Ok here goes the pictures of our new haven...please bear in mind that I don't have the best camera in the whole world and I am not the best photographer ever. These pictures were taken at night when I had some time and I remembered that I needed to take some photos to upload to my blog..
This is the foyer on the left. That's where the main door is and there are four pillars on the small seatee, supposedly is for fengshui purpose, as hubby read that if the main door is not blocked, money will flow in and out very freely, which is not good. Also without the pillars, passerbys can directly look into the flat and straight into the living room as well as dining area. The cabinets behind the door are shoe cabinets. Don't ask me if I have so many shoes, because if you know me, you'll know I don't. Most spaces there are empty. The picture on the right with min in the highchair is the seatee area just beside the foyer. Our living room is pretty long and empty so we figured that we should have a seatee area for guests to seat and mingle rather than wasting the space. Below the seatee are two big drawers for the kids to store their toys. The outside of the drawers are mirrors to make it look nicer. Min loves to open the drawers and hunt for toys to play with.
The above pictures are our dry kitchen. We originally had a big big kitchen as this is an old house. We hacked down the walls and partitioned it into a wet kitchen and dry kitchen. We had dreamt of having and open concept kitchen but later scrapped the idea as most designers advised against it. There's the problem of oil and smoke when cooking and it'll be too exposed since the entire house is rather big. Therefore, we came up with the idea of having a dry and a wet one separately. This dry kitchen is for light cooking as we have a induction cooker on the table top. There are plenty of storage spaces here which are empty too...we simply have too little things to store. Fridge is also here for easier access. To the right of the dry kitchen is the walkway to the bedrooms. The room on the right is the study room. If you are observant enough, you'll notice that the floor at the dining area/dry kitchen is different from the rest. That's to make out an area for different functions. Dining table is just beside the dry kitchen table top.
This is the wet kitchen just behind the dry kitchen. We have got a dryer installed for my convenience :P It's really a very useful gadget for me. For the first time, we have also got a front loader washer. So far no complains. This kitchen is mainly for heavy cooking and washing. The wall backings are black tinted glass to make it look more unique. Quite simple and plenty more storage spaces...
This is the living room and our TV feature wall. From the picture, it's not very obvious that our feature wall is using some patterned laminate plus black tinted glass and black tinted mirror. Also the sizes of the individual areas are different. The platform area that you see at the living room was previously the balcony. We had it integrated into the living room to make full use of the space since we didn't really need a balcony. The platform area was put up at the request of Hao. He wanted a garden concept but we didn't agree since there will be too much maintenance and upkeeping. I'll be too busy cleaning the house to be helping him maintaining the garden area.
This is the room where hubby works mostly nowadays. The right hand side of the study room are actually cabinets that doesn't look like the typical kind of cabinets with plain laminates. We wanted a better design but that's the best we can think of. Thank god the space here are plentiful to store the kids' toys too. All rooms are covered with laminated flooring for a cosier feel. The study table top is fixed with another pull out movable table for multiple users. Right now we are still sourcing for a comfortable chair for hubby to sit on. The current one we have from courts is simply not comfy enough for him. The door of the study room is entirely glass because this room doubles up as a playroom for the kids at times. It's convenient for me to monitor them in the room since the room is just right beside the dry kitchen. We want to be able to monitor them from outside. The only problem with glass door is that silly Ee keeps banging into the door when it's closed. He did it on the study room door twice and kitchen door once. We finally put up some decals to make sure he can differentiate when the door is open and when it's closed. The decals are 3 monkeys and 1 lion in the jungle. We call them the 3 monkeys and I am the lioness in the house. Since hubby is out working, he doesn't have a part in this yet.
Ok here comes the common bathroom. We are quite fortunate that when we were renovating the flat, the rules of HDB changed and we were able to do conceal piping for all the pipings in the toilets. Hurray to that as we can hide the ugly pipings. The sanitary ware were carefully picked out by hubby as he wanted the toilets to be as comfortable as the other areas of the house. Of course the other reason is simply because he likes to spend time in the toilet surfing net and reading newspaper when he is doing his business. Rain shower in both toilets are a must for him too.
I supposed it's not difficult to recognise this as the kids' room. This room is specially for Hao and Ee as Min is still sleeping in our room. When Hao gets older and needed his own space, we'll move him to the spare room while Min will move in with Ee here. The car beds are specially requested by the boys. Hao has the red one and Ee has the blue one. The mickey mouse bedsheets were also specially choosen by them from Aussino. Each time I change their bedsheet, they will beg me to get it dried and put it back so they can sleep back on it at night. Their pillows are also quality goose feather pillows supposedly to be cooling and anti dustmite. So far so good. The wardrobe is simple white and blue laminates. Hubby had wanted the designer to create something related to Mickey mouse for them but it's rather difficult so we scrapped the idea. We also searched for a long time before deciding to get these Thomas the Tank Engine drawer pulls for the wardrobe handles. On the wall are also various decals we got for them to decorate their room. It's easily removable and doesn't scratch or make paint peel off so we are pretty happy with it and don't really care where they paste it. Till date they are still changing the locations of where the decals goes.
The concept of the master bedroom bathroom is pretty similar to the common bathroom. Same sanitary ware and rain shower. Hubby commented that the toilets are the places where he's most satisfied in the entire renovation work as he's very contented just sitting in the toilet reading newspaper. Oh did I mention he also enjoyed his rain shower twice everyday? It's no wonder I am expected to keep the toilets real clean and nice for him LOL
Finally our master bedroom. From the entrance of the room, you can straight away see the wardrobe. It's metallic peach flowery laminate with peach color stripe laminate in the middle. When we had it, I thought the color was hideous...but after it settled into the room with our room colors in, it looks pretty nice. It's hard to see the color theme in the pictures. Our room is pretty simple with the wardrobe and a King size bed. We had purposely catered to a King size bed as Min is still sleeping in our room. Although his little cot is just beside our bed (after much persuasion of me to hubby and insisting that it'll be placed there against his wishes), sometimes it'll make things much easier for him to sleep beside me when he needs to be nursed in the middle of the night. Afterall, I need my sleep to recharge myself in order to clean this big big house.
That's pretty much the outline of our new haven. There are some little details that cannot be captured in the pictures but overall we are pretty happy with what is the result of our nearly 4 months wait in the renovation works. Overall we had to wait a total of 8 months to get the new house done and in a movable condition. We must say it's all worth it. We are finally getting a nice cosy place for the family and a home to stay comfortably in. I am just crossing fingers that we will not be going through the entire process soon as renovation works and moving house are simply too tedious!
