A farm needs a house, so that's where we start

Just got back from meeting our architect.

Now that's a sentence I never imagined myself saying, but here we are at the end of 2020 and we are signing off on a house design that will start being built in January. It's been quite a year, and next year looks like it will be another year of change and adjustment, although we hope to have a bit more control of the changes.

As with most trips in Thailand, we managed to fit in a terrific bit of food in a simple little restaurant sitting next to the fields. Our future house, and future lunches, should have a pretty similar view.

Our architect and builder, as they are one and the same, is based a couple of hours outside of Bangkok. As with most things these day, we found them on social media - a mix of both YouTube and Facebook - and I think this video was the first we saw of their work. We liked what we saw, and although we weren't sold on the layout of this house we decided to go and meet them.

After the second or third meeting drawings started. And we've come a long way since then. The first design was great, but it wasn't exactly what we were looking for. And what we were looking for wasn't exactly within our budget. But one thing we've learned this year is to be very flexible. So our budget flexed upwards.

This was the first design

It was on the right lines as we briefed for lots of outside space and a nice open house, but apart from the details, like the arched shape doors, the balance wasn't right and it was a bit too disjointed, but there enough to help shape some changes.

We'd also been inspired by some houses we'd seen on Pinterest and YouTube (and this is probably the reason for flexing of the budget!)

The number one in our minds was Brillhart House, a stunning tropical home in Miami that sold for a pretty penny when the architects, who built it for themselves, decided to sell.

So this was the dream standard. We'll see how close we got to it in the next post.