A week trial as a housewife

Photo by Angelina

Shifted in officially last Wednesday 23rd of Dec. And it was also the first day of my week trial as a housewife. I think it must be the third day, I slumped myself over my Mum's kitchen top and exclaimed that it is definitely harder to be a housewife than a career woman. Cos being a housewife is HARD WORK! I have read such exclamation on the net from new homemakers before but how difficult it is to do house chores? Oh no.... I was sooo wrong.

If you break up the house chores to individual task, they are not rocket science. Vacuum, mop the floor, wash the dishes, wipe the stove, clean the toilet bowl, make the bed... try doing them every day and you will realised it will eat up all your available time and is Never Ever Ending. There is always hairs on the floor no matter how many times you sweep it, dishes in the sink, dirty laundry to wash....

When I responded enthusiastically about finally having a house of my own to my secondary school friend, she shook her head cynically and said "talk to me in 3 months". Hey, I don't need 3 months. It took me only 3 days to wave the white flag. Yet..

Another been there done that friend advised me to skip the trying part and just get the express card to the weekend cleaner club. "The quality of life is sooo much better.. look, when you are looking forward to get away from work in the weekends, you don't want to spend all those precious time mopping the floor". Very valid point. Check out how I look now. An oily faced and hair, T-shirt and shorts, birkenstocked walking figure every time of the day since a week ago. Not a pretty sight.

But stubbornly, not really sure what I want to prove, I still want to give it a go. It is not all about the money (by the way it is rather reasonable to hire weekend cleaner, market rate is going at $50/day) but more liked something I always wanted to do. Be able to juggle both work and home well.

I remembered what my Bazi Teacher Master Chew told me. He said that whenever he does reading for career women who have problems with their spouse and family, he always asked if they ever do up a home cooked meal for them before. I guess it is chauvinistic for him to say that but his point is really about how a family is not just built on money and material comfort but love and warmth. So the Martha Steward in me came out of the closet (Okie, fine, not really a hidden fact.:P) and I just want to try my hands in juggling these two very challenging roles.

And I only dare to think of this option as I am blessed with a participative husband to be.We kind of took on our roles naturally; he doing the technical (TV, internet, washing machine, basically anything with a manual) and labor intensive stuff and me the cooking, washing, kitcheny stuff. And the rest, we do them together. I am crossing my fingers that both of us have the stamina to last.

On a festive note, tt has been really fun throwing the Xmas even party last Thursday with Yong's friends and I am so looking forward for tomorrow's. We decided throw Pajamas theme party and everyone has to be wearing one before they step into the house. Hee.. Can't wait...

It has been an interesting year jam packed with happenings. First the proposal, the house buying, the renovation, shifting of house... Phew.. Throw in my unusually frequent melancholy moments.. this is one heck of a year.

It is indeed a poignant moment, sitting in my new living room, typing away on my work laptop (yes I had to work during my leave) reflecting on the year.

And I can't wait for the new year to come.. :)

The morning after

Whenever I can't get over a certain event or decision in life, I like to quietly observe my feelings the moment I wake up the next day. That raw instinct, more often than not, is the most accurate reflection of what my soul feels. 

Today I woke up feeling calmer than before. More resigned to fate.

I think that is a good thing.

I found some small sparks of optimism rousing. Am already starting to think how to resuscitate my ruined holiday plans. That is a good sign. A very good sign.

Today is 'face off' day with Henry. Took the day off to meet up and go through the final quotation plus defects we are unhappy about. Not pleasant task but inevitable.

Was browsing Flickr for some pix to cheer me up and found this:

Photo by  Jelly Dude

And felt much better already :)

Purge

Photo by limaoscarjuliet's

Just finished 3 hours chat with Mum. Felt much better after the verbal diarrhea. It has been a while since the last long chat.

Too much 'toxic' built up within my soul. Thoughts I do not share with others, for the fear that the minuscule details of my life will bore them to death.

The growing insecurity slowly but surely gnaw away the happy carefree part of me. Poisoned with burdens and worries I can't let go. I had to verbalize these emotions to make sense of my unhappiness.

