When the founder of this popular playschool moved to Bombay, she found the school semester had already begun and she couldn't get her daughter a place anywhere. So she started her one in her own home.
Over the years it has grown organically but quite haphazard; it's now undergoing a planned overhaul. One phase of the work was over in the summer vacation and another will begin during Diwali.
When we first started working on this residence, we were only asked to do up the bathrooms. We discovered as we went along, that major structural repairs were required because the old wooden posts had completely rotted away over the years due to seepage of water. As a result a much larger portion of the house was renovated resulting in delays and cost escalation - a classical example of the productivity triangle/tetrahedron at work.
Decades of neglect had made a shambles of this wonderful building from the 1880s. When a survey was conducted, it was found that, the area to be renovated was a long-enclosed verandah. In fact, every single tenant of this heritage building had converted their deep verandahs into cabins.
Initially, the clients were unwilling to do anything that altered the ghastly state of the facade but after a presentation, they were convinced that it would be worth the effort. Unfortunately, the original cast iron railings had disappeared during a previous renovation so any hopes I might have entertained of restoring the building envelope to its former glory were quickly dashed.
