Honey, I shrunk our `palace’

My journalist friends would understand this better, my feelings that is.
When I moved to Hyderabad from Bombay, the only thing that brought me immense joy in a new city, new office was the house that we moved in. Thanks to a friend from Mumbai who had also recently moved to Hyderabad and was staying on the first floor of this independent house, that we found this very very spacious, un-Mumbai kind of a house.
Palace. That’s how I used to describe the house to my jealous friends who were still in the two-BHK houses of Mumbai. Here, we had a separate dining room, which to my Bombay-dyed eyes appeared like a banquet hall. Yes, a bit of exaggeration here, but, honestly, I had never imagined moving into as spacious a house as this after I left my beautiful house in Dehra Dun (where we had a kitchen garden and a lawn and of course, a separate dining room).
So, the palace fascinated me no end. The first time I realized it wasn’t as big after all, when a couple who live in a oh-so-beautiful bungalow in the posh Banjara Hills visited us and the wife sweetly commented, “What a sweet compact house!” I laughed out so loud that she got scared. I told her I called this house a palace. It was so huge, for us.
Her comment not withstanding, I continued to believe that this was the most awesome house on planet earth.
This morning, I shrunk the palace. It is important to mention here, that we had minimal furniture…actually no furniture apart from a bed and a table. Yes, four chairs too. Of late, I had been obsessing over the idea of “doing up” the `palace’. Last night, I brought an auto-rickshaw full of stuff that is now sitting in my once spacious drawing room.
This morning, as I was busy giving the finishing touches I had mixed feelings about having “done up” the room. Yes, it was looking nice but I missed the open space.
I have taken care to keep room but still its not the same. I, for the first time, felt that it was small house. A bigger drawing room would have been better. Or, was it a right decision to get furniture in the first place? Have I shrunk our `palace’.
Now, why I said that my journalist friends would understand my feelings better is because I was very driven and passionate about decorating the drawing room with a nice sofa set, hanging lamps... the works. I worked hard on all this, almost as I would for a story that I feel very passionate about. But, there are times when you put your heart and soul into a story but you yourself do not know how it reads. Are there too many quotes? Or, are there too few? Should I remove this line or paraphrase this quote? In my case, until someone gives my story a read I can never be sure whether it’s good or bad.
It’s with the same feeling that I view my done up drawing room. I want an opinion. To be honest, am scared of an honest opinion.