04.03.02 My Personal Experience as a Value-Adding Homemaker

From One-Bedroom to a Luxury Villa

A Personal Experience

My first experience of adding value to a ‘home’ was immediately after meeting my husband. All I had to work with was his bedroom given that he was still living with his relatives by then. In our culture, there was no way that I would have put my touch on a house that belonged to in-laws. So, with the bedroom as the only space where I could add some value, I created a feature wall by covering it with nice looking ‘wallpaper’, to hide the make-shift plywood that had been used to demarcate his bedroom from the kitchen. It was such a simple addition but it made a very big difference in the room, creating a comfortable ambience.

It was not long thereafter that we shifted to a small two-bedroomed house. That was where we started our family. For our bedroom, I made sure to put a small but simple three-seater sofa in addition to the bed, chest of drawers and one wardrobe. A bedroom sofa is an item I have always kept as part of my bedroom concept as long as space could ‘allow’, since it provides a comfortable environment.

My other favourite items include wall-hangings, rugs, several pillows on beds and fluffy animals such as teddy bears in my children’s rooms. I must confess that I have two teddy-bears on my bed as well, holding a red-heart in between them. I also love bronze animals such as horses and so on. My list could be endless.

Another thing I have always paid special attention to is the garden. I love flowers and greenery. Where we shifted to apartments, I made sure that we had a combination of natural potted plants, dry flowers and cute artificial ones as well. I had to watch my budget though since we did not own those properties, until we bought our first home, a shell structure that was situated in one of Kampala’s high-end suburbs.

I remember several days and nights of meditation and prayer, believing God to come up with unique internal and external designs on the structure itself, and the garden as well. I did a lot of research on the internet to find out what was the latest, given my dream. My eyes were open whenever we visited a posh hotel, to pick valuable lessons from there. And, to the glory of God, I was able to create a luxury villa and gave it a lovely name ‘Dayspring’ which is one of the names of God as in Luke 1:76-78 (NKJV): ⁷⁶“And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Highest; for you will go before the face of the Lord to prepare His ways, ⁷⁷to give knowledge of salvation to His people by the remission of their sins, ⁷⁸through the tender mercy of our God, with which the Dayspring from on high has visited us; ⁷⁹to give light to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”