Twink Macaraig’s home improvement

The owner of the house says this one will never land in a coffee-table book. Not true. We can think of five kinds of coffee- table books where the house will fit in nicely: Books on colorful homes, magical home improvement, contemporary Asian style, eclectic comfort, and finally, books that teach one how to organize accessories harvested from years of travel and a lifetime of gifts.

We can add a few more phrases to give you an idea of the kind of home that Channel News Asia’s Philippine bureau chief Twink Macaraig-Esteban has created: a house that makes you feel at home the moment you step in it, makes you want to sit down and converse with friends, inspires you to pick up a paint brush and color your own walls and to travel around the country to look for the exact same things she has because they work so well in her house.

The collaboration between Twink and her architect friend Jeff Fteha Isidro, whom she knew way back during her days in Singapore when she was anchoring for Asia Business News and he was practicing there, has resulted in the dramatic transformation of a drab, basic-white townhouse into a spacious, well-lighted contemporary Asian home.

But why buy a house that required so much work in the first place? "We could see the possibilities immediately," says Twink. "It was a repossessed bank property and so I did some homework on it and it turned out this property was in the bank’s inventory for five years. After five years, a non-performing asset of a bank becomes a liability, they get penalized for it. That knowledge gave me leverage to negotiate with them. There was no reason for us to leave the other house but I’ve always liked looking around and this one came to my attention from a friend of a friend of a broker."

The first problem that confronted them was the lack of sources of natural light, which required a lot of structural changes. As with any split-level townhouse, only the front and back have windows; the rooms in the middle were left to artificial lighting. There was also the basement, which looked and felt like a miserable dungeon.

"Her requirement for more light was my cue. I said, can you do without a third bedroom room on the second floor?" Jeff says.

So they demolished a bedroom and created an opening, a skylight which functions as the second source of light and provides cross-ventilation. The opening of this space has a dramatic effect. The townhouse has taken on an airy, spacious look. The original plan was to open it all the way to the ceiling to create an indoor garden. However, a drainage problem prevented that, so Twink settled for windows upon windows – a "very Singapore shop house style." This space now serves as a sort of foyer for the back entrance, which Twink and her staff use all the time since the garage is located there.

With the foyer covered, Twink could now style it without limitations. In came wooden furniture, like an original Igorot bed, looking awfully chic as a chaise lounge, given by a ninang, a bench also from the north and a wall of shelves that holds cherished possessions.

The wall on this side of the house is painted orange in ragging style. The dining room wall is accented by a garden wrought-iron candle holder, while on the other side is a crawling paper lizard by theater lighting expert Shoko Matsumoto.

The new space highlights the high, slanted ceiling in the living room, which is now painted crimson. "We had so much height in the ceiling so we could afford to paint it dark," says Twink.

The basement was in need of structural changes too. There had to be a better way to utilize all that space. Jeff put in windows in the darkest room, which is actually situated in the front part of the house, containing all the compressors of the air-conditioning system, to build a cozy dining room/meeting room. It sits right beside Twink’s office, which has its own entrance from the outside, where she does her writing and her two-person staff their video editing.

The façade of the house, originally with white grills, was opened up. Jeff created a trellis of logs on one side to provide continuity, a starting point of sorts to all the wooden furnishings inside. They had painted the façade orange in the beginning, but the village association had strict rules about façade color and so they painted white over it. But even when it’s the same as everybody else’s, the house stands out from the rest.

The second problem was the house looking so dated with its very ‘70s crazy-cut marble floor that drove Twink crazy.

"I grew up with a floor like this – didn’t we all? I was so upset with the floor but it was so expensive to change it. I knew I had to live with it but I couldn’t pretend that it didn’t exist."

Twink wanted to create a pattern in the wall similar to the floor to make it look like the floor was intentional, that she wasn’t just stuck with it. What Jeff did instead was to put half-moon patterns in coppice (a mocha-cappuccino color) in corners to match the floor. They also did away with a marble staircase and replaced it with wood, with Twink insisting Jeff could recycle the discarded facade grills for the stairs.

The third problem, of course, was the color. There was something clear from the start: Twink wouldn’t settle for white. "I guess I cannot pull off a very expensive, fine sort of look so I might as well make it interesting," she says. "The palette had to be something that could easily incorporate the variety of things that I had collected though all the years, all the things people had given me. So we might as well start with the basic premise that everything goes."

The science of color, choosing complementary colors or in the same shade, is what guides most people, but there is also the matter of personal choice. The colors were decided with some rules followed and others thrown out the window. Twink’s choices were all strong colors, no middle tones, no pastels (except for the butter yellow), definitely no tone-on-tone which is what you will find in most townhouses, and no compromises.

Twink and Jeff combined colors situated on opposite sides of the color wheel and of equal intensity, like red on the ceiling and green on the walls. They bounce off each other to create a visual experience. Red, as everyone knows, is the first color that grabs attention, and it does draw the eye upward. They’re all here: orange, the color of the sun about to set; blue, the receding color; yellow, the color of butter melting on toast; moody crimson highlighted with yellow lights.

