Mae Sai 05/4/2010 Surprises!

Yesterday was a pretty typical day in the re-model world of the Plumber & Little Thai Girl. The men laid tile in the kitchen and we spent most of the day shopping for a better kitchen sink and a 1/2" 45 degree PVC elbow.

We could not find either. The sinks here are all very thin stainless steel and the bowls are not deep. Also, most of them come with an overflow built into the sink that I'm sure will leak at some point as it is just plastic with a screw to hold it in place.

My problem is I laid out the bathroom piping against the advice of the man doing the work. I have one 45 degree fitting that is needed. Everyone tells me that you can't buy that fitting in Thailand.

Now, what I did was warm up a piece of PVC pipe and made the bend in the pipe. It worked very nicely, maybe better than a fitting as no glued joints.

Today had a pretty mellow start. The three men that are going to put in the additional cesspool came and we moved everything out of the way. They marked off the location and started breaking out concrete.

Daeng and I decided to get some exercise and carried the 28 boxes of ceramic tile up to the second floor bathroom. We both broke a sweat or as girls say: "Got a glow."

Surprise, the men putting in the cesspool got down about two feet and found they were on top of one that is already installed. That is good and bad. The good part is we know where the present one is and can bring the clean out up to the finished grade. The clean out opening is so a pumper truck can come and pump out the solids when needed.

The bad part is they have to move over and put another one in a few feet away. Installing the cesspool is only 2500 THB ($78.00 USD) so even if we had to pay the whole thing twice it would not be a big deal.

By the way, If you want 6-pack abs, this would be a good job your you. Check out this picture. Check out the bare feet, too. There is no workman's compensation here. The only injury today was one blister on his left hand.

The tile man also informed us he needs another bag of cement, 2 red tile edges, 5 cream tile edges, a box of red tile, 1 Kg red groat and 2 Kg of cream groat. We will also have one full box of cream tile left over so we can return that box.

We'll go get those after lunch time is over as I fell better about the men that are here working everyday than I do about the new workers. Like Mom always says: "Better to be save than sorry." I feel okay with the worker but don't feel good about the boss. He reminds me of "Gold Tooth Louie" in Santa Ana, California.

After a little talking, the cesspool men are going to bring the clean out top up to grade on the old one and put in the new cesspool with a clean out up to grade for a total of 3000 THB ($94.00 USD). We gave them half or 1500 THB to buy the materials.

Everything else went good today except the tile man's 4" grinder, that he cuts tile with, broke. That held things up for an hour or so while Daeng took the grinder to the tool repair shop down the street. In the mean time we tried to use the cheap one I bought last week but it did not work correctly.

We'll need to return it tomorrow to Tesco/Lotus. The grinder I bought is a POS (Piece of Sh*t) grinder. The teachings of when I was young come back. I remember my Uncle Lloyd saying: "Buy good tools and they will last you the rest of your life." My question is: "How long is that?"

Daeng came back in about an 45 minutes with the grinder repaired at a cost of 90 THB ($2.82 USD) and life proceeded for the tile men. It looks like the tile will be finished and ready to groat tomorrow.

The cesspool men finished installing the cesspool and the clean out covers and wanted to be paid the balance of the 1500 THB. They had not hauled away the huge pile of dirt that they dug out to install the cesspool. I told Daeng we should not pay them until the dirt was hauled away as they said in the beginning of the job.

We'll for the next hour or so Daeng and the head man argued over this. They called Salad who was in charge of the whole job and he said he would haul away the dirt at the end of the job. I told Daeng that when it rained we would have 2-3 inches of mud in our drive way.

Daeng stayed firm as the deal was they would remove the dirt. I had even asked that question, again, when they started today. Daeng made a few phone calls and took a ride up the street to talk to the lady that owns the big empty lot in back of us. She said they could put the dirt on her lot. The men agreed and took the dirt, bucket by bucket, and spreed it on her lot.

We paid the men the balance of the money and they all thanked us. Daeng gave two of the men a ride to the Myanmar (Burma) border. It was after 6:00 PM so I think they were going to wade across the river.

When Daeng came back she said it reminded her of men at home in front of HOME DEPOT in California. When she uses the word "HOME" referring to California it makes me think she may want to continue living in the USA.

We spent the next few hours cleaning up this red earth that had been tracked everywhere. We will be cleaning up this dirt for days, I'm sure.

We were both tired when we crawled in bed but glad this part is over.