Home Renovations
Boy’s Experience of home renovations in the Sixties
When I was six, my parents decided to renovate and extend our family home. With two little kids, me and my baby sister, extending a home in-situ was bound to be disruptive. But theirs was a bold decision.
Our home had two bedrooms, a living room, and an external firewood kitchen. There was a toilet and a water well for washing outside in the huge garden. The home built in the 1930s by my grandfather was basic.
The renovations and extension plans were ambitious; four new areas, dining, two new bedrooms and a modern kitchen. It was to double the size of our home. When completed, it would become one of the biggest houses in my neighbourhood.
The building supervisor was Jeremias, my mother’s cousin. His assistants and workmen were my mother’s cousins, three brothers, Publis, Joseph and Michael, young men in their early twenties to late teens. They were my blood relatives. The renovation was a family affair.
In no time, bags of cement, bricks, river sand, and wooden planks arrived in mini lorries and carts in our front yard. Our front yard became a construction site before my eyes.
Under Jeremias’s supervision, work began. The four men went into action with gusto, wearing short sarongs and bare-bodied. They mixed cement, sand and water pulled from the well. They carried bricks and laid them by hand. . It was pure hard labour, toil and sweat by the four able-bodied young men. \
My mother cooked and served lunch to her cousins at noon. In between work, tea was served, and I helped out.
I was comfortable among the workers; they were my uncles. It was a big family affair. They called me ‘putha’, meaning son. I called them by their name with ‘mama’, added at the end. Michael became Michael mama. Mama means uncle in Lankan. Among my uncles, I felt free. The construction site became my new playground. Fortunately, back in the day, there was no heavy machinery but simple tools operated by hand. No harm could come to a curious young boy.
Tools like chisels, saws, files, foldable rulers, hand drills, hammers, and tape measures were now plenty around me. I examined them, turning them up and down to quell my curiosity, obviously under our friendly workmen’s supervision. I had never seen so many tools in my life.
Every day after school, I changed quickly, joined them and watched them at work. The elder three were masters of their trade and multi-skilled. They were bricklayers, tilers and carpenters all in one. They laid bricks, fixed timber trusses on the roof, laid roof tiles, made doors and windows, and fixed locks. They used a ladder made of two bamboo sticks to climb up to heights. Michael, the youngest of the four, was the apprentice. Everyone coached him.
Every evening, after a busy day’s work, they bathed in our water well, and I chatted with them while they bathed. They changed into their normal outdoor gear before heading to their homes, some ten kilometres away in my mother’s ancestral hometown.
The three younger brothers had two young siblings, Francis and Agnes. They were much younger than their elder siblings. On weekends, Francis and Agnes came with their elder brothers. They became my playmates while their elder brothers were busy at work.
We played with wooden planks and cut pieces, making tiny homes on the sand. I plied my toy cars on the sloping tracks on discarded timber planks with them. We built sandcastles from the sands lying in the front yard.
On some weekends, Kudamma, their mother, came with her children. Soon after arrival, she took control of our kitchen. She was a great cook and made lovely Lankan dishes. Jack dishes and redfish curries were her forte. She was happy, loving, kind and had a big smile always. She was a great kitchen mama.
About four months later, the work was completed. Finally, the men applied slaked lime to paint the newly hand-plastered walls. The floors were laid with red oxide-coloured mixed cement. The newly minted floors looked bright red. The whole house smelt fresh.
Our house now was much bigger, double in size. Four new areas, a dining area, two bedrooms and a kitchen extended the back of the house. A large door with four panels donned the front veranda. An arch was now in the middle of the house, in the large hall, extending the beauty of our family home.
My father ordered new furniture to fill up the house. My mother made curtains for the doors and windows. She hung pictures of Jesus and Mary on the doors, dedicating the house to God Almighty. My mother and grandmother, Kadayamma were happy with the new integrated kitchen.
Renovations completed, I was a happy boy, with a new bedroom I could now share with my grandmother.
It was bliss.
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Images belong to the original owners — painting of David Paynter, a Sri Lankan artist.
