Who Lives in a Thai House Like This?

It’s mid-March and our thoughts turn to the renovation of our Thai farm house now that we have the infrastructure, irrigation, fencing, driveway and gates constructed.

It looks like the first year of going organic is going to produce a bumper crop of durian, mangosteen and rambutan… fingers and toes are all crossed. If this works out as planned, it will pay for half the renovation work we have dreamed up to do during the dry season.

The Thai House on Our Fruit Farm

The Thai house is a basic single brick structure that is common throughout the rural areas of Thailand. It has electricity and running water and no other amenities to speak about. The mobile phone signal is weak and there’s no Wi-Fi so it’s a great place to escape to over the weekends and leave the BS world of social media behind.

The windows have no glass, instead they have wooden shutters that are generally left open to encourage cool air to flow throughout the house. There are no ceilings and the roofs are high, again good for keeping the interior cool without air conditioning which there isn’t any off either.

The bathroom consists of a traditional squat toilet and a basin to scoop water out of a tank to shower. So, all in all by Western standards it’s a very basic two-bedroom house in the Thai countryside.

There’s Going to Bee Some Changes

The front of the house isn’t going to change very drastically. We will replace the sheet metal wall (it’s like, so retro darling!) with a living green wall and fit new doors and windows as with the rest of the house. We actually would love to modernise the front more but there is a swarm of friendly wild bees living in the wall, so we will let them be as they provide a great service pollinating the fruit trees.

Inside the house, both bedrooms and the living room will have ceilings installed, tiles will be laid on the floors and the walls will be rendered and painted.

The wet room roof will be replaced with a transparent material so when we shower it will feel like being in the great outdoors under a canopy of stars. A western toilet and wash basin will also be included in this new tropical space.

The kitchen and the room beyond will be demolished, and a steel frame structure will form the basis of a light and airy open plan space to cook and eat. Large patio doors will lead out to a terrace and kitchen garden.

The space between the living room and kitchen will be separated by a floor to ceiling glass wall where we will be producing bean to bar chocolate products in the near future.

All the exterior walls of our Thai farm house will be rendered and painted and a few minor repairs to the roof will be fixed. We are also planning on adding an outside toilet (a convenience for convenience) and a lockable shed to keep my garden tool in (even i have a knockometer!).

The property will also be completely re-wired.

Work is planned to start by the end of March, beginning of April and finished before the rainy season. But I live in Thailand long time and know, things are subject to change, and they probably will! Mai pen lai.

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Who Lives in a Thai House Like This?