Back on Track

The contractor who has worked for us so far has become quite frazzled.  He has 4 building sites with 5 houses to finish but only 20 workers. No wonder can he keep neither deadlines nor quality standards. Workers are in high demand in Chiang Mai because there are so many building sites some of them huge. There is such a shortage that workers are recruited quite aggressively.

After a long construction delay we have decided to terminate this contractor and find a new one. We believe to have found a good solution with khun Youd and his team. They want to finish our house within an acceptable time frame. The deadline is now set to October 31, 2012. Khun Youd has been recommended to us and we have a very good impression of him.

On the day after the agreement there were already workers on site to prepare for the coming work processes. New material had to be ordered immediately and things are happing again at the building site.

 More and more workers will be arriving as the project they are working on still (the house of another foreigner) is nearly completed. The people for tiling, painting etc. will soon be available to us.  

We are relieved to see that the atmosphere at the site is good, work is in progress and the quality standards are higher.

Slow and annoying

We were full of hope that our new house would be going into the end phase of building but these hopes were soon dashed. It all proceeded painfully slow. Most of the time there were no workers on site, on and off a few. That was no way to go on. Therefore we are now intensively searching for solutions.

May’37 who is doing our project management is working on sorting out the problems and getting proposals for solutions on the table. We are still convinced that they are doing a good job and will keep doing so once the problems with the builders are resolved.

Various larger items such as kitchens, bathrooms, windows, swimming pool and built-in furniture we had organized ourselves. The delivery dates have long gone by and we are now coordinating with these suppliers a next available and suitable slot for the delivery and installation or building of their items.

Small steps forward have been noted here and there:

The windows in the guest bungalow were installed.

Unfortunately the workers did not pay attention so dirt got into the frames.
Now we are worried that somebody might slide and windows and damage the frames.

Finally, the windows are locked into place.

A concrete base had to be built for the outdoor kitchens to protect them from water.

Various walls were plastered.

The crooked wall is finally demolished and rebuilt.

The workers are offering food the house spirits to get them into a favourable mood.

The ground was cleared and we can finally get an overview of the houses again.