Our New Home Part 2

Next up in our house tour is the kitchen. As you can see, the flooring was very simple and the cabinets quite dingy. We tore everything down and replaced it with a more modern kitchen following a classic palette of black, white and light wood.

The old kitchen with dingy cabinets

Entrance to the kitchen. We thought of putting in a door but the entrance was quite wide and it was more convenient to keep it open. It also meant the nannies could easily see our children in the living room even if they were doing something in the kitchen.

  

LG Refrigerator to the left. Dark gray tiles. Light wood laminate. Quartz countertop and and high gloss white  cabinets.

Built-in Turbo Incanto oven and right on top is our microwave oven.

The old kitchen had a simple two-burner hob with no hood. 

Black tempered glass 3-burner Turbo Incanto hob and matching hood (hood in picture below).

Deep sink to the right with a very high tap.

Closer view of the sink and tap and cutlery and dish drainer behind the cabinet with the translucent glass door.

It's a very compact kitchen which is also the laundry area. That's our washer and dryer combo over there which gets used quite a lot since it's too inconvenient to hang our clothes outside the building and no space to dry inside the house.

This is a shot of the old kitchen and that raised platform was meant for a washer.

Another view of the washer and dryer.

The old hallway with marble flooring and dilapidated doors.

The new hallway with light wood laminate and white bedroom doors from the center to the right, and white folding doors for the shower and toilet, to the left.

Our New Home Part 1

Well it's been a week and we're settling nicely in our home. I waited until all the unpacked boxes and various items had been put away and curtains are up before I started taking pictures. I've put the pictures of our new home side-by-side with how it used to look like so you can see the improvements.

 

The living room is my favorite area and the coziest part of the house, it's a rectangular layout with the play space near the window, the actual living room in the middle and the dining area near the entrance of the apartment.

 

The flooring for the living room was the old type of marble and towards where the play area is now, it was a different flooring, more linoleum. The play area used to be partitioned off by an arch and columns and was painted black. The mood of the room was a bit dark. What we've done was to take away the arch and the columns and have the same flooring all throughout the living room - a light wood laminate together with white walls so we could keep the area as light and airy as possible.

 

I took inspiration from boards I found on Pinterest which is where I got the idea for the book ledges drilled onto one wall so the kids could have a reading corner. I had another ledge drilled onto the opposite wall so we could display the kids' photos against the wall and just update them as often as we wanted without sticking the frames onto the wall (which we used to do with blu tack - quite messy though and doesn't hold strongly). Then my husband and I chose the BESTA storage system with movable partitions so we could keep the kids' toys accessible. We bought a new rug as well then brought over the pink table with chairs and the drawing board / chalk board easel from our old apartment (all from IKEA).

 

For the actual living room, the old owners painted the wall and dark pink (almost purple) which wasn't really doing anything for the room. Meanwhile, I've always wanted a brick wall in my home and I've seen one in all the home decor magazines I've flipped through. It makes me think New York loft. But putting one up was an added expense we almost decided to do without. I kept thinking I could give it up but decided I couldn't and I'm so happy we kept it in the final design. I think it gives a warmth to the room. The only change we made was to keep the original color of the brick instead of painting it white, which we've seen done as well and thought was also interesting. But this one was better.

I've also stuck very closely to the design pegs which I posted previously. I have the brick wall (red not white though), the structured couch, and parquet-looking floors. I even have the ceiling fan pictured here and I've followed through on the pictures on a ledge idea.

Meanwhile, if my dream was to have a brick wall, my husband's wish was more functional, i.e. to have a built-in TV console. We chose a simple dark brown laminate and black glass compartments which slide out and which houses our Starhub box, DVD player and Kinect console. It's so easy to use, my kids already know how to open and close the compartments so they can watch their cartoons in the morning. The console did end up being a bit thick so the designer told us he built some DVD compartments on the side as well and we mainly keep our kids' DVDs in there. Right beside the console is my husband's Father's Day gift which is a 6-layer steel compartment box for tools, gadgets and electronics. I knew I picked the right gift when the taxi driver asked me how much it was and whether there was still stock left. It was a steal since I found it in the AS-IS section at IKEA and no there were no other stocks left since I hadn't seen it anywhere and I would know since I've been to IKEA 4 times in the past 2 weeks already. Beside the tool compartment box meanwhile are two of our beloved paintings - one was a painting I bought in Guangzhou and another was a painting I made with my daughter Lexi. We have a lot of white walls and there should be room for more art but for now we're starting with these two.

Then there's the dining room. It's still very bare except for a dining set and again I found the exact chairs I wanted and we changed over our table to a light wood surface this time around. We also changed the overhead light to a pendant lamp which looking now at the picture feels a bit small against the space, but we'll see. We're also still using shoe racks but come the weekend, we might start looking at larger shoe cabinets which can serve as a long console table. I initially wanted to do a chalkboard wall but trying to figure out where to put it. It may or may not happen. We'll see. For now, the apartment already feels like home and we'll change and adapt as time passes.

More pictures in the next few posts of the other areas of the house.

 

Our 3D Visuals

After several meetings with the interior designer, a couple rounds of revisions to the 3D design, and visits to suppliers to choose tile and flooring; sink and taps and other bathroom fixtures; hob, hood and oven combo for the kitchen as well as lights for the whole apartment - we are finally ready to start the renovation. 

It is both exhausting and exciting at the same time. I can tell you nothing tests your communication and negotiation skills as husband and wife than going over design details. We argued over the choice of tiles for the bathroom; the brand of hob, hood and oven we would get; the brand of refrigerator - basically everything    . I'm just glad we sorted everything out and ready to now see the design come to life.

To be honest we weren't really going for any kind of theme and just wanted something modern-looking, minimalist and relaxing with the color palette mainly neutral tones - gray, white, black and some light and dark woods thrown in for good measure.     

Living Area/Dining Area/Play Space: This is actually a very long, rectangular area, with the dining area near the door, living room near the middle and play space at the other end where the windows were located. The picture above focuses mainly on the living room though because the design just needed to show what type flooring would be used (light wood but not as yellow as the picture, a bit more natural-looking) and whether it would mesh well with the built-in TV feature wall and console. We chose light flooring and will probably paint the walls white to have a more bright, airy feel to the area. There will also a red brick wall behind the sofa but isn't shown here as the designer said the brick wall effect doesn't really translate well in 3D drawings.

Kitchen: Originally I wanted an all-white kitchen but the realities of life and heavy cooking would render that kind of kitchen very hard to maintain and so we ended up having a darker tone for the area. I still have white cabinets though so part of the dream is still alive. A little to the right of the picture, beyond the sink, will be the trash chute area and I'm wondering whether we could set up a vertical garden somehow just above the trash chute. It will be near the window and will have access to sunlight and far away enough from the main cooking area - but will see how it goes. It will have to be a DIY project though since we're trying to keep to a budget here.

Common bathroom: We didn't really want a fancy bathroom, in fact, this bathroom is reminiscent of the bathroom in our old apartment in Moulmein - just white tile and dark gray flooring and yet it feels very relaxing. There was one thing hubby and I agreed on and that was getting the rainshower showerhead. The picture doesn't show but there are actually large industrial pipes to the left of the sink. We're trying to think of what color to paint the pipes. White seems to be the obvious color but black seems to be quite trendy right now as a color for bathroom fixtures so that's an idea too.  

 Bedroom: The flooring will be as is and we'll just sand and varnish the flooring so it looks new so the main change in the bedrooms will be the addition of built-in cabinets.

Hacking of the flooring and existing cabinets start next week. Here's hoping the renovation goes well.