PLEASE NOTE: THIS IS ONLY AN EXTRACT OF WHAT YOU WILL READ IN FULL IN MY EBOOK ‘BUILDING A HOUSE IN THAILAND’ DETAILS OF WHICH YOU WILL FIND BELOW.

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7 – 13 March, a week of yet more tiling, the start of landscaping, progress on the pond, doors and fixtures. We still only have three workers on the site, two on tiling and Ming who has started the week building the walls for the feature pond in front of the house. The pond will be tiled in a light green, which will blend peacefully into the garden. I hope Barney the soon to be resident turtle likes the choice. The two guys working on the tiling are great. They both turn up early in the morning and just get on with it. Jack, who is employed by Ming, mixes the cement and cuts tiles and the other man, who both Gaun and I call “the small man” – Thais aren’t strong on using names, lays the tiles. It is a smooth running operation and the results are excellent. A day was spent on Peng’s ensuite floor using the elusive white non-slip floor tiles I wrote about HERE, although the outcome is still more grey than white. Sunday build day 128, the furniture we had ordered turned up and was packed into the family home’s carport. We had bought two bed bases and mattresses, bedside tables, a display cabinet and a couple of desks with matching chairs. All made from timber and good quality. By Tuesday day 130 of the build Ming was still working on the pond and had added the saphan or bridge that would lead to the front door. At this stage I spoke with Ming via the family and asked that more emphasis be placed inside. The pond and anything else outside could be done later but my priority was to get the house ready to live in. We had bought all the doors and associated hardware at the weekend so Ming moved to getting the doors hung and once again got my brother-in-law Lud to help him out. Now here is one of those useful tips that I wish I had picked up on before. If you buy a standard door frame from Global House and probably the other hardware places, it comes ready to fit a 3.5 cm thick door, which is the standard in Australian and possibly elsewhere. However just to be different and cheap if you buy the standard Thai door it is a thin 3.0 cm. This leaves you with a door that doesn’t fill the frame, makes is very hard to fit a Western standard lock, which is designed for the thicker door and generally leaves you with an inferior job.  Needless to say I bought doors thinking about height and width, not thickness. This was one of the few disappointments on the build even though only very minor in the scheme of things. I have bought everything on the basis of being high quality and i have slipped up right at the end. Thanks for reading.