Sep
25
Building a Hong Nam
September 25, 2007 |
We took delivery of the materials for building the new hong nam this morning. The work crew has started the construction. The three guys doing the work are the same that refurbished the house in the first place, and seem to have some sort of idea what they are doing.
And with Nan doing the bossing around work is going pretty fast. There is no slacking on her watch, that’s for sure. And well, one of them is her brother. The other two are who I just call the foreman, who seem to be fairly capable and the last of the trio is the village drunk.
But as before, Nan’s rule is no drinking on the job. And with some yak-yak’ing from Nan he manages to keep himself sober.
My role in it appear to be errand boy. I am sent off in all directions with a vague idea of what I am supposed to bring back from various shops in the area. And armed with the Thai word for whatever it is.
The Thai word for bolt I learned just a short bit ago is “nut”. At least that what they gave me at the shop, and I was fairly proud when I brought back the right one.
My other job is to make sure the Morlam music is at full blast at all times, and keep the ice bucket full.
Meanwhile Nan is cooking something delicious smelling on the barbecue, so it looks like we’ll keep them fed as well.
So life is generally good, and my days of bucket showers are coming to an end if all goes well.
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Comments
4 Comments so far
Rune
What are you going to have in your new bathroom? Can you tell us what your expected cost will be? I want to do the same thing in my in-laws home in Ubon.
Hi Mike,
The room will be about 10 square meters. We are building with cinder block. We only need to build two walls as the house is sort of L shaped and we are putting it inside the L. So for:
Farang toilet + a Thai style one
Bum washer
A small handwash basin
A shower
A mirror
Tiles for the floor and halfway up the walls
PVC pipes
2 doors (one that will be our back door and give direct access to the bathroom from outside for when the kids come home covered in mud and dont have to go trough the house)
Cinderblock
Gypsum plates for the ceiling
Timber for the roof construction
Tin plates for the roofing
cement
sand
gravel
2000 litre septic tank (made from concrete rings).
We paid 21K baht
So I guess we are doing this el cheapo
Then there will be the paint and other bits and pieces
Basically I think final cost will be around 30 K baht. But have budgetet for 40K
We pay the workers 200 baht a day, there is 3 of them, and they get all the coke and water they can drink + lunch and a few shots of lao kao (when finished for the day!)
I forgot the shower system. We could go for electric heating. But I have halfway made my mind up on adding a black PVC water tank on a tower, and let the sun heat the water. Later there may be a water filtration unit as well.
Also putting in a wet room electricity outlet war a washing machine.
Then there is a light fixture still to be bought, and I have no idea what the electrician will charge yet. As we are going to have that fixed when the house is more or less complete and redo the whole wiring.
Also there will be a PVC watertank inside for when the mains water is cut. Which happens regularily, so we can do Thai style showering in a pinch.