The little things
Of all the blogs I maintain, this has been least written... it is typical of me, to be weaken by passion. I cannot start... because I feel that whatever I do it is not good enough... but then again, i have to start somewhere.
This entry is about the little things that make my house me:
the floor
The first thing that attracted me to the house was the flooring. It was mosaic... the kind that was the trend in 60s and 70s. I saw the floor amidst the junk and i knew that this was it. I can still remember how my agent told me to contain my pleasure and passion for it so that we would not be in a weak bargaining point. So when I got the house, I maintained the flooring... repaired the missing parts... it is still my favourite aspect of the house!
the chandelier
I knew that I had to have a chandelier.. the iron sought.. not the glittery Chinabeng sort that is so common. I wanted the old look... So I searched... and I could not find. I spoke to a shop which had a catalogue of the chandeliers I wanted. They quoted $12k at least.... I was disheartened! Then I searched the internet...and was crazy enough to gamble on buying a chandelier which was a quarter the price that the shop quoted.
The chandelierr came but in flat packaging... and I had no idea where to start. The instructions were dismal. I was lucky to be going out with a guy who had as one of his qualification, engineering. He could decipher the assembly from the almost nothing instructions. Within 3 hours we had the skeletal chandelier up...
The weekend after, the electrician came. My ceiling was a slant one... hanging a light was doubly hard, but it was done. An hour later, we had the crystal hanging ceremony... I guess this must be how decorating a Christmas tree felt like...
I put the final crystal... and the chandelier was lighted up...
the sunken bath
I decided to take a smaller room and an even smaller study for my room, wardrobe and bathroom (the master bedroom was going to be the room for my parents). The little study was divided into my wardrobe and my bathroom (okay a took a little square corner from the master bedroom's bathroom... yes I reconfigured the house!). The little study had a sliding door, which I wanted to save... which meant that I could only have a sunken bath... anything else would be aesthetically ugly. But my another engineer friend was dead sure that the water system was too shallow for me to be able to dig for a sunken bath and the width etc would not fit. He said he knew because he had done many houses. I insisted because I had a gut feeling... and I bought a bath tub anyway...decided to splurge a little and got a jacuzzi actually. They had no choice but to dig... partly to prove me wrong... only to find out that I was right. And as I have sat many times in my sunken bath, I cannot help but feel what a great investment... and how glad I was to have insisted... trust that little voice.
This entry is about the little things that make my house me:
the floor
The first thing that attracted me to the house was the flooring. It was mosaic... the kind that was the trend in 60s and 70s. I saw the floor amidst the junk and i knew that this was it. I can still remember how my agent told me to contain my pleasure and passion for it so that we would not be in a weak bargaining point. So when I got the house, I maintained the flooring... repaired the missing parts... it is still my favourite aspect of the house!
the chandelier
I knew that I had to have a chandelier.. the iron sought.. not the glittery Chinabeng sort that is so common. I wanted the old look... So I searched... and I could not find. I spoke to a shop which had a catalogue of the chandeliers I wanted. They quoted $12k at least.... I was disheartened! Then I searched the internet...and was crazy enough to gamble on buying a chandelier which was a quarter the price that the shop quoted.
The chandelierr came but in flat packaging... and I had no idea where to start. The instructions were dismal. I was lucky to be going out with a guy who had as one of his qualification, engineering. He could decipher the assembly from the almost nothing instructions. Within 3 hours we had the skeletal chandelier up...
The weekend after, the electrician came. My ceiling was a slant one... hanging a light was doubly hard, but it was done. An hour later, we had the crystal hanging ceremony... I guess this must be how decorating a Christmas tree felt like...
I put the final crystal... and the chandelier was lighted up...
the sunken bath
I decided to take a smaller room and an even smaller study for my room, wardrobe and bathroom (the master bedroom was going to be the room for my parents). The little study was divided into my wardrobe and my bathroom (okay a took a little square corner from the master bedroom's bathroom... yes I reconfigured the house!). The little study had a sliding door, which I wanted to save... which meant that I could only have a sunken bath... anything else would be aesthetically ugly. But my another engineer friend was dead sure that the water system was too shallow for me to be able to dig for a sunken bath and the width etc would not fit. He said he knew because he had done many houses. I insisted because I had a gut feeling... and I bought a bath tub anyway...decided to splurge a little and got a jacuzzi actually. They had no choice but to dig... partly to prove me wrong... only to find out that I was right. And as I have sat many times in my sunken bath, I cannot help but feel what a great investment... and how glad I was to have insisted... trust that little voice.
posted by notts at 6:04 PM
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