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Fixing the gaps between the
floorboards |
In mid-May we started to do some work on
the house. Structurally the house was OK . . . or so it appeared, the real work
lay in tarting it up so that people other than Burmese refugees would be
happy to stay there. The walls were lined with probably the most awful looking
hardboard I've ever seen and so had to be covered up one way or another.
The floors were in the main OK but all rooms had some gaps between the
floorboards. We fixed these by using the same technique as boat-builders
use to seal the planks in wooden boats. (We later found out that this was
a crap idea.)
The ceiling in the third bedroom was a
mess and so had to come off, a simple replacement we thought at the time.
However, as anyone who has lived in an old house knows, when you start looking
underneath the surface you open a veritable Pandora's box. And, as
everyone knows, the secrets of Pandora's box are best left to Pandora's husband
to discover and not some amateur DIY guy.
It turned out that there were quite a
few damaged tiles on the roof which had to be replaced. In addition, with
one of the ceilings and part of the roof off it became easy to see that the
wiring was in a bit of a state. We already had an idea that none of the
island's finest electricians hadn't been anywhere near the house when we found
the main circuit box for the house behind a door in one of the bathrooms.
So we added rewiring about 80% of the
house and at the same time putting in a few more electrical points and light
fittings. We got our old landlord to do this for us as he promised it'd be
something he could do in a day or three. But, when you get friends to help
out, something far more important always seems to crop up, so about three
quarters of the work was done and then he declared himself too busy to finish
it. (In early June he told us that he'd wait till our builders had
finished in the rooms and then do all the little jobs remaining in one go -
rather than doing bits and pieces weekly.)
We had our ideas for the interior of the
rooms, paint over the hardboard, add a border of 'surlampeng' (a thin, hard
panel made of woven bamboo) and some varnished softwood to give it that good ol'
country feel. At this point I should mention that our plan is to rent the
house out to groups of Thais - be they a family or group of friends who want an
alternative to renting three or four hotel rooms. At present there aren't
many nice house to rent so most groups check into a hotel, annoy their
neighbours and spend the weekend complaining that there's nowhere for them to
cook their own food. (Farang guests are more than welcome, it's just that
most western tourists aren't interested in renting an entire house. The
walls are paper thin, so renting rooms to members of the same group is
preferable to having strangers endure listening to the goings on in the next room.)
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Looks like there's a hole in
the ceiling |
We'd already spoke to half a dozen or so
builders who'd been recommended to us by various people we'd met.
However, many of Having found an experienced
builder who seemed like he knew what he was doing, charged a sensible price for
labour and, as an added bonus, came from the same province as Mam (always a good
thing), work commenced in earnest at the start of June.
Stay at Baan Rim Nam
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