For more than 40 years my wife and I planned to build a retirement home in Thailand. I aways pictured the home as a Lanna style house in Chiang Mai and in 2006 we visted Chiang Mai to find land and a contractor. After find just what we wanted in a new housing estate, we failed to negotiate a satisfactory contract and but our dream on hold. Later in 2007, due to health issues and family pressure (my wife is from a large Chinese Thai family in Bangkok,) we opted to build in Bangkok. The wifes family offered a lot and house in a quiet Muban next to family members so we purchased it from them. Initally, we intended to renovate the house but a survey of the structure changed my mind. Although I am an aeronuatical engineer and not a civil engineer, I could see that rehabilitation would consume unreasonable amounts of money and time for what we would end up with so we opted to start all over and build a new house. This is what we started with in Bangkok:

It had been unoccupied for many years.

Our next step was to find a reputable contractor to remove the old house and other structres on the 87 square waa plot of land. This turned out to be one of the most diffcult tasks. My wife and I had to return to Korea where i worked at the time so we accepted the gratis help offerd by a family member. As the old saying goes "help is worth what you pay for it!" After a year of no action, I finally paid to have the buildings demolished. Again, not being present I was not aware that the demolition team merely took the resellable items, smashed the builds down and left, never to be seen again. That left the foundation and tons of debris to be removed.  No company wanted to do the clean up since it would take considerable time and effort with heavy equipment. The property went untouched until 2011

In 2011 I retired and we moved into the guest cottage of  my wifes nephew that is next to our property. This afforded me the oportunity to oversee the build process as it takes place. We then talked with a lot of custom home builders as well as large contruction companies that offer ready made plans. The costs had increase about 15% since we set our budget at 2.5 mil TB and we had to adjust of plans to fit. Custom builders became to expensive so we looked for a builder with ready floor plans. We talked with several large home builders that use ready made plans and have standard bills of material. They all exceed our budget when we selected quality materials and a floor plan we liked.

My niece did a google search for home builders in the Bangkok area and gave me a large list. Afeter contacting them, most of the builders turned out to be small companies that we could not research for reputation and quality. However, one company sent a representative to take us on a tour of thier homes under construction and a few completed homes. Meter Squared is a small business ( three principles), but thier workmanship and materials were a cut above that of the other builders. In July of 2011, after much discussion, in Thai unfortunely, they agreed to comlete the removal of the remains of the old house and prepare the property for contruction at no additional cost should we sign a contract. We gave them 50 K Baht as a security bond so they would draw up plans based on our modifications to one of thier standard floor plans. Two weeks later they returned with a set of plans for our inspection.

Plan changes and government paperwork took until late September to comlete. Once they building permit was issued, our contractor sent the crew to prepare the land for contruction. This took a full two weeks. 

 

This after week of clean up.

Our neighbor asked the PooYia ban to stopped work when the crew started to use jackhammers to break up the foundation. They wanted a guarantee that the work at our property would not damage thier fragil house. This was not without cause. Thier house incurred the same cracks I found in our original house that cause me to tear down the old house which occurred during the contruction of our nephew's new home. We had to agree to drill rather than drive piles for our new house. This increased the costs by 100 K baht and took a week to accomlish. 

Lay out for foundation piles.

Hand Drilling for pilings.

Once the construction crew finished building thier homes, they stared on the foundation.





After massive amounts of steel and concrete, the foundation was complete November 1.

Rain and flood caused short delays, but the crew has made progress. As of November 24th. the second floor framing is about complete.