NAFASI THE BLOG

The Guest Room It was really easy to forget about the bedrooms through the hallway. We weren't renovating them, we were keeping the floors the same and the walls were just white. They were 3 simple rooms and not the highest on my priority list, considering the magnitude of the main area and all of the work that that needed! But after looking at it this way for so long, and basically using it as a huge walk in closet, I wanted to get organized, and more importantly, I was in the mood to make a mural. :) This is how the guest bedroom looked when we moved in. First I took the old curtain rod down and had a wooden curtain rod made.  Then the mural began! I wanted to do something very bohemian, light, and resembling a layered watercolor. I added the circles Some yellow And some burnt orange and purple! (night-time painting lends for bad progress photos) But by morning it looked pretty good!! The next night I added some white geometr...

If you read the last blog article, The Kigali House Hunt Tour , you would have seen the huge selection of houses we looked at before finally making a decision. It's funny hearing everyone's votes for which house they thought we picked! Most people guessed that we'd chosen the 2 Story house in Rugando- Sorry to disappoint! We did NOT go with this one!!! In the end, we wanted to be as close as possible to the action in Kimihurura, and we thought, we won't be interacting with the stubborn landlord very often anyways, right?! Plus I couldn't get over the stone wall and fireplace, and we just had our hearts set on the Original House. (If you're interested in the 2 Story however, we worked with a great realtor, Peter, from Plut Properties! I definitely recommend him, and this house !!) :) Here's the Original  House again: We were walking to this house , and dreaming about how pretty it is, when we met Jean Luc, a realtor at Forrest Jackson across the...

...Before I get to the final house pictures. But this one's a doozy... Yeah that third shelf fell. I tried putting a big beautiful plant with a clay pot up there. It looked beautiful! For about 1 hour. The shelves even with anchors can't hold very much weight in old cement walls. It ripped out huge holes in the walls where the brackets were and dirt and pieces of pottery were all over the floor. It was so sad! The good news here- the maintenance team came and fixed it all immediately! Before I knew it holes were patched, the mess was cleaned, and by the next week the bracket was back up and I had painted over the new cement. The only down side is we had to move the shelves higher than their old placement to drill into a more solid part of wall, and the 2nd and 3rd shelves are now a little too tall to reach. Patrick's having an OK time with it though at least! While we're on the topic, another fumble occurred in our bathroom. The best part about ha...

I admit, we did do some more fun house accessory shopping even though our walls were crumbling. There is some urgency when your walls are crumbling, yes... but there's also urgency in the small touches that can make a home feel more like a home in the meantime. I'll get to those later and let's all just pretend we worked on the walls right away like good home owners!  So surrounding almost the whole house, at the bottom of the walls in these older homes, you'll see the  wall bubbling out just at the bottom. In one area in our hallway, I curiously touched the bubble, and poked right through the wall, dust and pieces crumbling to the floor! We called maintenance.  They came through and crumbled all the walls back and re-cemented them. There is a lot of moisture in the air when you live in the jungle! And the walls are made of cement, and then painted directly over with paint. The water fills the cement and collects at the bottom, and the paint seals the...