Well, from the headline you thought I will talk about the famous song from Vanessa Williams but no…this is all about your home interiors. While I have written earlier on how to set up a budget for home interiors and thumb rules for costing your interiors, the thought around this post hit me when I saw that ugly blue box fixed next to the main door of that 3.5 Crore Luxury Apartment.
It was during one of the visits to an ongoing project site that led to the episode of the blue box … allow me to elaborate. This is a luxury multi crore apartment, limited edition with just 2 apartments per floor, a lift directly entering the apartment and the works, an apartment that most aspire to buy once the war chests and bank balances have copiously overflown. The neighboring home owners on the same floor where our work was going on had just completed their interiors but were yet to shift in. Standing wide and tall, next to their main door and casting its shadow on the entire corridor stood this ugly blue box, apparently to store and hide the footwear of all humanity. Though it was meant to be a simple shoe rack, the dimension and design of it was so un-planned and un-done that it un-did the entire 3.5 Crores worth of luxury that the entire apartment exuded. Though I did not get a chance (nor did I really want one) to speak to the designer who did the place, what was immediately evident was that by the time the home came to the “interior ready” stage the owner had well run over her budgets. The blue box type interiors were mostly a result of the deep negotiation for full home interiors (all 3000 square feet of it) that the owner had sqeezed out from the vendor. Well the squeezing did have its own set of unplanned outcomes and the birth of the blue box was one such.
Now that we have made the point that Interiors do need a budget that needs to be protected under lock and key right till the end of the home buying process (lest you get carried away spending it all) what really remains to be answered is how much should one actually plan for the interiors. I have tried answering this on an earlier post on this blog and you may want to revisit it. Refer thumb-rules for costing home interior work. Since the time that post was written in 2013 good old inflation would have hiked up the cost by 30 to 40 % hence please account for that in your planning. If you still have questions then feel free to write in using comments section of this post
Happy budgeting and, as they say, may the force be with you
Cheers
Nandita
