All things Cozy and Homely - Home Renovation: September 2012

Wallpaper

Posted at 08:30 in furnishing tips

Renovation Plans Ahead

Posted at 07:40 in musings

Image copyrighted to paretoraw

Renovation Plans Ahead

I have fallen pretty sick for the past few days. It is fortunate that my husband, let us address him as Mr Diva for this post, was around to take care of me and our place when I was out of action.

On the first day, I clogged up our basin because I couldn’t keep any food in my tummy. Then I realised how silly I was after Mr Diva gently reminded me that I should have used the toilet bowl instead. Over the next 2 days, Mr Diva constantly fussed over me and also took the opportunity to reassess together (by the bedside when I became restless after waking up from my drug-induced sleep) how we should best remodel our ~~nest~~ place.

Well, since I was constantly brainstorming on how to optimise and reorganise our so-very-limited space, I leaped on this rare chance to share with him some of my mini-renovation scope of work for the coming year.

Our Study and Guest room was deliberately left out of our original renovation scope of work as we were unsure how we should maximise the physical space. We figured that instead of wasting precious resources – read: money, time and effort – on these two rooms, we should concentrate our efforts in other areas which we utilise more often.

Well, our lifestyle needs have evolved and certain habits have somewhat converged and become shared habits after living together for around half a decade. Aside from drawing, my interests expanded to include home interior designs, trends and new media, whilst Mr Diva has taken up photography and even serious political readings! Our shared hobby is now mountain biking.

Thus, we are in serious need of customised book-shelves and cupboard to store the numerous piles of books, magazines, photos, paintings and photography equipments and tools. Not forgetting, a decent storage solution for our pair of mountain bikes too.

We also realised that our living room is more multi-dimensional that we have originally thought of; for guest entertainment, meals, studying, doing work (somehow we dislike working in the study room), relaxation and chill out after a hard day work. In fact, we spend an extraordinary amount of time there. Thus we are looking at creating more storage space in our living room to keep up with such heavy utilisation.

We have more intimate knowledge of our flat right now and realised that although our home features the much sought-after breath-taking unblocked view of part of our neighbourhood, our place is still warm especially in the first half of the year. Although the fans and air-con helped, we are looking at having solar window firms to keep the heat out and consequently, our carbon foot prints down.

When we first started our renovation journey, we concentrated heavily on our needs, and our wants were set aside. As a result, our toilets were also left untouched and as what Mr Diva always deadpanned (whenever our relatives or friends enquired about the apparent clash in our design theme), in 100% “stock-condition”. However, we have somewhat gotten really tired of the awfully mismatched wall tiles – all thanks to ~~aesthetically-challenged~~ HDB architect – and desperately wished for a decent face-lift.

We felt that this mini to-do-renovation-list might be a bit too ambitious to accomplish over the upcoming year. Even though we have narrowed down our scope, we have yet to perform some decent ball-park figure on the total expected expenses and work out a decent renovation plan.

Well nevertheless, let us see how these will work out over the next year. :)

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