Our Slow-DIY Home

I think the perfect words to describe keeping a home is: it is a stressful joy. We moved into our 300 sqm bungalow six years ago, through generous permission to to live in the same place where Awesome Guy grew up.  It's been a time-consuming project to play house ever since.

This is the foyer area when we moved in

Compared to this house, my family lived in a shoebox!  I grew up in a house less than half this size, in a family of 5 daughters and one bathroom.  It was kalat and chaos, and fights and fun.  It's funny now how our talk about fashion and music has turned into home decor and organization.

But having a home this size is definitely like a forever-project to me : we simply don't have enough time or money to call it finished.  Ok, those and decisiveness.  I'm always changing things up to find what works best.

This is what that same area looks like today.  See the paper bags?  That's the next project: lighting.  We're always in the middle of something or another.

We settled into a pattern of having one major home improvement per year, but that throws everything back into "temporary" decor.

Two years back we had one wall of windows turned into a doorway.  That's 'foreman' Awesome Guy striking a pose.

It looked like this when we moved in (I can't find a more recent one before the renovation)

And this was the small side area of the home, which we turned into a laundry washing area.

Here's the 'after' : it's now a functional place for play.

This year, it's our closets makeover, which still looks like we just dumped things back.  Nothing in this house is finished yet.  By finished, I mean I want everything to be organized and functional according to our lives everyday.

Everything just needs to earn it's place.  I feel strange doing pretentious decor vignettes, like so:

I simply can't make room for breakable white statues.  But I did buy this side table probably because it was merchandised so well.  Photo from Bungalow 300.  

Having Ladybug Girl in our lives means needs change constantly around the house.  For example, I love creating play spaces.  It's a no-brainer for me to choose to make room for a pretend play area vs. a large unused dining room:

Oh wait, I did that already.

And then reading blogs and pinterest inevitably inspires me to make things pretty, not just functional.  Add those to the long list of home projects, which I've named just like my projects at work.

This is Project Green:

My peg for bringing some successful green life inside.  I've killed maybe P2,000 worth of plants already. 

Judging from how this post has gotten all over the place, I think you get the idea.  Awesome Guy rolls his eyes at me, and asks me if I even have an end-goal in mind.  So I think I'll make him read this post.

But then he'll smirk and tell me I love it anyway.

And the man knows me well.  Because I do.