How best can your house be renovated?
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Arriving at a decision whether to renovate your house or build a new one is difficult. A look at a newly renovated house
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By special arrangement
Before and after: Sweeping changes were made to the house.
Renovating a house involves meticulous planning and patience, especially if the whole building is to be remodelled and extended. The huge costs, labour, time and effort make renovation a difficult choice for a family. Buying a new house often seems so much easier. Anilkumar Pandala, an information technology professional, and his wife, Devi, an architect, took their time weighing all the options before making the decision to give their 25-year-old house a makeover. The fam
ily bought the house in 2002 from the landlord at the end of their tenancy.
“We discussed the pros and cons thoroughly before arriving at a decision,” Mr. Pandala says. Predictably, designing the house was an in-house affair. Ms. Devi employed her professional skills to remodel the whole structure and add a new floor.
Six months later, when the family of five moved in after the renovation, the house was as good as new. The addition of a floor saw an increase in the area from 1,300 sq.ft to 2,400 sq.ft. Except the outer walls and the staircase, nothing of the old house remained.
The load-bearing walls were retained for structural safety. Two beams and supporting columns were added to take the additional weight. The interior configuration was completely altered.
The original entrance from the south was shifted to face the east and a new car porch provided at the southwest corner. The double doors at the main entrance open into a cosy living room. The dining room at the centre opens into two bedrooms and the kitchen. The staircase sports wooden tiles recycled from waste wood.
The space under the staircase is used as a utility and storage area, while a nearby recess was converted into a puja room. The kitchen at the northeast corner of the old house was replaced by a bedroom for Mr. Pandala’s mother. Another bedroom adjoins the car porch.
The kitchen sports a granite counter top and a small granite dining table mounted on a single metal leg.
The staircase leads up to a music room which also doubles up as a library and photo storage area. A smaller room at one end is designed as a home gym. The master bedroom-cum-study has been provided with a wooden ledge near the window.
A pergola spanning the wide balcony is a dominant feature of the building. “The balcony was designed for the whole family to sit and watch the rain,” Ms. Devi says.
Thoughtful additions such as a small sit out at the entrance, a solid granite pillar at the main entrance, a slatted wooden jalli with folding shutters providing a view up to the gate and granite-topped window sills add utility and aesthetic value. The mud blocks on the compound wall lend an ethnic touch to the house. So do the cane furniture, large terracotta pot and the brass clock in the living room. Only the bedrooms in the house have doors. The configuration of rooms is in such a manner that the walls lend just the right amount of privacy to each space. All the doors and windows in the old house were sold off and replaced with new ones. Large windows all round keep fresh air circulating through the house. While the window frames are made of pincoda, the shutters sport teakwood.
Looking back, the couple feel that the Rs. 14 lakh spent on the renovation was worth it. “Constructing a new house would have cost Rs. 10 lakh more. It would also have taken several more months,” Mr. Pandala says.
Ms. Devi admits that renovation is much more difficult than building a new house. “It took years for us to make the choice. But by the time the work commenced, we had everything worked out to the last detail. Both of us had a clear idea of the plan right from the word go.”
Expectedly, the construction of beams and columns proved to be the most expensive element in the renovation work. All the walls were re-plastered, the mosaic flooring was changed to ceramic and the electric wiring changed.
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Property Plus
Coimbatore
