Sri Lanka It's Happening

October 14, 2007

My new house is to be a green building. I had originally planned to use Aluminum for doors and windows. But try as I might, I could not find a design that seemed attractive. Most designs would tend to make a house look more like an office. Then I thought to switch to used doors and windows. Doors and windows that had been pulled out of demolished buildings.

If you goto an antique dealer for them, you will have to pay through the nose. But still, I decided to go ahead with it and drove all over Colombo and even as far as Hikkaduwa looking for them. I had finally decided on a set of doors and was about to make a payment when my friend/contractor put a stop to it. He doesn't mind using antique stuff (some contractors do), he just had a better option

He was taking charge of a construction project. It would begin by demolishing an old house at the premises. The house is made of Laterite brick (Cabok) and full of nicely designed doors. He offered the lot to me at bargain basement prices. It seems the modus operandi of antique dealers is to buy these things from the contractors or house owners for a pittance and sell them after adding an extra zero to the price.

The door frames have now been patched up and polished. Most of them have been fixed already. Now we driving all over Colombo looking for windows. The windows in that old house had dry rot and they wouldn't fit anyway.

Posted by raditha at October 14, 2007 1:02 AM