That’s part of how I see it. Taiwan was supposed to be a temporary place for millions of evacuees, so it was OK to just slap stuff together for now until they could retake the mainland. Hence the slapdash military dependents’ villages and the ugly old condos. Build cheap and fast.
As for people’s individual homes, most people live in condos anyway in Taiwan, so the outward appearance of a condo building is someone else’s responsibility. People here still often do have immaculate indoor spaces.
Yeah politics must play a great deal in it. And just the sheer assault on all good sense and taste just wears on you. In Taipei, of the 17 large parks built by the Japs, only 2 survived to the 80s. People just got used to having nothing but cement around. Those with better sense left in the 70s-90s.
I remember meeting Taiwanese in Vancouver after I had moved to Taiwan who wondered aloud why I was living in such an ugly place.
Remember the massive population explosion , in the 50s-70s , people were pretty poor but needed housing fast. Then there was a burst of wealth in late 70s into the 80s with more construction.
Good luck. I am building a house in Taiwan and have run into the whole gamut of contractors…enough to drive me crazy. But seems this is not only a Taiwan problem.
Involving family and friends can be good or can be bad. I suggest to set the standards very clear at the beginning. If some item needs to be redone sometimes is a very uncomfortable situation if the construction person or manager is a friend/family. I faced that situation today. Can I ask the vendor to make 4 of the iron sections 2 cm shorter to fit better in the space? After consulting with wife seems cannot reach that standard. You would think the contractor could measure better.
I asked some older people here awhile back why they didn’t hang nice paintings on their walls, use nice color on the outside or in, or didn’t seem to take pride in the appearance of their house in general. While where I grew up the interior or exterior of your house was a projection of self, or a means to provide comfort, an emotive aspect, the concept of walls serving a purpose other than protection from the elements never occurred to them.
We painted the interior of our apartment yellow, red, gray, and purple, because otherwise no matter the furniture it felt like we were living in a cold desolate concrete box. Casual observation has shown that no one else in the building shares this view.
It seems even those who save for years to buy a beautiful home, decorated to their tastes, fight chabuduo culture. Friends of my wife spend over a million US on a apartment here in Hsinchu only to suffer repeated water leaks due to faulty construction. They redid their bathroom 3 times due to damage.
Good luck in finding competent contractors, I’m sure they exist, but in 16 years I have yet to meet any. Personally I find doing it myself saves time.
If you don’t have the tools and assistance, you will need to find a professional. They have the tools and the expertise.
You have to realize that if you want quality in Taiwan, it is available but you have to pay for it. Maybe not as much as back home but it will be close. The problem is so many homeowners are cheap bastards and don’t care about quality, so the lowest bidder gets the job. You should not attempt things like gas, electrical, or plumbing unless you know what you are doing. You could cause a fire or flood the house otherwise (if you flood the house the neighbor down below can sue you). The key is you need to hire someone who knows what they are doing, has certification (they do exist in Taiwan). You just need to be willing to pay close to the costs back home for it.
[quote=“Milkybar_Kid”]We have recently purchased a house. It is over 20 years old and requires a bit of remodelling. It is mostly painting, protection from the elements, replacing bathrooms and installing a kitchen (the previous owner didn’t need a kitchen so did away with it to create a larger living room).
Throughout the whole process the whole attitude that I am getting from tradesmen, family members and anyone else who wants to give some input is “差不多”。 This is my new home – surely people should be doing their very best to assist me to establish a nice home for me and my wife.
One of they biggest stickling points is the different interpretations over the term DIY. I was brought up on DIY, and remember spending many a weekend working with my parents fixing up the family home. Although it was hard work and meant missing out on some leisure time it was still worth it. I also have a strong interest in DIY and enjoy watching tutorials on Youtube.
However all of the Taiwanese people think it is crazy that I am even considering doing any of the work myself. Their attitude is that I should let other people earn my money and spend my time relaxing, going out, and not worrying about the house. As well as the usual ”你想太多了” comments my wife has also invited friends of friends over to provide quotes. These people have told me that I am incapable of taking up some bathroom tiles, removing a toilet and painting the interior of my house. Of course – they say that I should entrust all of this to them (for a charge). My wife sees these people as friends; I see them as trandesmen, so naturally our perceptions are very different. It’s all driving me insane.
Having seen the quality of work that is sometimes done here in Taiwan I don’t want to spend my money on a poor job and have to fix it later. I would rather try and do it myself now and get it right. Obviously I understand that I can’t do everything myself.
Whilst I understand that labour is very cheap in Taiwan compared to back in the UK, I still want to try and save a bit of money and have a go myself. Is this really such a bad thing? Why is it so hard for Taiwanese people to understand this?
Maybe I just don’t understand Taiwanese culture.[/quote
I suggest that you don’t do it. Everything is different here and a DIY job elsewhere is a nightmare here. We just took over my wife’s home. Same situation. No kitchen, blue dirty bathrooms, no style or drapery. What a mess. Wife’s brother had a friend. All worked out except the painting sucked.
Hire out and be there when the work is done. I think it is cheaper than DIY.]
My parents are both very frugal and had DIY attitudes, though neither had any real DIY skills and we always lived in rented apartments, so there wasn’t much opportunity to develop them. But I always envied friends who had learned building and repair skills at home, and still do.
