Thursday 24 April 2014

Upkeep


This post comes a little late but well! these days I just try to squeeze as much time as possible. Home straightening is going on, but along with that the preparations are on for my son's 7th birthday. Mix all that with the lousy teacher discussions with the school friends' moms and then follow ups with the academic head, and you get a great 'Khichdi'.



 Anyways, These days I am upto a challenge with myself and all the other GREAT goings as mentioned above. Continual upkeep of the home. As I have mentioned, some of the areas of my home are in a mess, but still there are some which are clean and mess free. My challenge is to keep them tidy and clean at all times. I am not there 100% yet for all the areas, but I can say, I am doing very well is keeping up the master bathroom and kitchen. The appliances are kept sparkling clean and 80% of the tiles are clean. In case you are wondering of the missing challenge , let me tell you that I am not taking any extra time to clean / maintain the cleanliness in these areas. I am just utilizing my time in these areas in an efficient manner. Like, when I am making tea, instead of waiting for the tea to boil, I am cleaning up the cabinet doors and tiles. Similarly, while waiting during my son's bath, the bathroom is getting cleaned up. Absolutely no extra time is being devoted. And it is working...... (so far).

I hope they will say this for me some day....



Tuesday 22 April 2014

Sell–> Keep-> Renovate-> Love

 

Hey Friends!!! In case you are wondering about the title of the post, let me assure you that by the end of this post, you will know why it is titled so. This is going to be a long post with lots of pictures….

Whole of march and half of April, our house was in the hands of carpenter or painter. And since, there were places that we could not use much, the accessible places became a mess, specially my son’s room. It is still a mess, but the rest of the house is taking its shape now. Mostly every room has undergone some change , some have minor changes and some have a completely different look. I will talk about the rooms in my later post. But this post, I am specifically dedicating to one piece –> Our TV Wall unit.

image

Sometime back, I had mentioned about this wall unit, that we wanted to sell. We had actually finalized on the price as well with the buyer (Rs. 3500). One fine day, we called him and told him that he needs to just take it away now that our woodwork was in progress. He responded that he will come in a day or two and will take the piece away. We waited for him for a week, and then he came. He said that he will come back in few hours after arranging for the transport.And then, he did not come back. Meanwhile, we were almost certain that he is either not willing to buy it, or he wants to lower the price. I was fed up of the mess and uncertainty and the dependency on someone. I talked to the carpenter and made a decision to reuse that wall unit.

To remind you, this is the picture of the wall unit.

1383717301_563602344_1-TV-wall-unit-Indirapuram

We have a TV in my in-law’s room, but the wall unit was too much overpowering in that room. It took so much space and the left side shelves were really not that usable. I asked the carpenter to make four parts of this structure. One wall panel, second lower cabinet, third shelves rack, and fourth the corner unit. I have tried to depict the different components of the wall unit explaining what was made into what.

Edited Wall Unit Picture

He did that , and lo, we had such amazing pieces of furniture to use. The corner unit was too tall, so I asked the carpenter to put the shelves in between to make a small size corner unit to be placed at the far end of our lobby.

We had a small unused mica sheet left from another project (Study table) and another mica sheet from the new storage almirah, which the carpenter fixed on the unit. This piece now holds our medicines and such stuff. This also gives a much needed pop of red color in this area. This is a closer view.

Corner Unit

This is how it looks from the living room.

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farLook

I simply love this look and it serves a great function too, an accessible place for medicines.

The second piece is left portion of shelves with the glass door. The carpenter shortened it and made two pieces with one extra shelf. The extra shelf was used in the kitchen, one box serves as bed side table in in law’s room, and three shelves put horizontally and serve as book rack in my son’s room.

 

bookRack

Remaining were the wall panel and lower cabinet. The wall panel is put on the wall with a small TV, and I got a shelf inserted in the lower cabinet which is now used for seating and inside is a book rack.

 

wallPanel

I am still not done with the uses. There were still a few pieces left. Two big shelves which were used in this console table.(Yes, I got that made too). I will relate the story later.

console table

The crockery unit that we had gotten made, did not have enough shelves to put cups and glasses. So the glass shelf that we got from wall unit, I put that in the unit and wow… we had enough space.

crockeryUnitEdited

Can you see the extra shelf which has the glasses on it???

The only thing remaining was two small shelves and the glass door. The shelves again went into the kitchen for extra shelving needs in cabinets and the glass door, I got that fixed in the balcony horizontally to hold the smaller and cute looking planters for plants.

glassDoor

This is in its current state. We still have not cleared up the mess from balcony and my son’s room.

After having got all this done, I feel really satisfied . A simple book shelf would cost us Rs. 2000. Even by including the cost of labour , around Rs. 2000 , I feel that we got stuff worth more than 12-15K.

Phew!! That is it from my side today.. For past one and a half months, I have not been writing regularly for my blog. Although, in my head, the posts publish daily. I have written earlier as well that I do intend to go back to writing regularly but something or the other happens and all my commitments go down… So, today I am not committing anything. We’ll see how it goes.

In the end, do you now relate to the title of the post?? Is the title apt?? What do you think of the uses I got out of the wall unit? I would love to know….

Monday 7 April 2014

Hurray!!!!!!

Finally !I am glad I am writing this post!!The carpenter is out of our house. Now the wood polish and paint work is remaining.. But that will just be a 2-3 days job,once it gets started,hopefully tomorrow! This past one month,I have got so many things done,that I just am not able to understand as to from where should I start narrating. Oh well'! I will just go one by one. The house is still a mess but this is still tolerable. From tomorrow, I will be on organizing spree, and I plan to share all that with you! Oh , did I mention ,I am glad to be back on blogging! And actually, I have already started organizing bits and pieces, and the proof of that - I am blogging from my googlenexus - the tablet. I have charged this tablet after around 8 months! Don't ask me why please!!!!

Phew!! I will just leaveyou With a few pictures of my home in the current state. From tomorrow, I will post about the work/organizing and other stuff.....


Thursday 3 April 2014

Slow and Steady!!!!




Dust, Mess everywhere and still loving it!!! Dont get me wrong! Although now, I am a bit tired of looking at the mess all over at home, I am still loving the feeling that finally  I am getting some concrete and beautiful done and that too to my liking.

I had mentioned in my last post, that we have outsourced the woodwork that we had planned to get done. Although the closet that we wanted was completed in a week, I am coming up with new work for the carpenter almost daily. And so far, we have gotten quite a few things done.The work is in the last stages now, hopefully it should be over by this weekend, provided I dont come up with any new tasks.(wink wink)

Since all that is getting done, the laptop remained hidden for the initial days. Then One fine day, it surfaced and I thought of writing down my post. Then realized, that it was not charged. Looking for the adapter to charge it was going to be a tidious task with a baby in one hand. So, I just let it be.

The reason I am narrating this story is to let you know that although in my head I really did not want any gap in my blogging, but sometimes my laziness, sometimes circumstantial, it just happened.For past few days, all the time I am thinking of the stuff that I want to be done with the residuals, much to the dismay of carpenter.

 I will be back next week (With high hopes) with pictures of my home.