Proof that this six-color palette is so rarely done is that, according to Twink, the painter did it "against his will." "When he was painting the house, you could tell that it was such an obscene thing for him to do. He’d say, ano, itutuloy ko pa ba ito? Oo! Di niya magawa-gawa." Even the painting of the shelves in the foyer became an issue with him. The shelving is yellow but the wall behind each shelf is of different color. "There was another time when the painter was doing the wrong color of blue. I told Jeff, you correct him naman. So Jeff went and talked with him and he came back to me and said, ‘Parang nagagalit siya sa akin.’ So here we were, both of us cowed by this masungit painter, di namin masabihan."

"We pride ourselves pa naman on being strong and assertive!" Jeff continues with a laugh.

Twink was vindicated, of course. Jeff, who in the beginning was holding back on the color scheme, brought his Ampersand Architectural Partners staff to Twink’s house to show them the finished product. Now his office has a red ceiling as well.

"I learned that I can actually stretch my four colors," says Jeff as he looks back on the project. "For me the possibilities are greater. Eclectic doesn’t mean you have to have a neutral background. You can actually revive an old type of dwelling and transform it into a more vibrant space like this one – a ‘70s modern house softened by the furniture. It works rather well."

These days, Twink’s home is known in the neighborhood as the "makulay na bahay." Curious neighbors can sometimes be seen trying to peep inside; one of them even asked about the architect/interior designer.

So why does Twink Macaraig, whose fashion sense she describes as nothing as exciting as her home sense, like colorful surroundings in the first place? "I guess it’s just because I’m not a timid person. Though I understand now that an all-white palette is more difficult to make it work. Particularly the colors of this palette and all colors of the earth palette are typical of my personality. I guess I know I cannot pull off a very elegant look. I don’t have the quality furniture and a deep enough pocket, so you try to compensate in terms of making it fun, in terms of making it different maybe, a bit more dramatic."

The fourth hurdle was the tons of accessories that Twink has. How do you use them all – and there are plenty – without the place "looking like a flea market"?

Jeff credits Twink for the interior decoration. "I gave her a palette and she filled it up."

Twink muses, "If it were one level, I suppose it could have been different, it could have been magulo. But now there are crucial points, different sources of light that can highlight these things."

It also helped that the spacious living room has three focal points instead of one big living space with an island in the middle. The L-shape of the room dictated to Jeff that there would be more than one living space.

With such space planning, Twink was able to play around with her soft furnishings. "I get interesting stuff from relatives and friends who have an idea that these are the things I like." Her sister Bambi Macaraig Yuson is another home-decorating adviser, who has added some touches to Twink’s home (like natural fiber ribbons) and dispenses advice, which Twink admittedly doesn’t always follow. "I guess they’re waiting to see a maturity in my taste," she laughs.

Twink herself is a tireless hunter for quality and inexpensive stuff. "It’s the chase that’s exciting," she says.

She combs through bazaars, markets, and out-of-the-way places (is FTI in Bicutan out of the way enough for a Pasig dweller?) and the provinces. In a venue where haggling is an art, Twink usually gets her way. There were several instances when the seller would recognize Twink as the impeachment trial witness and willingly give her a discount as a gesture of gratitude "for what she did for the country."

She admits that unlike other journalists, when she’s covering a story, she takes the time to see the place and buy something from there to take home. "I feel like the trip isn’t complete if I don’t do that." So she has banig from Zamboanga, batik from Mindanao, pipes from Baguio, cabinets from Vigan and accessories from all around the country, her preference being natural fibers and materials.

"When you like wood, you tend to choose natural colors and materials. I really can’t say how I was influenced. I guess it starts out with something you love and building on it. Because I have traveled a bit, I buy everything and before I know it, I have a body of ‘work.’ You just accumulate and suddenly it all represents you. There are some things I consider okay and beautiful but are not for me."

During her stay in Singapore in the middle 1990s, she also found herself hopping from one country to another for vacation, particularly in Southeast Asia, where she acquired works of art and other cool stuff.

Twink confesses with a laugh that the renovation project led her to discover that she’s "such an addict." "Nagkaroon lang ako ng a little more space, I have this compulsion to fill it up. Up to the very end, I was buying. People would say, tama na, what more can you buy? That’s a terrible discovery," she says, laughing.

But there is also the meticulous side of her. "I tend to agonize in deciding where to put an accessory but when it’s there di na puwedeng magalaw. I get obsessive. It’s funny but I still wander around the house: is everything really okay, do I need to add a few more things? At the same time, I have to say I’m really cheap. Maybe if anything, I’m penny-wise, pound-foolish."

We remind Twink that "inexpensive" is relative, but she insists, "I’m always buying these inexpensive things that I consider a bargain. That’s my big thrill."

With a house like this, we understand why she’s having a blast filling it up.