The proposed plan for our kampung house is in the final stages and the appointed contractor decided that he will be measuring the built-up area to allow him to better understand and propose what needs to be done.
That said, a couple of weeks ago, the contractor came by to measure the land. He also discuss some details on the proposed house.
He explained that he will built the slab and pillars first, before proceeding to build the walls, roof, completing the piping and wiring, and finally the finishing.
Questions were raised
He got the rough square of the house and asked a few questions which I could not answer immediately due to the lack of knowledge in making a house.
Building a house is a privilege to be honest because not everyone can afford to build one.
In my case, my wife and I secured a loan to do so as you can read in my first post about this project.
Anyway, the questions and the explanations to each questions he asked are as follows.
- Do you want d house to be parallel to d main road / the gate? – This was a cosmetic choice. Parallel to the road looks nice, and a house parallel to d gate looks symmetry.
- How far do you want the house to be from the road? – It was proposed that a space of at least 20 feet was allocated for this, but I don’t have such space so I only could spare 12 to 16 feet, hence making it much closer to the road.
- How high do u want the walls ad ceiling to be? – Typically, houses are nine to 10 feet in height. The higher the roof, the cooler it is, and the less noisy it is when it rains.
- What type of roofing & pillar options do I want? – Apparently pillars these days do come in certain cast, so there’s plenty of choices.
- What type of drainage? – There’s concealed drainage and open drainage.
- What type of indoor ceiling & outdoor ceiling? – The options were plaster cement for indoor ceiling and metal for outdoor.
- What type of windows & doors? – There’s many choices of door and window, but this is largely choosing the number of frames and also style of the windows and doors.
Aside from that, there was also consideration of where the sun rises and sets because it will affect how hot the house can become on a regular day.
Measuring built-up area: Extending
After much consideration, I also decided to extend land size had slightly. This was to avoid the house being too near to the road as I mentioned above.
Since the house plot was raised up, some 5 feet of land had to be added or raised to allow the house to be at least 16 feet from the main road.
This will definitely increase the construction cost which I assume would be already quite high.
Add that to the fact the price of cement has already increased by 10 percent, I am looking at higher cost just to build just the footing.
What’s next
I’ve submitted most of my proposed plans to the contractor and I am waiting for his quotation.
Due to rising cost of materials, I can say that the construction will not be cheap.
More plans will likely change once the contractor reverts to me with his quotation because if it exceeds our financial capabilities, we have to trim down the design and plans, or build the house in a few stages.
Regardless, I do hope the cost will not strain my budget too much.
Faster updates on the house will can be seen on my Instagram, but if you want detailed information, it’s on this blog under the tag ‘Kampung House‘.