This afternoon, I heard the best news for a long time. My townhouse will be ready by next Saturday! It has been a long time coming. I actually bought the house back in April. It was the summer holidays and it would have been the perfect time to move in. However, it was an empty shell at that time and needed quite a bit of work to make it livable. Well, comfortable enough for a Westerner like myself to live there!
I wouldn’t say it is my dream house. It doesn’t have a garden and it isn’t in the countryside. It also has neighbours on both sides. But, the dream house will come later. Maybe much later. The main reasons I bought this townhouse is that it cost only 1.5 million baht and is about a 10 minute walk from the school. It is also centrally located in Paknam. It is near enough to Sukhumwit Road to be convenient but back enough to be relatively quiet. Well, time will tell about that.
The house has four floors as well as a roof garden. The second floor was originally a balcony looking down to the first floor. But, I had the floor extended so that there is now a big room on the second floor. This will be the office for my company, which I will set up later in the year. The third and fourth floors were originally all open rooms. However, they have now put in walls so that the third floor has two bedrooms with shared bathroom and toilet. The fourth floor is like a studio apartment with bedroom, living room and bathroom all-together.
It has taken just over two months for them to refurbish the townhouse. All of the Thai style toilets were ripped out (no squatting for me). They put in proper Western toilets and hot water showers. Washing Thai style involves a big tub of water in your bathroom and scooping icy cold water all over you. No thanks, I’ll pay extra for the hot water shower.
I also had all of the windows and outside doors changed. The quality of the originals weren’t that good. Now the rooms are more sound proof and will be better with no gaps between them. I am not that keen on the mosquitoes! Anyway, all of the windows now have mosquito screens. In addition, each of the bedrooms have air-conditioning. The only room that doesn’t have it is the living room on the ground floor. Maybe I will regret not doing that later.
Obviously, all of these changes to the house have been quite expensive. But I think it is worth it in the long run. Now I will have to go out and start buying some furniture. I am not too sure how much money I will have left after all of this. So, I guess I will only buy the essential items first. I’ll go out tonight to Central City Bang Na to look at some furniture. I will also try and get some idea of prices of things like fridge, washing machine, beds etc. I have the t.v. already. Actually it was free. UBC was having a promotion, which ended last month. I signed up for their cable t.v. package and I got a free 29 inch t.v.! Seemed like a good deal. I needed a t.v. anyway.
