[From Si ... ] Here's the latest stuff from the farm house project. (all images clickable for enlargements)

First up, this is what we're replacing. Little shelters like this are everywhere in the fields here, offering a bit of shade or dryness, depending on the weather. Not much comfort, though.

Here's the posts. They were delivered by a truck with a crane, from here on it's muscle work.

The posts are in their sockets, which were dug and filled with concrete the day before.

Here the posts have been trued up, aligned, and concreted in, and the framing for the roof is up.

The next we got rained off, but didn't waste the day, Got the gang over to the house, and worked on the rebar we'll need later...

Back at the farm, with the stringers going up. The roof panels can be seen at the near post and in the background.

And here the roof! As you can see, we have a desirable lake side property here, at least during the rainy season we do...

Here's the rebar in place, ready for the concrete. This is the genius of Thai construction, no shuttering, just dig where you want concrete, and pour it in.

And here with concrete.

A double row of bricks goes on top of the footings,

sand and reinforcement go in,

... and the Thai cement mixer gets to work. Bad luck for the crew, normally this would be a delivery of five cubic metres by a ruddy great truck, and just poured in, but the access road (top left in the photo) wasn't up to it.

Here the completed base. The blue pipe in the foreground gives away what will be in that room...

The first bricks are up!!! This row of three is the veranda back wall.

Here door and window frames, and lots more bricks...

It was pointed out to me by all concerned that the monsoon comes from the south in these parts, and that I had put the roof on "backwards". We needed some rain protection at the front of the house, so a quick change of plan sees this framing for the purpose going up.

And here it is with the panels going up. At the right, the veranda, next a bedroom/crash pad, storeroom to the left, and bog at the end farthest from the grill, which will be at the right of the veranda. And that's where I have to leave it, as the time was up. Incidentally, in the foreground here is a row of our little darlings, the future rubber plantation...

Posted by Dave Bull at 2:00 AM | Comments (0)

Here are a couple of screen shots from tonight's Skype call ...

 

While we were talking, Simon came online and we tried to add him in, but we only got audio, no image. After the call was over, I checked with the Skype website to read up on 3-way calls, and found this little item (the small print): "Note: people with Skype video-enabled mobiles are currently able to join group video calls via voice only." ... so it's no go for multi-person video from the iPad (at least at present ...)

Posted by Dave Bull at 4:24 AM | Comments (0)