Amid the demolition dust there arose a mighty house...

........................ Huaykeaw Road, Chiangmai, in 1967

....

Once Upon A Time, in Northern Thailand's magical city of Chiangmai, there was a road called Thanon Huaykeaw. It meant "Glass Stream" Road, but really it used to be a bit of a swamp. Hmm, parts of it still are, especially just past the 711 Convenience Store. But hey, we love the place, so what the hell, we bought an apartment on the 14th floor of this condo:

...................... Nakornping Condominium, Chiangmai

...

Green: Lounge, Marie's study, bathroom, & main balcony
Red: Kitchen
Blue: Bedroom & Dressing Room
Orange: Peter's office, TV/guest room, second balcony, & bathroom

.......................... The view west from the main balcony.

........ The light on the mountain peak is the revered Doi Suthep Temple

This [above] was how the balcony looked when we first bought the place... except for our Buddhist shrine on the wall and Edwardian lamp on the right. The terracotta tile floor had a slight depression in the middle which could suddenly transform into a wading pool under the table during the odd rainstorm from the north.

................. The main balcony as originally seen from the kitchen

..... Work begins: Marie and Nic camp on the balcony floor in the dust

Concreting wiz Chang Serm and his Burmese offsider raise the level of the balcony wall. The following short movie shows you the view Serm can see:

...and here's the same view on a different, more dramatic occasion:

The next photo shows how we solved the problem of the balcony pond by lowering a few rows of tiles so water could actually flow to the floor waste. Cool. Sleuth Marie searched far and wide by mechanical camel to locate identical old tiles:

...and slaved to create a traditional Thai tile wall in the curve of the balcony:

...and this is how the balcony looks today:

Here are 2 kitchen pics from the time we first moved in:

...so (as usual) we pulled the whole blinking lot out and started from scratch:

......... Chang Serm raises the level of the kitchen window sills

Electrician/plumber/translator Chang Chaisit checks the tilers on the kitchen floor

................ Hey presto, new windows, new suspended ceiling.

................ Well, er, "Hey adagio" might be more appropriate

One requires the strategies of Roman generals to organise a spot to store one's furniture and personal stuff where it isn't gonna be in the bloody way or need to be shifted again (grrr) for a while. Speaking of which, here are 2 pics of the lounge as it used to be...

...and then after we domolished it and used it as a dump for a literal mountain of our stuff:

The leaky window at the far right of the above photo was ripped out and replaced. Seventeen years earlier, it had looked like this (photo supplied by the original owner):

So out came the built-in seat, in went replacement floor-boards, this time reaching all the way to the wall...

Here's a short movie of the view Chang Chaisit can see from that lounge window:

...and currently the lounge looks like this:

(We had a surprise raid from Alan & Brenton, claiming to be Council Building Inspectors from the Rubyvale Gemfields in Queensland. They approved our work in exchange for tea money... it's a Thai tradition they decided to adopt.)

...and after the old front door had been pensioned off, we had to improvise a chain/padlock until the new door turned up:

Off the lounge is the guest bathroom, first as it was...

...then as it became after Marie took her characteristically gentle sledgehammer to it...

This internal window, right behind where the toilet sits, is to become an internally-illuminated light-box. Aned no, it's not gonna be transparent, OK?

........... The Burmese worker again, seen through the light window
... into what is later to become the Dressing Room (AKA the Dungeon)

After a complete tile revamp, the bathroom gets an internally lit ceiling [above] and new glass tiles in the shower [where once there was a bath].

...and a new sliding teak door. All the door frames in the apartment were replaced too, because we wanted aged dry teak as a defence against termites.

Adjacent to the lounge is Marie's study, seen below in its original condition [17 years earlier] - complete with termite-riddled [non-teak] frames around the [teak] louvres:

...so out it all came...

...to be reborn with termite-proof frames:

In the photo below, just past the study you can glimpse the bedroom as it used to be, with its aged blue wool carpet:

The air-con compressor, hiding in the white plywood enclosure behind the deco chair [at left], was our bete noir, the mother of all leak problems:

Burrows Wrecking Company cruises in...

...and tiles appear... and a frame for a suspended ceiling (in Thai, it's called a "sky ceiling"):

...and the bete noir air conditioner compressor gets a new home, later to be disguised by frosted glass sliding windows:

At this point we mysteriously acquired the room next door in an aggressive takeover bid. (More about the new room later.) The ink was still wet on the Deed when Chang Serm began knocking a hole through the wall to the bedroom:

..... Delicious thru-breezes and an expanded vision from one end to the other.

...and the bedroom as it is now, with new double-glazed windows, seen from where the bed will be:

If you can drag yourself away from the jaw-drop view, turn 180 degrees to look at the opposite end of the room where we installed a gothic iron window to permit natural light into the Dressing Room:

Chang Chaisit speeds through the bedroom on a mission to completely re-wire the joint. Note the yellow conduit hiding in the ceiling space.

When we first moved in there were The Blue Doors with old iron panels. Behind The Blue Doors used to lurk a bathroom, a Very. Dark. Bathroom. Indeed.

In the space behind Serm's new wall there had been a built-in wardrobe with gorgeous teak bi-fold doors. Out they came, to be rebirthed in due course as a book-case in M's Study. Not so the blue wool carpet, which, as we had suspected, had been eaten out ten years earlier by termites.

Marie's trusty jackhammer got to work without delay or regard for dust or noise... The original ageing Blue Doors were retired from service, but the cast-iron retained for a Phoenix-like ressurection in forthcoming new doors:

...and Chang Serm got to work building a replacement wall, in a slightly different place to allow more wardrobe space:

Fast-forward: this is how things look today:

Behind those Blue Doors, we removed the old shower/toilet/basin etc and created the Dressing Room. Geographically, we've been full-circle: you are now looking back thru the Light-box into the Guest Bathroom where we started this tour:

The Dressing Room will also have an internally-lit sky ceiling (not yet finished in these pics, so you won't see the pipes):

Now we can return to the New Room - Peter's office, TV/guest room. It has its own entrance and bathroom:

Just like the other bathroom, we made a window for natural lighting and re-tied from scratch. Here Serm knocks the first bricks out to start the window:

Here's the interim locking method for this door. You also glimpse the new glass shower tiles, retro style:

...and we install a new window out of 3 pieces of old filigree iron, welded together:

A newly-made old teak bench now supports a shiny new basin:

...and there's yet another illuminated sky-ceiling (only the frame; the acrylic panels were not yet installed at the time of this pic):

From the bathroom, gaze out through the office [do ignore the mess] to the second balcony and the northern vista and past infinity:

Oh my Buddha! Another slight problem - door not aligning with tiles... fixed ok.

...and this is how it looks today, awaiting the new air-con:

Stop Press: the air-con is now IN. The kitchen goes in next week.

Tha... tha... that's all, folks. Watch for updates. We've moved back in ...yippee. Marie carried me over the threshold.