After 5 years of negotiations we finally signed the lease for House 29 in July 2011. The owners told us that if we did not take the lease right away, they would rent to some Koreans who would tear it down!

We are not sure when House 029 was built, probably in the 1950s. Our historian is tracking the building's story now. In the mean time, we are cleaning out termites, old wiring, dust, and lots of 1970s foam ceilings.

House 29 is actually two buildings, an older front building (we are calling it 29A) that is one floor with a loft under the roof. Behind it is a two storey cement building that appears to have been built in the 1970s. This building will make two apartments we will call 29B and 29C.

The front building has no indoor toilet; the toilet and shower are housed in a small cement building in back. We will have to build one indoors, but there is a question of where the runoff, with its potential smells, will go. The rear building has one toilet on each floor (the one upstairs was probably added some time after original constuction), but one of the three downstairs rooms has no access to either of the indoor toilets and anyone sleeping there uses the outdoor toilet. One wonders what the builders were thinking with this strange arrangement.

The kitchen in the back building is bigger than the rooms. Why???? This, coupled with the odd room layout makes modernizing this building an interesting design puzzle. Watch this page to see how we proceed.

Apartment 29B can be rented right away if you are willing to put up with some construction noise. Special low price!