Aayiram Jannal Veedu

If you have heard of Karaikudi, it's probably for the cuisine or architecture. It has always been on my to-do list to go on a one-day trip to Karaikudi and walk down its streets, patiently looking, studying, and enjoying the architecture of the place.

This project demanded a visit to Karaikudi for the carpentry works especially. Carpentry is quite a tricky and expensive part of the construction. In the old days, when people decided to build a house, the first thing they did was buy wood and let it dry. Wood tends to shrink and expand with varying temperatures and takes years to become stable. So the older the wood, the better it is.

So why did I have to go to Karaikudi to get my carpentry done?

Karaikudi is like the hub of vendors selling refurbished carpentry works. When an old house is to be demolished, these vendors collect the old wooden doors, windows, thoons, etc. (also antique furniture). They rework these old pieces and put them up for sale. The biggest advantage of this is that the wood is old and it saves a lot of manpower because the item is almost already done, just needs a retouch. The price difference, however, is just marginal between making an entirely new set of doors and windows and using the age-old wood items with their refurbishing expenses.

One setback would be that not all the doors, windows, or thoons would be of the exact same size you want. We had gone there even before the foundation began because we didn't want to risk the varying sizes.

We already had a plan of the kind of facades we would want, including the number of doors and their sizes. We had decided to have at least 4 thoons. The major need would be the thoons, main doors, and windows. We thought that if there were other antique furniture pieces available, it would be a bonus.

The first vendor we went to had an AMAZING collection of antique stuff. There were chairs, dressing tables, dining sets, doors, and windows with super intricate designs. Some of them were used by the British. There were chairs that had the faces of British people carved on them and so much more.

The trip actually reminded me of a post I read about minimalism. Such a thought-provoking read that was and this carpentry reminded me of the necessity for detailing and creativity. With AIs replacing art, I am afraid people would soon be less appreciated for their artistic skills. I honestly felt "unnecessary" when ChatGPT completed my poem better than me - I lost interest in writing poems. And it is scary to think there might come a day when we would work like machines, without creativity and the machines would do the creative work.

We kept taking pictures of the doors and things we liked and noted them along with their sizes and prices. It was now up to us to choose the windows and doors for the house.

There were a few factors we had to keep in mind - the type of interiors we would want. I didn't want very traditional pieces with very intricate designs because I thought that wouldn't suit my plan.

There were main doors with enormous depths (because walls those days used to be deep, even about a foot), so we had to be careful about the depth of the doors and windows since the CSEB walls are just 6" deep. The pattern on the windows and doors should be similar (if not exact) so that they go well together. Since the roof work hadn't started, we didn't have an exact height for the thoon. We just fixed it to be 7' based on the SketchUp model I had made. However, thoons can be adjusted to about 1' in height using a stone base at the bottom and ___ at the top.

With these constraints, we were able to finalize the main doors, room doors, and thoons from the old ones. Windows and French windows didn't really match our needs, so we decided to make them all new.

We had to pay an advance for the vendors to start working on them, and refurbishing those would require at least 25 days, they say. It would be up to us to polish the wood for the colour we like once they give it to us on the site.

We decided to place an order for the rest of the woodwork with a carpenter at the earliest so that he can get the wood dried. We gave him a detailed idea of how the windows needed to be with drawings and photos (especially for the French window because I loved it so much that I wasn't ready to make any changes to it).

The struggle here would be that the windows needed to be 5' long since I had planned the sill level to be at 2' and the lintel at 7' (all except the kitchen window). This meant the window grill rods in between (I wanted the rods in the middle to be plain circular rods) should be strong enough to not bend with height. I had also avoided the ventilation part (a division on the top of the window, usually about 1 foot in height and has fixed glass) since that would mean the tip of the window opening would be 6' from the ground, and for an average person, that would hinder the vision above that height.

The carpentry works are to be ready by the time the bricklaying starts since I didn't want unnecessary chipping off of the bricks. There wouldn't be space for errors as they cannot be adjusted while plastering either. So the doors and windows should be placed at the beginning of the block-laying process.

The Aayiram Jannal Veedu

On the way back, I got to see the Aayiram Jannal Veedu (translation: 1000 window houses) and I wondered if there were really 1000 windows. Windows cost more than laying bricks for the same area. And I wondered how much they must have spent on just the windows!

I am super excited to look at the finished goods. The thoons, doors, and windows. And of course, the French Window. Touch WOOD. Like literally. Lol