This isn’t the most exciting thing going on around the land, but I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned this before.

Since the houses we are building are all wooden, and they use tongue-and-groove connections between the wooden planks in the walls, there are always slight imperfections in the fit between all of the wooden planks in the walls. These are filled in manually using a mixture that the workers call “bo” but probably translates as “wood filler” in English. I believe it is made from a mixture of fine sawdust from cutting and sanding the wood and wood glue.

It is applied at the seam between the planks:

Later it is sanded with a power sander and the whole wall is coated in a clear lacquer that pretty much results in the filler being the same color as the wood.

One thing we’ve noticed on BaanMae is that after all of the expanding and contracting of the hot season, it may take a second round of filling before the house is “done”. Hopefully it doesn’t need to be done every year. :-