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Kitchen view 1We keep adding bits to this kitchen and it's still not complete. A breakfast bar still has to be built from the left hand side near the fridge to halfway across the archway. And the fridge will be replaced with a side-by-side. Cost: there is about 65,000 baht's worth of KITZCHO?® units. The solid granite counter tops cost about 18,000 baht including installation. jazzman
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Kitchen view 2The cooker hood was got cheap for 6,500 baht from Home Pro, Udon. Normal price was baht 13,000 but it was in a sale because it had been a demo on a display board in the shop. The two-ring glass cooker hob cost about 4,000 baht (if I remember rightly) from Global House, and the stainless steel double sink and drainer cost about 2,700 complete with tap (faucet), drains, and underneath plumbing pipes and U-bends.jazzman
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Local tradition.BEFORE you start, please remember that all prices cited in this story are now nearly FIVE years old. Click thumbnail to see an enlargement then click the tiny clapperboard if you want to start a slide show (but without the comments). 15 November 2006: After the foundation holes had been dug and the reinforcing wire cemented , the whole family and the village turns out for a ceremony with the monks. Some mumbojumbo takes place and well wishers throw flowers and coins into the foundations.jazzman
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Blueprint - Budget: 560,000 bahtClick the pic for a full screen image.
Own design. Quality construction. Contractors' quotes: 1.0 to 1.3 million baht. My DIY: 560,000 baht (materials & labour 2006). This floor plan was later vastly improved at no extra cost to the construction; and we opted for some slightly more expensive extras, taking us about 100,000 over the original budget. jazzman
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Foundation of a column.The hollow core is filled with concrete at the same time as the footings are filled ensuring a contiguous pour of the entire matrix of footings and their foundations. The floor of the hole was lined with PVC damp course and the walls of the hole will be lined too. Another solution to keep the damp out of the foundations is to paint the masonry with bitumen.
jazzman
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brick formwork for ground beamsInstead of using expensive wooden shuttering, the formwork for the beams is built at ground level with the Thai 'cinder' blocks. These are extremely cheap, and they stay in place afterwards thus adding even more strength.
Click an thumbnail to see an enlargement then click the clapperboard to start a slide show. jazzman
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Formwork for ground beamsThe brickwork form for the beam gets a final height adjustment with a row of red bricks. This is much cheaper than using wooden formwork. It stays in place and adds enormous strength to the beams, and provides the 'plinth' that can be seen around the base of the house.
jazzman
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Protecting the concrete.In the tropics it is indispensable to prevent large pours of concrete from drying out before it cures. We covered the freshly poured ground beams with rice sacks which we drenched with water and kept damp for a week.
Click on thumbnail to see an enlargement then click the clapperboard to start a slide show. jazzman
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Floor drainsThe drains in the the bathrooms and on the terraces were protected with PVC film and screwed into their pipes to serve as further height guages. Their height will be adjusted again later to be flush with the tiles. These diecast drains cost 140 baht but turned out to be not very good so we got the much more expensive one in the next picture instead.jazzman
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Floor drain for bathrooms, kitchens, patios, etc.These are made of high quality stainless steel, are an extremely effective design, easy to clean out and simply cute. They come in several sizes from square at 14 x 14 cm to rectangular at 14 x 32 cm. Disadvantage? The price! (like everything else from Cotto) - about 1,000 baht.
As Thai tilers usually cut tiles with their teeth (or so it seems), we found it better to avoid having them install circular drains.jazzman
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Bathroom plumbing.??n absolute minimum of plumbing goes under the floors. In the side-by-side bathrooms it was kept as close to the outside walls as possible. In the UK, plumbing like this is often on the outside wall - a headache for those cold British winters - where it can be recognised by its swathes of lagging - strips of sacking!
Prepared and installed correctly, PVC piping is perfectly adequate. A lot of it is used in Europe.
For hot water piping see http://www.siamgpi.com/solarpower/multipipe.htmljazzman
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