We Built Our Houses!
Well, okay, not the real houses. We met with the foreman and architect to go over the basic plans for the last time before they make up the full blueprints. These model houses that Sean and I built are based on the latest set of design plans that we got from that meeting, and at the moment they’re the closest thing we have to what the future houses will look like. You can also see our oddly-shaped land.
Update: I forgot to say that the brown house is to be the Heine House. The grey house is the Abbott House. These are also not the final colors, just the colors we chose for our models.
In two weeks we meet with the foreman and architect again to go over the real blueprints and make any changes we need to make before signing the contract. We’ll also find out exactly how much they will cost. Right now, all we have is an estimate (though from what we’ve heard, it’s pretty accurate) of 5 to 5.5 million Baht for both houses (that’s about $140,000-160,000). With the sale of our condo and a couple of other large gifts made towards this purpose, we have almost enough for the whole thing. Maybe we do have enough, but I can’t be sure until we have a final quote. In any case, if you’d like to help us out with this, please feel free.
The last time we spoke with the contractor, he said the houses could be done around April or May. It’s fascinating how God has timed all of this. A few years ago we hesitated on using the old land because we weren’t yet sure what our needs were. That turned out to be a very good decision, because now I feel like I know what we’re doing. Mostly.
Our contractor is a Christian who built one of our friend’s houses. He told us about how, like many Thai Christians, he came to Christ thinking Jesus would help him get out of his debt. He learned that following Jesus had nothing to do with that, and only then, when he had devoted what he had to Jesus, did he start to become successful financially. He says he runs his business as transparently as possible. He cares more about honesty than about making money. Some other weird connections: this guy owns Cornerstone International, which runs the school where we learned Thai (in fact that’s where we have our meetings, so all our old teachers get to fawn over Isaac and Abigail when we come), and, strangely enough, he is the brother of the guy who sold us the land. Chiang Mai really is a very strange, small world.
It looks like you mostly flipped your house plan around from the one you sent me a while ago. But now with a roof and with Sean’s all in the yard it looks really nice.
Another advantage of a foreign country, you can decide to place your “houses” where you want on the property and can then call it an orphanage. In the US you would have to have many visits to the planning commission and then it would never look like what you wanted to begin with. Also, an orphanage would probably not be allowed.
Great news on the finances – God is always faithful and it is something we can always count on.
Wow, that looks so cool! Will there be guest rooms? In case visitors from NorCal wanna come visit?
A sort of silly question: was the lighting direction in those pictures chosen intentionally? Does that reflect a certain time of the year/day? Or was it just the default from the renderer? Just curious.
-Matt
I was wondering about the lighting too actually. Good question Matt. Adam, I was curious which story the indoor swimming pool is on. When you design your own house, you always have to have an indoor swimming pool… and an elevator! For sure. Which brings up the question, why only 2 stories? My fantasy houses always had at least 3 stories. ;)
The lighting is an approximation of where the sun would be sometime around 8 or 9 in the morning. But I’m not sure of the exact orientation of the land, and we have neighbors that would change where the shadows fall.
Both houses, I think, will have 5 bedrooms. Until we fill them up with kids, there will be guest rooms :-)
Our original plans called for an indoor soccer field on top of a roof that spanned both houses, a go-kart track around the houses, and an underground home theater accessible from both houses (thus also creating an underground tunnel between the houses). For some reason Cindy and Prang didn’t take us seriously when we wanted to suggest those items to the contractor.
women…
I would think Cindy, of all people, would go for the soccer field!