Mom Luck

I'm extremely fortunate to have a Mom who is into architecture and interior design.  Through the years, she's been collecting a lot of old wood, materials and furnitures and using them in her projects.  These projects are mainly in our home as well as some properties she's fixed up herself.  In trying to save every penny for my first renovation project, I looked around her storehouse of stuff and thingamajigs.  I got leftover tiles -- those that were mostly white and mixed them with bargain tiles that I had to purchase to complete the required bathroom area. 

There were also leftover curtain and upholstery materials that were too pretty to pass up.  The occupants of this apartment will be a mother and her two young daughters so I thought these prints would be perfect for them.  From the curtain pattern, we could also derive the colors of the rooms, doors and accent on the walls.   I'm also doubly lucky that Nanette in our house knows how to sew and she's sewing up the curtains for free.  

I'm putting on Excel all the expenses including putting value on the items which I got for "free" which is quite considerable because of my mother's treasured stash.  So far I'm on budget at P49,000 (actual + projected) with the freebies amounting to around P25,000.

Yesterday, I went to Wilcon and Home Depot and was surprised how much curtain rods cost.  There were wooden and stainless steel types but they seemed to be overpriced.   I thought of having them made "for free" by my Mom's carpenter but then my Mom ingeniously suggested I can use old GI pipes that could easily be painted.   The "free" is in quotation marks because these are not actually free but paid for by Mom but passed on to me for "free."  What a super duper double triple blessing to have been born as my mother's daughter!

Bathroom Redo

The future occupant of this apartment insisted that this toilet is unacceptable and has to go. The one paying for the renovation doesn't believe this should be changed at all.  To save on materials, I scrounged around for extra tiles and we'll see in a day or two whether the chopsuey look will be pulled off with success or not. 

It took six days to chip off the tiles and new workers came in today to install the new tiles.  One half of the total renovation is going to redoing this bathroom while the other half will go to painting.  The rest goes to minor repairs and putting in a missing door.  We had to go to the hardware three times this morning and realized we need to buy materials in Paranaque instead of Makati because of the considerable price difference.  The worker gave me a long list of materials but I decided not to buy them all at once to make sure we just get what's needed as we go along.

The First Contender

This is the two bedroom apartment that I'm aiming to renovate within three weeks with a budget of P45,000.  Week one has passed and mostly that was spent taking out the bathroom tiles.  To save on costs, I used the scrap wood from another renovation project which I've put on hold because this has to be finished first because the occupant is moving in soon.   Also, that other project is a lot bigger than this and would take a couple of months.

I wish I had a bigger budget to work with so that I can do more to improve the spaces especially the windows and doors but I'll have to work with what's available.  That's also part of the game that I intend to win - come in within the budget while creating spaces that the occupant would relish to go home to.

The main bedroom upstairs is well-lit but the kitchen and living areas downstairs are shrouded in darkness.   For this main bedroom, I wish I can install sandblasted glass that would allow light to go into the other bedroom which has no access to natural light.  However, that would be too expensive and there must be a creative yet cheap way to mask the ugliness of this wall -- curtains!

The furnitures have been donated by a relative and I have to scrounge around for additional donations to furnish this.

Dark, dingy and sad corner of the kitchen that we hope can be resurrected in new light.  Apparently, the windows continue up till the end and were just boarded up to make way for cabinet space. 



Starting Out

Almost a decade ago, I visited Central Park in New York and read the dedications on the benches.  People bought the right to memorialize their loved ones and it was interesting how everyone had names on the tiny engraved plaques, sometimes accompanied by favorite quotations or personal messages.  There was one bench that I thought was set apart from the rest and totally unique.  It had no name.  It just said "Entirely of Possibility" and I contemplated the peculiarity of it -- the person wishing to emphasize one compelling idea while remaining totally anonymous whereas everyone else deemed it important to name either themselves and/or their beloved.  Since then, I adopted the phrase as my email address and thought someday, I'll have a blog with that title.  As procrastination goes, this is one of those delayed by many different reasons that finally ran out today. 

There are many dream projects that I've started, abandoned, rediscovered and rekindled throughout my life so this blog will touch on those.  For starters, I'll talk about the renovation project that I'm working on at the moment.