Not an easy job

House hunting can be an extremely tedious job that seems unending. You see one house that has 2 of the requirements on your list and another , which has the other 2 or 3 requirements, so what can one do except settle for the one that has at least some of the requirements and then try to add on or reconstruct the place according to one’s taste. This has been the case with us as well. After looking at no less than 24 houses in all shapes and sizes we were ready to call it a day and continue living in the small two bedroom apartment with three children, a dog and a maid, which had no lift and no covered parking!

 One fine day a friend called me and informed that there was a house which was just made for us although it was thirty years old and not well kept. You can imagine how I reacted to that . No one wants to see an over grown, thirty year old house and be told that it was just right for you ! But I did go more out of curiosity rather than anything else. What I saw made me feel extremely depressed since this was probably the worst house I had ever seen. But after I came home I began to go over the image of that old house in my mind and something made me go and take a second look. I then noticed that the house was not just old, it was old fashioned as well, however, it had tremendous possibilities.

The structure was solid and the wood used for the doors and window frames was treated jack! There was a large garden around it that had 2 mango trees, a jack fruit tree and several well grown flowering bushes and a few coconut trees. But I had the task of convincing my entire family before we could actually decide to buy the house. I still have a feeling that what convinced my hubby was its price, since we had seen a lot of other houses but the old house was the only one, that came within our budget .

Finally we found a place

However, initially when my hubby and children saw the place they rejected it outright and no matter what I told them ( I must have sounded like a very convincing and pushy real estate agent at that juncture because I had totally made up my mind about the place), they were not convinced either by the possibilities that the house had or the large garden around it. But a second look made them rethink and one by one all of us liked the old house and that’s how we bought our house. And that was just the beginning. It was anything but a dream house since I was constantly clearing up and cleaning up the place to make it liveable.

We were in dire need of more space since ours was a largish family and the children were growing and becoming more independent by the day and it was only fair that we provide them with more space to play and run around and the garden and the space around the house seemed like heaven. We decided to do up the interiors (consisting of some patch work and a coat of paint ), which also consisted of knocking down a few walls in between poky little rooms that were built in a row and generally spruce up and repair the old house that had been neglected for a number of years by the previous owners. We also redid the bathrooms which gave an entire new look to the place. However it took us more than six months before the house was ready for us to move in.

The main attraction for me at least was the large garden around it and some lovely seasonal flowering trees which were apparently more than 50 years old. Right then I had no energy to deal with the largely overgrown garden except get a couple of workers to get all the unnecessary plants cut and remove the weeds so that the children could run around and play eyes spies and hide and seek, which they did day in and out getting in everyone’s way. I decided to tackle the garden later on once we got settled into the house. We also decided to add on a verandah or a patio where we could have a drink in the evenings or during weekends with our guests and friends. I have always loved open places and loved the idea of having a balcony/verandah/patio of our own. I could already imagine all the sunlight and breeze we would have and also a view of the garden while we entertained our guests, relatives or just spending time with my own family.

Building a patio

The only space available to make this extension was to the side of the house .The site is an odd shaped one with an elongated portion, where there are a couple of really old flowering trees that I mentioned earlier and the mango trees as well.. Initially, we decided to open out the Dining hall, by extending the side wall, but, it had some practical structural difficulties so we had to consider other possibilities.

We finally decided to add a patio by the side of the dining room itself . We consulted our architect and he advised us not to invest too much on the structure and since we wanted light and air , decided to go in for a half wall measuring 2 feet high built all round the verandah, which was basically a raised platform .. The entire patio area measured roughly about 14 feet x 9 feet. Not too large by any standards , but , because of the design it could be fully utilised. Initially when it was built, it was an open space, but not very practical because of the heavy monsoon rains. So after a year we decided to enclose a part of it with a grill mesh and left the rest of it open.

I was amazed to see that the work on the patio was completed within a week since there was no roofing work involved . We used painted Cement sheets , which were placed on metal grids and screwed down which took less than 2 days to complete. For more light and brightness, a few square pieces were cut on the cement sheets by professionals , and Glass squares were placed and glued on to the cement sheets .

One of our architect friend recommended something that was being extensively used by many builders and designers while building farm houses. It consisted of 3 parts of Red mud, mixed with one part of lime and one part of cement and water was added to make a thick mixture , and this was painted on to the short 2 feet wall around the patio. The effect is that of an old ethnic greyish brown finish , which looked very attractive besides being very economical, which at that point of time was very important for us . After that we all took over and tried out our own painting with white lime , drawing some traditional figures on the wall ! Just when we were set to make full use of this space, we had a tragedy in the form of an overturned coconut tree from our neighbor’s garden which crushed the cement sheet roofing and part of the dining room tiled roof as well ( I was very annoyed when this happened because I had requested them to get a wire run around the tree and tie it up so since it was leaning heavily on our compound). They flatly refused to take any responsibility at all leave alone compensate for the damages...

Now we had to get the entire place done up again and we decided to settle for a concrete roofing which was expensive ,.But we had no other go since we had already moved in and part of the roof had a gaping hole open to the sky. This took another two months and we were completely wiped out as far as finances were concerned. I would be screaming like a banshee at my kids ( in fact my son coined that name for me when I went into one of those screaming fits- mummy is screaming like a banshee, the screaming ghost !!!). Eventually ,But we did settle down and very well too.

As things stand today

Now we have added on another floor to the main house and have plenty of space to accommodate a battalion but the children have grown up and moved away and that is the irony of life ! But when they come for their annual vacation it is like the good old times of fun and excitement for all of us. However to come back to the house construction, there were unending jobs to be done since it was after all an old house that had seen better days. But , for us that’s what made it endearing and in time all of us got to really like the place. The garden was simply left as it was with all the old trees except adding a few pots and plants of my own. We have kept potted plants , comfortable bamboo furniture with lots of colorful cushions and jute mats in the converted patio, which has now become our favorite place to relax. Children love to laze around there with a book or listen to music or surf the net !

We can see part of the garden that has a Purplish pink and white bougenvillea, which has grown and covered the entire roof of the patio. It is a lovely sight when the shrub is in full bloom. I spend a lot of time here doing most of my work like writing , reading , browsing , listening to music or just sit watching the greenery around me. During holidays children take a nap on the Rattan sofa and spend most of their waking hours there. It is not easy to buy or build a house, however it has been a rewarding experience in our case although we did have some tough times in the beginning.