Mr. Gong, my school director and landlord had his man come out today. He started building the bedroom for MyeongHee’s son. My apartment now is large, but only one bedroom. The veranda was very large; far larger than I really needed, so we decided to have the kid’s room put out there.

Above is only half the veranda. We’ll probably lose a lot of natural light that comes into the living room when they put the walls up over the glass. We’ll still have some glass door area going to the outside, but only about the size of a normal 3 foot door.

SaTang is having to stay indoors in the bedroom until the worker gets finished. Probably at most 3 days.

It’s a pretty hack job. There won’t be any connection to the central heating system. That would be too expensive to reroute. Koreans use a heating system called “ondol.” A beneath-the-floor set of pipes that distribute heat via the boiler.  It’s very efficient and doesn’t dry out the house like blowing warm air does in most western homes. Its just too much trouble to rip up the existing floor and tie into it. So, instead, he’ll have a portable heating unit along with an electric blanket – the same setup he has now at her house.  We don’t have central A/C anyway, so no big deal there.

We really don’t need a full integration with this room. Dong Hyun will be entering high school this February and he’ll be out of the house 12-18 hours a day for 6 days a week. Lots of studying, both at school and after-school prep classes. He’ll sleep there and, on weekends, late evenings and vacations,  hang out and play computer games like most Korean teenage boys. I already bought the network router and cabling to get his room wired and the workmen will install that cabling as well.

When we move out, Mr Gong will have a two-bedroom apartment should he ever decide to hire a 2nd foreign English teacher. The whole remodeling thing won’t cost me a thing, as it’s his house and he’ll have the benefit after I’m gone.

I’ll take more pictures as work progresses – unless they get it done while I’m at work, which is likely.