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.

 

What Can Go Wrong Will Go Wrong

Well it was time to move and though we dreaded the packing and subsequent unpacking of boxes, the discovering you have too many stuff and too little storage, and the adjusting to new spaces and new routes -we were thrilled we were finally moving to a space we could really fix up and call home. Unfortunately, since we were moving to a new house there were a lot of kinks.

- The contractor couldn't get their people to drill our IKEA-bought curtain rods and so we moved to the new house, without curtain rods and curtains. I initially checked for quotes on getting everything done with a place that specializes in curtains but almost fell off my chair when they quoted me SGD1,000 for 3 sets of curtains. So I trooped off to IKEA for aforementioned curtain rods and starter curtains which were SGD20 a set, had them fixed to proper length for SGD16 a set which is also expensive but still way cheaper than customized curtains. Problem fixed, curtains up next Monday.    

- The contractor somehow designed the kitchen cabinets so that they partially concealed the gas point, which we only realized when City Gas came to turn on the gas. It took 3 online appointment requests, 3 visits from City Gas, 1 visit from the carpenter, countless hours spent calling the City Gas hotline (which I am sure is a hoax since I've never been able to talk to a City Gas Officer directly through their contact numbers) and 7 days exactly before we could get the gas turned on. I was so desperate to get the gas turned on that when I finally got the carpenter to saw off a part of the kitchen cabinets I started madly calling City Gas and realized the only way to contact City Gas was if you requested an online appointment (they would then call you to confirm the appointment). The moment I got hold of a City Gas Officer, which was the next day, I mentally tried to figure out whether to berate them or just beg for an appointment - I ended up doing the latter and I thankfully got my appointment and my gas turned on. Goodbye hawker food. Though the porridge was the best and some of the other items tasty, nothing could compare to home cooked food.

- The kitchen backsplash isn't finished and so is the bathroom mirror, which makes me think there's something wrong with the mirror place our contractor coordinated with.

- The room and kitchen lights seem faulty and flicker a little before turning on. In fact, technically, our bedroom light is broken. Will have to get that fixed.

As with all problems though they eventually get fixed and now 1 week after moving we are slowly settling into the new place and loving it to bits.





 



 

Too Many Interior Designers, Too Little Time

Now that we've completed our first HDB appointment and met up with our lawyer to get the paperworks going, we needed to find the right interior designer to renovate our new home. I've heard lots of horror stories about contractors skipping town with your money, not finishing the project on time or doing a shoddy job on the renovation. We wanted to make sure we wouldn't encounter such problems. And so I researched, went on home renovation sites and requested for quotes. Hubby and I sat down with 5 different design firms and had email communications with about 3 others, here's what we've learned from this long and tedious process.

1. Come prepared - Bring your floor plan and bring pictures of the unit. The floor plan is a no brainer, but we took very few pictures of the unit and so when they were asking us what type of flooring it had and whether we wanted to change the flooring, doors and windows, it was a bit difficult for us to answer.

2. Focus the discussion on the fixtures instead of the design - Unless you're willing to shell out SGD2000 for a 3D drawing, don't spend too much time talking about the design during the first appointment. Normally, all they really need to know to be able to give you a quote is whether you're doing any hacking, tiling, cabinetry, carpentry and whether you're changing doors, windows; doing plastering, painting etc. The design discussions can come later when you're about to shortlist or have already shortlisted your designer. Otherwise, you'll spend too much time discussing details and then you'll have to keep repeating yourself during subsequent appointments with other prospective interior designers.

3. Prepare for a reality check - Normally, you'd come in with an idea of how your dream home should look like (mine had a glossy all white kitchen and a glass-enclosed play area) and think that the interior designer should be able to bring it all to life. Sadly, they're there to also keep things real. And in the real world, all white kitchens are hell to clean and glass-enclosed play areas (where the children can be seen but not heard) are impractical and a safety issue. So buck up, breathe in deep and prepare to listen to suggestions.  

4. Ask yourself, can you work with this person? - Although it seems pleasant to work with an interior designer who will do as you say, it's better to have someone who will tell you why your ideas aren't going to work and recommend something better. Use that first appointment to see if you can feel comfortable working with the interior designer for the next 6-8 weeks, which is how long the renovation usually takes. If you start getting riled up while discussing dividers with the interior designer and having to justify why you don't like them and therefore don't want them in your house, it's probably a sign that you won't be able to work together.

5. Watch out for responsiveness - All is well and the discussion goes smoothly. Now you wait for the quote. Whether or not they submit the quote on time can be a good gauge of how responsive they'll be in future. 

We had a wide range of experiences with the five designers we talked to. The first one talked to us but did not give a quote, only offering to do a 3D Drawing if we shelled out SGD2000 and said he could probably work within our budget but it would be a stretch. The second one was pleasant to talk to and promised to give a quote within the week and never did. The third one sat down with us and painstakingly did a furniture lay-out on his computer, when it would have been easier to do a pen and paper draft, then proceeded to deploy hard sell tactics by asking us to sign on the spot and when we didn't, asked his team leader to come over so she could persuade us. The team leader then proceeded to push on with the hard sell (what is it with these people?) by saying if we signed on the spot we could participate in the lucky draw (it was at an expo), get discounts as well as an electronic door lock. I wanted to kick my husband under the table so he could get the hint and get us out of there but that would be too obvious. It took another 15 minutes of saying no before they finally got the hint and we were able to leave. The fourth one was pleasant to talk to, seemed knowledgeable and submitted their quote on time. The fifth one was also okay but seemed a bit young and was a bit delayed in submitting their quote. 

In any case, we'll be deciding soon and hopefully move on to the next step in the process. Very excited about talking design ideas. I'm especially excited about the designs for my kids' play area. More updates to come.