Q&A with Eben and Sarita

Any cost-cutting tips? Browse around for good prices and keep a lookout for sales. Where did you get your ideas? If we weren’t able to come up with our own ideas, we used décor magazines, houzz.com and Pinterest. Sarita’s father, who’s done many home renovations, gave us good advice, says Eben. What do you like best about your new living room? We can all be together in a spacious open-plan living area, but we can all do our own thing too. The layout is sociable and we spend many happy hours in and around the kitchen. We both love cooking and it’s much nicer to entertain if you’re not working alone in the kitchen. Any other tips? Planning is extremely important; it made our 28-day turnaround possible. Make sure you measure correctly and when buying materials, account for an extra 5% to 10% – otherwise your project will get derailed if you have to scramble around for additional tiles, for example. What’s next? We want to give the façade of the house more personality with an interesting structure.