Friday, November 7, 2014

Homey

As soon as I gave birth, we moved into the new home. The major renovations were already done, just a few minor things left so we decided to move in first.

Some details on renovation:

Interior Designer Co.- 9 Creations
Duration - 6 weeks
Theme - Scandinavian

We decided not to take up any loan so we had to compromise on quite a few things. Let's start with the living room first. But before that, you will see one or two speck of stains in my pictures because of my lousy phone camera which has stains on it and I couldn't remove them. :/

Living Room
I was really contemplating on whether or not to have the brick wall. I didn't want to have it at first because it's almost everywhere now. But I decided to have it in the end because I just couldn't find a better feature wall that fits into my Scandinavian theme.

(That stain on the white drawer, that's from my camera. :/)

I got the wall that I wanted and Zai got his TV console the way he wanted it to be, curved corners and all. Although it was me who decided on the white and wooden laminates. The ID thought we wanted the curved corners so that it'll be baby friendly with no sharp edges but no, it was purely aesthetics hahah.


This is the wall across the feature and TV wall. Zai saw the the framed 'Allah' and 'Muhammad' being sold on Facebook and coincidentally, the white and wooden frames match our home's theme. Didn't want everything to look dull and grey so we threw in a few cushions to brighten up the sofa.

We didn't plan to have a coffee table with wheels but it turned out to be a good decision in the end. We can easily move it away when we want space in front of the sofa and Zai will move it to wherever he sits on the sofa so that he can eat while watching TV. I still prefer to have my meals at the dining table.

Things we considered:
To get a sofa that's easy to maintain. We got something dark with removable fabric. As it is, Maliq has already vomited on it. :/

Things we compromised:
In built settee/bench by the windows. It'll probably take up more space and we can just get a bench or an arm chair in future.

Things we might do in future:
More seats! Probably an arm chair or something.

Dining Area
A very small area. The three hanging Edison bulbs are more for decoration cause I prefer white lights. So we also have white cove lights at the dining area. Didn't want the area to look too white so we painted one of the walls. I wanted a peachy colour but our painter gave us this aquamarine colour instead and we were too lazy to get it changed. I thought that looks not bad after all.



Things we considered:
Not to incur additional electric works charges by having more than one electrical point. So what we did was use one electrical point for all three bulbs. We used that black casing to cover the wires for the three bulbs.

Things we compromised:
DIY-ing one of the walls instead of getting a professional to do it. The ID charged us more for such a simple design. So if you take a closer look, you can see that the lines are not perfectly straight.

Things we might do in future:
Frames, vase, flowers, chalkboard wall?

Passageway to Bedrooms
We don't think we need much light here so we didn't go with my preferred white lights and got these two cage lights in copper with Edison bulbs.

(Again, ignore the speck of stains from my camera.)

Things we considered:
Same thing here, Not to incur additional electric works charges by having more than one electrical point. So used one electrical point for the two lights. My parents find the dangling exposed wire an eyesore though.

Things we compromised:
Didn't compromise anything much here.

Things we might do in future:
Frames or chalkboard wall?


If you noticed, I painted the whole of the areas above white. And as for the flooring, we chose the lightest colour for the living room. There's another area which I left out, which is the area in front of our main door. We got the contractor to build a floor-to-ceiling shoe rack cum shelves for storage there and the laminates are the same as the TV console.

As for the lights in these areas, we got downlights for living room, cove lights and hanging bulbs for dining area, cage lights for passageway. I suggest doing track lights if you want to save more. Doing the ceiling works for downlights and cove lights cost us quite a bit. We didn't go for track lights cause I just don't think it'll be bright enough. 

Okay, kitchen, bedrooms and maybe bathrooms next entry!

8 comments:

  1. Hello neighbour! :)

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  2. Ur reno id was one of the first we meet but I wasnt so lucky engaging the id that u got... Our first appt with the id assigned to us looks hopeful but there wasnt follow up by him so we had to drop him. But we learn along the way haha. Thanks to them i know abt kompacplus top.

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    1. Ooohh our ID is actually a lady heh. I wouldn't say she's super good cause she made a few mistakes along the way, but she has her good points as well la. And oh! I wanted kompacplus top because of the look but decided not to take in the end cause it's a relatively new product and I am just not adventurous enough haha.

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  3. eh i thought i made a comment but looks like it didn't go thru?

    anyway, i am lovin' that aquamarine wall! the design is very simple but so chic

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    1. Hahah had to convince my husband to paint that for me. Was quite skeptical of the outcome but it turned out okay la. :D

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  4. LOVE! Can't wait to see the rest of your place and that Aquamarine is such a nice pop of colour!

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    1. Yeah! I'm hoping to blog about the rest of the house soon but having a baby is limiting my time to blog haha.

      I wanted a subtle color but I guess this is not too bad either. :D

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