One signature of our architect is something he referred to as “make the support posts look like they are floating”. We had intended on doing this for the balcony posts on BaanMae, but due to the “fog of construction”, it didn’t happen.

So we thought we would give it a try on BaanRimNaam.

Basically, the idea is rather than rest the posts directly on the cement footing, one can build a steel box for the wooden posts that the end of the posts fit cleanly into and then make those steel boxes “float” over the cement footing by having a smaller steel rod hidden underneath to hold it up.

We ended up deciding to use a larger hidden support piece to be more conservative and to make it easier to weld. We used 4 L-shaped cross section steel pieces welded together.

Here is a picture of the steel box piece before the post goes in:

And here is one with the post already in:

Once the wood is fully dried out, it should darken in color. Then we will chose a color for painting the steel to match it so it can blend in a bit better.

Here is a picture of the back of the house with a row of these:

If you zoom in you can see the posts “floating” above the support.