium.

Almost another year passed with no new tenants and about a month ago …… movement !

A pickup with a company logo shows interest, some new furniture and big tv arrives and some solar flood lights are installed, coming on at dusk to illuminate the house, lawn and carport area.

But then the company pickup, a SUV and a Honda civic are intermittently parked overnight but no sign of live in tenants. All very confusing, am starting to think the company ( a water solutions company, whatever that entails ? ) have bought the house for visiting employees to stay infrequently ?

Then on Friday morning plastic tables and chairs, ice boxes and numerous glasses, plates and cutlery etc arrived and are all washed down in the car port area. Ah, “the house blessing” me thinks, but no sign of any religious artefacts or the compulsory marquee erected outside ?

Early Friday evening, straight after work presumably, the hordes arrived, families with children and grandparents, around 50 people. Music and drinking seems to be the theme, but tbh not too loud or too late,   this goes on till Sunday morning when the big clean up, and division of left over food and drink, starts.

The short 6 house ( 3 either side ) cul de sac becomes one big car park and 3 pickups had to move so I could get my car out ( and back in again later ) yesterday, plus the obligatory staring as a farang was spotted in Thai territory.

So, the party is over and my stress is starting to subside but am still not sure of the main function of this house now, is it now a regular domicile owned by someone who has a huge family and had a house warming party ??

Or is it some sort of party house available for rent ?? there’s no pool or adequate space for that but that didn’t seem to bother this weekend’s visitors.

Time will tell I suppose but if it’s the latter then I can sense a meltdown approaching, after all i have had roughly 4 years of peace and quiet and the bonus of a large end of cul de sac parking at my disposal, although in the 5 years I have lived here that has only been used once when a family member passed away.

Quite a big difference from the usual situation, only one guy parks his pickup outside his house, on this tranquil sub soi .

If , on next Friday, a similar situation starts to appear i’ll be straight round to the moobahn headman !.

Some might say that I should stop being a grumpy farang and head over to the party with a bottle of 40% but it is not my style and I’d just be happy not to have 20 strangers leaning on my gate smoking ( in the shade ) and commenting on the farang’s garden and wife while their partners are cooking endless chilies.

Watch this space for an update.

[Faz]

Over two months passed since my last update.
Doesn't time fly when you're having fun - not!

With the new roof completed, external boundary walls, new external soffits, fascias, windows, rear frame and door installed I could finally see the end of the external work for the builder coming to an end in phase one of the project, with only the new front entrance doors and external paths left for them to concrete.

As I'd fitted all the internal frames and doors, which was originally in their remit to do, I was also confident of making a better job than them of fitting the new external front entrance frame and doors, with them just cutting and preparing the opening to accommodate them.
The existing front entrance door was a single wooden door with a glass panel fitted above. The wife wanted new double featured wooden doors, opening externally, and they were expensive. I've come across very few Thai builders who were both conscientious and the aesthetic appearance of a completed job.
Did I trust myself more than the builder to fit frames and doors, - you bet ya!