During a visit to That Phanom, NE Thailand, in early January 2024, & the future site of our home in “Isaan”, we undertook some land clearing, site survey & site planning work, along with house design discussions.
We established contact with a young builder who we eventually contracted to construct our home. We moved to That Phanom permanently in mid-March 2024 & commenced building in April 2024.
Interested in Thai House construction? – then you can check out our building project, & the progress made during our 8-month house construction, with weekly videos on my YouTube Channel (link) –
Youtube channel (link here)
We spent a couple of days with our builder to inspect some of his current & previous house builds and to work on the land’s likely build site.
Ace’s mom, who lives about 50 km away in Nakhon Phanom, has adjacent land & knows all the locals so arranged for a farmer to clear some of the land to be able to survey the building site.
Aces 3 Rai of land is about 5/10 minutes outside of That Phanom, a small town on the Mekong River. It is about halfway between Mukdahan & Nakhon Phanom, (50 km each way). It is a rural setting but with all the services ( power, village water, garbage collection & internet). It is in a quiet location for sure but easy access to town.
The 3 Rai of land is generally flat & had banana trees on it previously so not too difficult to clear. One day of work by a local contractor with a tractor to clear about half the property was – 3000 THB or ($130 AUD) – not bad. We have at least established a cleared area for the building site and generally worked out the placement of the home & adjacent carport.
House Design
Since returning back to Chiang Mai we have been liaising remotely by phone and Line with the builder on the house design concepts, cost estimates, and the like.
After many iterations & countless changes, we arrived at a concept that we like in terms of internal functionality and outside practicality/elevation. He is currently finalising the concept design plans and 3D renderings of the house for us to view and confirm before moving on to architectural drawings.
The design is based on a farmhouse-like approach with porches on the east, south, and west sides of the house to reduce sunlight on the walls. The roof has gables to allow for ventilation & air flow to allow for heat to escape the roof cavity (given the intense sun of Thailand).
In terms of the interior design, we will have a one-story home (thinking to the future) with rooms similar to what we currently have & are used to for functional use. We have downsized the space we currently use for practical purposes & cost considerations. At this stage the inside of the house is 160 sq meters & surrounding covered porches (for outdoor living) are a further 74 sq meters, giving us a total livable area of 234 sq meters.
I am excited and with anticipation, I am interested to see how this all works out in reality through the architectural & cost quotation phases of planning.
Looking forward to the next steps over the coming months. We began construction of our house in April 2024 – 10 years after moving into our first home in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
There are some content pages & some posts regarding our house build that you can check out in the menu, but if you are interested in Thai House Construction, then check out my YouTube channel that covers the building progress with weekly updates
Retirement Reimagined: Thailand - My Journey 