House 120 is the third AHL lease on Vat Chan Street in historic Chantabouly District, right downtown. Built by a branch of the Souvanivong family, four generations of the family women were present at the lease signing January 2008.

The house is about 90 years old and built in classic Chantabouly style. We have divided it into two apartments, each with a new kitchen and two bathrooms. There is a beautiful shared garden with a fish tank and bird garden.

A few years before AHL leased the house, the owner had built a three room cement house in the garden to accommodate her granddaughter and family. The site had been completely paved to push water away from the main building which is 20 cm or more below current street level.

The first job was to demolish the little cement house and to remove the cement apron around the main house. The smelly old bathroom, a 1970s addition, had an entrance only 1.3 meters high. We demolished it and built bright new bathrooms and kitchens for the two apartments.

One of the most charming things we discovered is that the beams of the house are labeled with Chinese words carved onto the sides. We believe that the house must have been built somewhere else and disassembled to move to Vat Chan. As yet we have no clue when and how this happened.

Like all our buildings, the wiring was upgraded and fiberglass insulation was added to the roof. The downstairs apartment even has a whirlpool bath.

Property description

Vat Chan Street is one of the most lovely streets in the city. It is almost too narrow for cars and has the most concentrated grouping of old houses to be seen in downtown Vientiane.

Apartment A is two long rooms with two small detached rooms flanking the outdoor stairway. The bedroom has a walk-in closet and a half-bath. The dining room, kitchen and full bath are accessed from the main room. A balcony overlooks the garden. The breakfast table rests on the top of the former staircase and the newel posts hold up the table!

Apartment B is 5 interconnected rooms plus a kitchen and two baths.

The garden has a fishpond and one design block, just under the balcony of Apartment A, is specially planted to attract birds and butterflies. There is a pergola for orchids and several varieties of flowering and fruiting bananas.

There is no parking of any sort at this building but one tenant rented a space at the local temple.