The Project

Now that my house is 95% finished, I can blog again.

It's kind of a good feeling to know that I'm living decently again. And of course, much poorer financially now, considering that I had to spend quite a sum OVER and ABOVE the budget because my interior decorator was giving my bank account a financial make-over as well. Oh well, after 35 years, it was time to give the much needed face lift.

I've asked my partner to bring his camera over one of these days and take photos of our new house. For the meantime, for those that have seen my old house, they seem to give a thumbs up sign for the make-over.

And now the billing starts. And it's time to sing the rhythm and the rhyme, "I owe, I owe, so off to work I go..."

It's a long weekend this week and next week, thanks to our economically deranged president who thinks that the economic holidays are the solution to this country's problems. Anyone who thinks that the little Philippines is tantamount to the US has got to be hallucinating. The traffic yesterday was hell! The Filipino is not known for being thrifty. As long as there's a holiday, off to the provinces in hoards and droves. And the tiny expressway which is likewise getting a face lift at snails pace has contributed to the expense of the middle class family just for gasoline.

It was mom's birthday the other day, August 15 and we had a little house warming even though it wasn't completely done yet.

The raves of her friends on the house were generally good. That was nice. But considering they were between 60-85 years old, they'd really find everything good. Hahaha.... They loved the bathrooms and thought my architect, Dindo Valdes did a good job. The house was, according to the mom of Anton Barreto, very Cocoy Cordoba. Of course, for people like me who didn't know these artistic flares in interior design, I left everything to the interior decorator.

The good and the bad of the project.

The good part is that at the end of the 2 months make-over, you get to appreciate a really new home.

The bad part I thought outweighed the good. For those into make-overs, remember not to commit the same mistakes I did.

1. When you get an interior decorator and you have no idea of anything, ASK. I trusted the interior decorator with all the quotations only to find out during the project that I would have to find my own carpenter, my own architect, that all the quotations did not include all the accessories to make the home look much nicer or like a showroom. And the accessories were simply beautiful, but the cost was much more than the cost of the furnitures he put into the house! And so you can just imagine how much it cost me.
2. Living inside the house during the who make-over was like living in Desert Storm. Now I know how the homeless felt. We were moving balikbayan boxes in crates and we filled about 15 boxes just for our personal stuff. Oh my God. After all had been done, it was like going through purgatory just unpacking them AGAIN and trying to figure out if it was gold, or it was trash. We're still sorting them out now and we're in box number 7.
3. Never ever get everything from the interior decorator. Well, he did the drapes, he did the wallpaper installation of the ceilings, he did the painters....and he fought with the painters...who did a lousy job and I ended up spending AGAIN to have the painting re-done. And the painters never came back to finish the work. And I was fully paid.

Lessons learned. I resolved that I shall never, ever have my house re-done again. I will just go buy a new one in the future.

As for interior decorators, I vowed never to get another one in a project again.