The Land

So now your all ready to build, well almost, most land is to low, ie the road maybe higher or as high as your land, this is really not a good thing during the rainy season unless you like boating, now the odds are that the road you are buying your land on will be redone about 3 times over the next 10 years, now here when the redo a road they just lay on top of the original lay, so over the next 10 years the road may have rised as much as a foot, that could mean that rain water will be rushing into your land as opposed to rushing out of your land and onto the road. not good huh, so in answer to that you will need to infill your land, now here in Pattaya its 650baht for 6 cubic meter of infill, although out in the sticks its as low as 350baht per lorry load, i might add here that a Thai cubic meter for some reason is a lot smaller than an English cubic meter, yes, i do realise that metric measurements are used worldwide but you try telling the Thais what a cubic meter of anything is.
Also now is the time to decide whether or not to have that swimming pool as the dirt from there can be used as infill.





Not everyone needs a marble swimming pool though.

Well now you are ready to rock and roll and get that house started, this is generally a period of tension between the builder and the owner, the owner will be spending his time trying to tell the builder where he wants plugs fitted and about earthing wires, while the builder is actually wondering whether to get a digger in to dig the footings, on a large house the wiring is like 3 months away, I find that it is mainly Americans that are fixated by this, I really do not understand why as I have not seen that many Thai products with a 3 pin plug.

OK, now I reckon some of you lot want some prices, now this is actually quite hard to do on a single home, I remember one place which was quite basic and a bungalow, it was 6,000baht per square meter to build, it was quite a nice farang style bungalow, but he wanted the 60,000baht toilets and not the 3,000baht ones, I mean you only use toilets for 2 things, so things like that will make your dream home cost more money.

Here is a nice picture of some land that is 5km away from Lotus in Pattaya, this prime porky worky land is selling for 1 million baht per rai.




More About Thailand Construction Here And My Ongoing Saga With Building My Own House In Thailand


More About Thailand Construction Here

Some Nice Adverts

If You Like Funny Pics Then This Is The Link For You

Cabinets and Cupboards

Well I have to admit that I started this blog as like just a one off thing and was just going to leave it at that, but after hundreds of emails begging me to carry on with it, I shall.

ps, thks mom, but stop spamming my email account......

So onto cabinets and cupboards made in Thailand, now this is the fitted stuff not your mfi gear.

Cabinets and cupboards etc are made using veneered ply wood and 2 by 1 inch plinths as supports, now some of this stuff actually looks quite good, but to my mind it seems quite expensive, i mean when a counter starts at 8,000baht per meter length using ply wood that costs 500baht per sheet and untreated 2 by 1inch wood it does seem a bit much, OK its quite labour intensive and there is a good profit in it, shame its an illegal business for farangs..

I also know of several teak furniture manufacturers, now using real teak wood nearly doubles the cost, but this is real teak wood, ie stuff that gets passed down from generation to generation, the old veneered ply stuff you will probably chuck out after five years or so, so its quite obvious in what to invest your money into.

Also you will find many kitchen manufacturers here that supply euro style kitchens, the only problem with these of course is that the carcas is made from mdf board, now this country is hot and humid and the floors are mopped everyday, yep that mdf is like a sponge and expands like nobodies business, the best way to get round this is to put a tile/marble/granite or real wood skirt round the whole of the base of all the kitchen units, it actually looks quite nice, well as long as its granite.


More on Cabinets in Thailand here

Also here for nice Kitchens in Thailand