I was very honoured to interview FASoS’ very own director Cerien Streefland and I was intrigued to know what her free time looked like. My supervisor already told me that Cerien was quite a handy woman. But how handy is quite handy?
Updating electricity? Insulating a roof? Plastering? Tiling? Painting? Cerien and her husband do it all. Three years ago, they bought a fixer-upper in Eys with the intention to do the renovating works themselves. “Of course when we do it ourselves it takes three times as long as when a professional does it and it probably also isn’t as neatly done, but the feeling you get when you are improving your own home is just indescribable.”
How did Cerien get so handy? “I first think: I’m gonna do this. Then, I start watching videos of what I want to do on YouTube. Then I think a little more and decide how I want to do it. The last step is going to the construction market and starting the works. It sounds cliché, but I became good at it by doing it.” Her husband says they do all the renovations together, but in reality he does all the ‘crappy chores’ such as demolishing and sanding, and Cerien does the rest. Basically all the renovations take place in weekends and during holidays.
As with all renovation works, Cerien sometimes runs into difficulties. “Last summer, we decided to demolish the living room fireplace as it was old and huge and we knew that if it was gone we would gain a lot of space. As I started demolishing, I noticed that there was another chimney underneath the fireplace. I thought to myself ‘this can’t be true’. But you know, then you just have to continue. But guess what? Underneath that chimney was a huge layer of cement, so we had to get a drill to drill the cement off what we thought was a wall. Guess what? It was not a wall but another chimney. Five days of blood, sweat and tears later we finally had removed all three chimneys only to find a web of electric wires. Somehow I still wasn’t sick of it so I took out all the bad wires, improved the ones that we could still use and covered them up behind the beams so you don’t see them anymore.”
As you can see from this story, Cerien is not a quitter and she continues until she gets the job done. “Of course, sometimes we really cannot do something so then a professional needs to come in, but we really do want to do most of the work ourselves, even if we sometimes hate it. We even grouted the outside walls of our house ourselves and I was in charge of assembling the scaffolding because my husband has a fear of heights. We also placed a heater ourselves and added a sliding door in the kitchen. Next year we are going to improve the roof.”
Renovations aren’t done then just yet: Cerien still has the bathroom, bedroom and walk-in-closet on her renovation list.
