Semal House
Location : Uttarakhand, India
The Semal House is a 100+ year old property, owned by Dhiren Dhamasana, an ex- army official.
It is co- managed by Pooja Garg and Aashish Singh.
The property was already run as an homestay since a few years, but owing to the overall inaccessibility as well as a lack of adequate marketing, it has not seen enough numbers.
The house is a mud and wood structure, built to withstand the heat, cold and heavy rains of Dhura. Since it was to function as a homestay, a lot of amenities, like attached bathrooms, geysers and lights were added later. This is also the reason why it didn’t require a lot of intervention in its construction.
One of the major assets of this property is that it has plenty of farmland and plantation surrounding it, which adds to its image of a comfortable, rural home.
The core design theme, decided initially, was that of a ‘Vintage Farmhouse’.
Many of the elements added to the site, are selected for their nostalgic value, like the gramophone records, old board games and so on.
As the work started to take shape, a lot of the previously planned elements had to be made by hand. This brought in an important theme of DIY. This included birdhouses, diya stands as well as the garden plantation. In a lot of ways, this also brought out the existing objects in the house which were also made by hand, adding value to the property.