About 6 years ago I bought a 37 year old apartment in Wanhua that had to be completely gutted and redone. I hired a carpenter to act as contractor, and he subcontracted out, but oversaw and took responsibility for, the wiring and plumbing. The contractor was very cool about providing itemized quotations for every piece of work, and about letting me do the things I wanted to by myself, and with me hiring others for specific things. I did stuff like installing mirrors, towel racks, and curtains. Not very impressive, but something of an accomplishment for me, as I’d never even used a power drill before that. I also designed the place, and the contractor was very happy to work with my design, and talk through it with me. (Not a fancy design, but to my taste – open and airy.) I also did things like go to large suspended lighting and ceiling fan outlets and choose exactly what I wanted to my own taste. The stores will generally install those things for you with the price of the purchase or just a small surcharge. (Here’s a good tip I fortunately got from a friend in advance: don’t get the ceiling fans with lights in them, unless you like the subtle strobe-light effect, which I definitely don’t.) I’d be happy to give you the number of my contractor. I’m pretty happy with what he did for me now, six years on. His only major shortcoming is he tends to work a bit slowly. But I found it was worth it to have someone who gave me that kind of flexibility.
Well, you can either have it done quick, or done right.
Choose your contractors carefully. Do NOT go with the cheaper or the quicker ones. They will cut corners.
Actually, there is. It’s call B&Q (特力屋 or HOLA). Totally reminded me of Home Depot the first time I went into the Neihu location, especially since all the workers were wearing orange aprons. Seems Home Depot copied their store model with the orange theme (Originally thought it was the other way around, but just found out B&Q is older than Home Depot).
Actually, there is. It’s call B&Q (特力屋 or HOLA). Totally reminded me of Home Depot the first time I went into the Neihu location, especially since all the workers were wearing orange aprons. Seems Home Depot copied their store model with the orange theme (Originally thought it was the other way around, but just found out B&Q is older than Home Depot).
i-house.com.tw/[/quote]
HOLA is a different store; it’s a clone of IKEA. I think 特力屋 and HOLA are owned by the same company though, as they’re often together and identically priced products.
Thanks for all of the replies.
A month later and I decided to pay the professionals. It just wasn’t worth the constant fighting with my wife - it was getting close to divorce circumstances. I’m still not happy with my wife’s “don’t worry honey, we will always be able to earn money” attitude, but all I can do is try my best to be as frugal as possible over the next couple of months and years to try and recuperate some of the costs.
I have to admit - watching the pros do the bathroom remodelling made me realize that it would have been far too big of a job to take on by myself. Lesson learnt.
You would probably do well to rethink your attitude of money sometimes… Because truth is they are not all that it matters. You can save money but there could be other costs that may make the saving less attractive.
Yea be careful with DIY especially if you do not have the right experience. Fixing someone’s mistake costs more than doing it right in the first place.
Hi MilkyBar Kid,
I completely understand your frustrations as I bought a 40 year old house in Taichung that required a complete renovation from inside out. Without going into all the details, I would say to you to trust your instincts and what you learn from the internet rather than the tradesmen.
From my experience in Taichung, most will not have the time, experience nor expertise to entertain a different way of doing things. You can get a designer and pay $$, but if you are only trying to recreate a home you are familiar with and nothing fancy, it’s not worth it IMHO.
After a year or so, we are nearly done. I found that after the major stuff i.e. cement work/painting/basic electrical wiring were done, the contractor no longer cared about completing the work, and the renovation slowed down considerably. So much so, we were 4 months over the completion date agreed and with probably as much work needing to be done. So we sacked the guy and I took on the task as contractor/DIY’er.
I have rewired certain portions of the house, installed all the electricals from ceiling fans to light fixtures and bathroom extractor fans. I also tiled the ktichen backsplash, designed and ordered the kitchen cabinets (CAD), and have built cabinets, and retiled the bathroom and installed the bathtub. I went directly to tradesmen for stuff that I couldn’t do myself, like installing balcony handrails and a glass roof for the back of the house.
After sourcing materials myself and getting to know the vendors I found out that the contractor was way overcharging us on materials. Which is common but something to be aware of. There are two prices the vendors will quote you, a “desginer/contractor” price and a “retail/pleb” price. They are very different.
The contract should show in great detail costings/timeline/labour etc. Make sure the contractor is underpaid no matter how chummy or agressive he may get. Once they are update in pay, they will just walk away from the project if they feel it is too much hassle. This part, while obvious, is really hard as normally there are quite a few things going on and it is hard to know how much money is being spent.
Good Luck
I have always wondered about this too and maybe it’s a start of a new thread.
I would agree to the above and also like to add that I don’t see it as a Taiwanese issue as I see the same total disregard for outward appearances in Hong Kong and China too. In fact it was when I was living in HK that got me thinking. My theory is that the Chinese in general are brought up to think of their family first and then their guanxi network and taught to mind their own business. In the past the family and villages were very much tied together and this probably encouragd a lot of civic thoughtfullness, all of which worked to keep villages neat and clean. However in modern times, with important relationships/guanxi being predominately outside of the place where one lives, and neighbours not knowing each other, there really is little consideration given to how one’s actions will affect the neighbours. Which can lead to shockingly inconsiderate behaviour. So long as the police won’t get involved, anything goes.
I know this does not explain why Taiwan looks like it does in the first place (which I think the above post does a good job) … but maybe helps explain why it stays that way… just like plenty of the villages in HK.
My 2c worth