And boy I did with Mum. And Mum being Mum, she patiently listened to all my grievances with no judgment or solution. She helped by simply listening and loving me despite.

So now, I am safe again. Purged clean of my wicked musing. And hopefully a good night sleep awaits me.

Nearly completed home sweet home..

Update: Completed reno photos here 

We started reno back in the later part of September 09. There was some delay. Both contractor and us contributed to the 2 weeks delay. Henry told us pricing of aircon and electrical work just days before the scheduled time to start work on those. We did not agree to the pricing so had to spend time hunting around for other quotes.

So now we are in the first week of Dec which I originally thought would have me and Yong sipping our cups of tea on the new sofa, watching the birds fly past our balcony.

My sofa is still under wrapped, protected from the layers of saw dust swirling around the house. There is no cup of tea in sight since my kitchen is still half done. My balcony door is still jammed stuck due to its decade old bearings and dust. And...what birds....

But but but.. we are progressing and nearing the last stage of reno so i do have some pix that can quite do as the "after" photos. So here goes nothing:

My living room had a fresh coat of paint in bluish grey or greyish blue depending on the lighting. We did a feature wall in Fiord Blue from Nippon Paint to give that pop of color against our light grey furniture club sofa. The green cushions which I regretted choosing almost immediately after, blended in well with the rest of the living room colors. This is the part of the house I am most pleased about.

More of that grey-blue paint in the dining area. Fresh coat of paint on the front door. And our Furniture club Dining set. They delivered the wrong size so i will upload the right set later.

We do not have any storeroom to keep our barangs barangs so Yong designed this storage cabinet in the dining area. I wanted a place to keep our shoes away from the dining table area so he incorporated the "shoes" cabinet together with the round theme he wanted for our carpentry. We are really pleased with the results. :)

We re-do our kitchen. Hacked the floor, tore down all the cabinets but left the wall tiles intact. We tiled the floor and overlay the wall tiles. Choose hanging kitchen cabinets so we can have lights installed beneath them. Everything is white cos choosing the colors for the living room took half our life away (we are not really good with visualizing colors) including the solid surface top and glass backing.

We also tailor made TV storage unit for our living room. Not really by choice as our layout of the living/dining area is kind of strange. We have to erect the TV stand in the middle of the two area so had to custom made the entire console. Again, after much sleepless nights poring over magazine tear outs and websites, Yong came up with this design to keep the woofers on the left and DVDs in the round round drawers and all other audio devices in the bottom shelves which will be covered by glass panels. Swee boh?

We tore down the original far east wardrobe in the masterbedroom and get Besglas which carried Alumix to install their signature pole system wardrobe. Again, the reason behind it is that we need more space to dump barangs in.

Will have more pix coming up when the work in the toilets are more of less done. 

Ups and downs of Renovation

This is Yong and my first hands on project. I expected shouting matches and screaming tantrums, which of cos comes from me, amidst the uphill task of redoing our place via *gasp* contractor. With no ID to templatize the whole process, we are left with magazine tearouts, scribbles, emails, hand gesturing (the non crude kind) in desperate moments to communicate our design whims to our dearest Main Con Henry.

I got his contact from Renotalk which we got lots of reno tips and not to mention contacts. SuperSimon kindly shared his reno process and his wonderful kitchen caught my eyes and after the flurry of emails, phonecalls, meet up and wham, my reno started.

Let me start off with the before photos first:
My main entrance which leads straight to the dining area

 

View from dining to living area. The door beneath the aircon leads to my kitchen:

My 12 years old kitchen:

Door from kitchen that leads to Yard area and toilet. Check out the huge aircon compressor hanging above:

Living room walkway to the bedrooms:

Busy looking Masterbedroom toilet:

Teeny weeny Masterbedroom:

Even more teeny weeny 2nd bedroom:

Common toilet in its 90s tiles glory:

And here you go, the 12 years old estate ready for some much needed rejuvenation.

Reno preview

Teaser of my upcoming entries. And it is all about the house.. All about the house.. *beam*