Back to home from home!

Had a wonderful trip! Had tons of fun. I don't know where to begin, so will just write as it comes to my memory (no chronological order). The first thing I did, after I landed (of course after refreshing) in India, I surprised my friend (Sai) by going straight to her work. It took her one day to recover from it. I spent most of the time on this trip in Interior Designing of a single bed-room apartment. I don't like to call it Interior Decoration for some reason. For most of you who don't know my background, I am an Architect by training and never practiced officially other than few design suggestions to friends and relatives.
We have a single bed-room apartment close to my MIL's place (Mother-In-Law) that is by all means must have been designed by the contractor himself or a Civil Engineer or by a compromised Architect. The bed room has no ventilation except for a small opening into the shaft. They were cement shelves in each room and the floor was marble got a Wow! effect in the family. The half dying Architect in me shouted aloud, Help Me! (quite dramatic ha). Any ways so walked to Sai's (practicing Architect) office and said and I need some renovation done to my apartment. She was like, "OK - What do you want to do with it". I need to cover those shelves and do something with the bed-room lighting. It took two days for us to meet with their Interior Designer. I told him what I exactly wanted done to the apartment. He didn't expect a very decisive client who is an Architect by training at first, later we understood each other very well. I designed the whole thing, Sai implemented it in Auto-CAD and the ID (Interior Designer) suggested the labor and materials. You need to have lot of patience and money management skills to get work done. You need to be there 24 X 7 while the work is going on, otherwise things turn out to be just the opposite of what you want :) Ma'am this looks great! Moi, No! I want it like this was the quote of the month. Meanwhile DH (Dear Husband) was getting fits with my construction/renovation budget. It looks great already what are you doing to it? Huh! Please wait until it is done- me on the other end, miles away trying to convince him of my Architectural abilities. It is a three-week story, I will post some tidbits later meanwhile enjoy the pictures. At the end the single-bed/single-bath turned out to be a cute double-bed/double-bath apartment. I was happy to have completed it with utmost satisfaction and so was everyone including DH.