1. Brief Background, tell us who you are?
Well, I was born and brought up in the Southern part of India. An engineer by education, I traveled and lived in different parts of Asia in my career, and finally settled in the United States.
I quit my job once my twins were born as I absolutely knew that I wanted this time with them. I did not want to miss out on their early development years and I do consider myself lucky to have found a partner who supported this choice.
2. Your kids are still quite young so how come you decided to step out of the confirm zone and try something absolutely new?
It’s fun to see kids grow up, but at the same time waking up every morning and having the same monotonous routine of brushing their teeth, bath time, play time, food, sleep and REPEAT takes a toll on most of us.
DIYing and creating things I love in my home on the other hand was new. It has no monotony and every project I worked on has a different perspective!
Since my kids were very little, my husband and I tagged team to complete projects. It was fun times!
3. Why did you choose DIY building as your topic?
One of the things that my husband and I have in common is our love for interior decoration and I am a HUGE fan of restoration hardware. We learnt how to use the basic woodworking tools and realized that we could create beautiful things at home. Soon we were building center tables and cabinets the way we wanted!
DIY helped me escape from the stress of everyday life. Soon I had babysitters watching the twins so I could go to the garage to work on different projects. We built pretty much most things in our workshop and slowly added more tools and kept getting better. Of course this journey never ends and I am still a novice with a lot more to learn, but it excites me everyday to do something new.
4. Has Social media helped you, personally?
Yes. I have to say I was averse to social media and really never saw the positive side of these platforms.
But then COVID happened. All of us were home and I started to check what Instagram was all about. Slowly I started to love it. There was a large community of DIYers sharing ideas. For the first time I saw it as a platform of like minded people who have similar hobbies and skills.
I am very new to social media and have just started my page. I have so much to learn and that’s what excites me the most. There are so many women who can do so much, it is truly inspiring.
5. What advice will you give to other girls / ladies who are getting attracted to this new way of communication?
Any one with one of the two following reasons must explore this platform:
a). If you are looking to connect with people who share the same or similar interests like you, or b). If you wanna learn something new / pick a new hobby.
It challenges you to get better as there are others now who will see what you do. And playing around with multimedia to create posts / reels / videos add on to the fun. Just don't fall for the race of followers and you are all good to go.
6. Everyone looks at these beautiful pictures and settings and the end product, I am sure the process isn’t all that smooth. Tell us a bit about the hard work that goes behind these post’s?
Lol! Well I am blessed with not having OCD – and that’s all I can say.
I have an exciting life with kids building forts in the living room while I work in parallel there hammering and gluing things. It’s a lot of dirtying and cleaning. My husband and I work on projects together and my kids also help which means there is wood glue sometimes on the carpet so there is always more cleaning to do. It is fun for all of us and we create memories. We have a Roomba which runs two times a day and I am so thankful for it.
Do follow me at https://www.instagram.com/build_vlog/
Instagram handle @build_vlog
To learn more, click on the tags below:
Child Care | Experts Speak | Women Community | Sustainable Living
Namrata