A $35 Architect and the Sri Lankan Pony Express

Last November when we were in Sri Lanka for Eid, I found a plan I liked online.  God bless the internet.  Nice and simple with a verandah, open kitchen, actually has a closet (another lesson learned from the Crack Shack) it looked perfect.  We were in my husband's village and we called the one of the local architects to see if he could make a plan from it.  He came over, looked at the image on my laptop and sketched on a pad of paper that looked like it was from the Raj era.  His fee was a whopping $35, and I'll admit it, I was skeptical.  He came back to the house with a computer generated plan that looked pretty legit!

It's got coconut trees, looks good to me

When we got back to Saudi, I took another look and checked out some websites about making naturally ventilated tropical houses, and got some advice some friends (thank you, Chris Newns!).  The result was sending the poor architect this piece of whited out/Sharpied architectural vomit that he then needed to make into another proper plan:

I'm not an architect but I play one on TV

Wait, that sounds easy, like the architect just needed to check his iPhone.  He doesn't have email.  Sending the plan involved sending one of Madu's friends to the village "communication shop" and getting an email address of someone who works there.  I sent the plan to the random communication shop worker, which he printed out.  Another friend of Madu's who knows the architect had to go to the internet shop, find the worker, ask him to print the paper, hop in a tuk tuk and hand deliver it to the architect's home.  The Sri Lankan pony express. 

Next post: Learning about Sri Lankan Feng Shui the hard way.