from drab to fab

i am extremely satisfied with how our home improvement project is going. as most of you already know, for the past month now, most of our time, energy, and resources have been geared towards revamping what used to be an umabitious bachelor's pad into something a more sophisticated couple would live in. our condo-townhouse has just turned 1 last march 28, and we thought there has never been a better time than now to give it its long overdue makeover.

also known as a duplex in the philippines, our house sits on a quiet subdivision that is slightly elevated from the road. It is composed of two modest floors with two bedrooms (one converted into an office/library for the time being), a living room with an almost floor-to-ceiling window that overlooks a bed of greenery and the road outside, a kitchen and a dining area that overlooks a small patio, and a separate garage about 10 steps away. It's a nice small house just about right for newly weds. It's not much by any standard, but it's ours and we have it only to ourselves. i must commend bong for his foresight, for not many guys his age would have the prudence and initiative to invest and build up assets even if there was a more comfortable option for us to live in his family's house.

most people who have been to our house say that its main selling point is its choice location, where everything--from commercial complexes such as the streets of woodfield, to convenience stores such as target, dominick's, and walmart, to schaumburg's business district, recreation centers, and array of specialty restaurants, to hospitals, fire stations, and other places of interest--is within easy reach. for me, though, what i like most about it is the presence of a golf course (or two, i'm not sure if the two are connected) and a small man-made lake just across the street.

i didn't truly appreciate how amazing the location of our house was until spring began. under a clear blue sky, you can alsmost see a 180-degree view of green, perfectly manicured grass that gently slopes toward an inside road. on this carpet of grass just outside our front door are yellow dandelions and a number of maple trees under which i can imagine myself reading a book or eating home-grilled pork barbecue or lamb kebab on a warm and sunny day. we even had a row of red tulips, which to our surprise, bloomed and recoiled on its own accord as the weather changes. they all died just as fast as they had bloomed, but i'm anticipating that a new batch of blooms are already well on their way.

the inside of the house, though it looked utterly clean, needed a little work and a lot of imagination. the first thing we did was to splash a dash of color onto its pale walls to give it a young and vibrant look. then we added some plants to freshen and enliven it. this turned out tricky as neither of us had a green thumb. we have probably killed a whole nursery of plants before we found a few that do not require too much attention--one of which is an orchid plant, which, to our ohhs and ahhs, can actually subsisit on 3 ice cubes a week.

we are now in the process of touching up paint spillovers in between completing the furniture we need. you have no idea how many home and furniture stores and flea markets we have been to just to get good deals. we actually don't need too much, as we want all our things to complement each other and to serve a purpose. this means no antique drawers, wooden statues, or glass figurines for us--those take too much space and cleaning time (which i unfortunately barely have).

i really have a good feeling about how it's gonna look as soon as we're done. it has really come a long way since the first time i've seen it last october. before it felt cold being inside it; i felt more like a guest, a stranger. maybe it's because i wasn't there when bong purchased the house, although i've seen pictures before the actual purchase. maybe because most of my personal things were left in the philippines and i have nothing to bind myself with. maybe because the house didn't say much about me or about bong, except the fact that it was uber clean (bong's a neat freak; he makes me look like a slob). maybe because it was fall and the weather wasn't exactly warm and welcoming. or maybe because i was never really sure if this is the kind of world i want to belong to.

but after doing all this makeover, i began to develop and establish a strong affinity with this house. i may not have the right to say that i've done it with my own bare hands, but let me just reiterate that--contrary to what bong is telling everyone else--i am a major force in this makeover project. like how it has always been in this relationship, i am the brain, he's the brute (hun, if you wish to retaliate, you put up your own blog). hopefully though, as i try to give our house a facelift, i'll be able to pick up a thing or two from watching the "queer eye for the straight guy." whatever semblance of style or taste i have accumulated over the years, i got it either from the fab five or my mother.

i must say that my mother's sense of style is effortlessly immaculate; mine pales in comparison with hers. she fancies expensive things too, but only those that complement her and do not violate her creative parameters. she also knows when to buy affordable ones without letting you figure out the difference. she sets the trend among her colleagues, that even the wealthiest of her friends would ransack the racks of the rustans just to get hold of even a semblance of what she has. it only goes to show that you can never buy class and style, that you can don yourself with the latest and the most expensive item there is on the runways of milan and still look cheap and tacky. that's one thing that our brand-crazy generation does not understand until now.

but more than anything else, i like the fact that even if this project has left us tired from walking from one flea market to another and with little time to sleep, it has given bong and i plently of time to bond, laugh, play, think, work, talk, choose, make plenty of mistakes, overhaul, restart, and learn together. even with too many instances of painting and repainting, in between installing, dismantling, and re-installing, and despite buying, changing our minds, returning, and buying again--our house still has a long way to go. it's still far from perfect, but at least it looks a lot better now, a lot more colorful, a lot livelier.

i know months from now, some of our handiworks would backfire on us (labor here costs much so we had to rely on those do-it-yourself thingies), but right now, at this very moment, i could say that i couldn't be any happier. like everything else in my life right now, our house is a work in progress, and it will continue to be so as each day progresses, as we continue to change and grow with the changing of seasons. as i've said, it may not be much, but it's ours, it's a by-product of our conjugal thoughts and actions, it's all that we have in our hands--and what we have is great.