The Finale

Our renovation has officially ended a couple of months back, but we were still getting our stuffs ready, hanging up clocks and photos, setting up new gadgets and completing our home. With our housewarming party due the following week, we did a mini photoshoot of our house so that we could compare how much transformation the house has gone through. We have always seen others posting their before and after photos so we had made it a point to do it too, else it is too late once the walls starts coming down and the carpentry up. So for those that does visit this blog, here is the preview of our home....

The entrance, where we had sealed up the original door to the kitchen.

Our shoe cabinet which also concealed the unsightly bomb shelter door.

The view of our living room once we step into our home.

Here's the open concept kitchen as well as the entrance to it.

Presenting the deep-end sofa for us to lie down comfortably to enjoy our movies.

A custom made sword case as our tv console. And a plain wall behind it.

which transform to anything we want at a touch of a button.

Open-concept kitchen which we have not been cooking much.

and the other end of it with our service yard behind those doors.

The corridor splashed with maroon and the doors framed black.

Our recreational room where we work out and namaste.

keeping the room simple so that it could be anything we want next time.

Here's our study area where we get the work done.

Took down much of the walls to combine both rooms into one.

Bedroom cum study room cum walk in wardrobe.

Our platformed curb for our beauty sleep.

which opens up to store (and hide) our future belongings.

Our wardrobe which closed up the original door to the masterbed room.

and the other side of the wardrobe.

A little changes to the toilet, with the toilet bowl remaining constant.

and finally, how our vanity cabinet had enlarged to this.

This is home... truly...

Touching up minor details

We have another clock up, this time at our dining area. Loving the classical feel of the roman numerals

Did some minor touch up to our living room track light. We usually keep this lights on during our movie time so that we could see what we are eating and not fiddle with our spoons in the dark. However, the track lights were too strong and overpowered the screen, turning it too orange-ly. So we cut some papers up to act as a filter, reducing the amount of lights to just sufficient only. It turns out great and we could now watch our movies while having our meals without compromising either.

Christmas is coming, time to get ready for it!

Back from our Bridal Photoshoot in Taiwan

Just got back from our taiwan trip! It had been a great time with the massive shopping at the night markets and nature explorations. But the number #1 reason for our travel was the bridal photoshoot package which we had bought earlier this year. It was our first bridal photoshoot, and we were quite clueless with poses most of the time, but with the guidance from our photographer, the photos had turned out beautifully! Our package had also included a huge framed up canvas and we had carried it back all the way from Taiwan back to our humble home. How does it look? You have to come over to see it yourselves!

Glimpse of the Projector

With the last touch up completed and the final payment settled, our renovations for the house has officially come to an end. It has been a long long journey, one that we are almost too embarrassed to talk about. The planned completion was in May 2017, but it was delayed for almost half a year. Many things happened along the way and we gained many learning pointers which would hopefully help us and anyone with any future houses renovation next time. It has been an eye-opening experience for us, setting up our little place called home. We are definitely glad that this is all over, although it only marks the beginning of our beautiful lives ahead in this nest....

And showcasing a glimpse of our home entertainment system right now. A whooping 150 inch screen punched into our wall to give us the feel of a movie theatre. Although we have some light leaked from the glaring afternoon sun in the middle of the day, which we would touch up soon, the projector did a fantastic job at providing us our shows and movies. This is our first time exploring the projector world instead of a regular television, and we have to say... we are definitely here to stay.

Doing it ourselves as a learning opportunity

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Through this renovation, there were many opportunities where we decided to use our own hands to get things right instead of relying entirely on our ID. Changing of bathroom tap, fixing up our oven because it was crooked, and siliconing our skirting are just some examples of which we had done it ourselves. Of course if our ID had made them perfect in the first place, we would not have to get down to that, but we like to see it as learning opportunities for us. Beside, now is the best time to try it ourselves because if things get damaged, at least there is an ID who has contractors to fix them up. Could you imagine the cost and trouble of finding a tiler next time to come and fix ONE tile because the drilling cracked it?

And this is the hubby installing the rack to hang our stuffs. It may not seem like anything but we were quite worried that the tiles may crack from the drilling. Apparently it seems that the tiles were stronger than it seem. Hubby's dad came over to demonstrate how to drill the tiles and we fixed up the rack. There is still one more rack to be installed on the other side of the kitchen but have not bought it yet. Finger crossed for that because it will be done entirely by the hubby next time!

The finished product. Space is always a constrain in BTO because of the small area, so we must make use of all the spaces that are available, including vertical space. This way, it enables us to have more space for preparing the foods.

Bought a mini fan for our living room too. Now we are able to save money from not relying on our aircon, and also the hassle of bringing our Dyson fan around so that we have wind wherever we are.

So far it's working well. Even our tissue paper box is licking its tongue in delight!

Moving Into our new home

1st August 2016. The day we officially moved into our new nest. No longer coming over here just to oversee the renovation or to fixed up our furniture. The time has come for us to finally live here. We got our FSM down to our house again to help us with the moving in ceremony, and they did some prayers and rituals through the ceremony. Her mother came too, and we were really thankful for her helping us do the preparation and some cooking while we were busy doing the rituals.

Our starting ceremony revolved around the phrase, 风生水起. We switched on the fans for the wind, plant the coins on the floor as seeds, and boiled the water to bring around the house to water the seeds and create growth. We then brought our rice bucket and filled it three-quarter full so that it symbolized that we would always have food to eat, yet space for more fortune to come to us. We unwrapped our door number sign on the gate as a symbol of officially opening the house. We cooked some tang yuan as a symbol of reunion. We brought soy sauce, vinegar, salt, sugar, tea leaves, oil as a symbol of having the necessities. We walked over burning charcoal at the door as a symbol of burning the bad past and having a new start at our house.

That pretty much summed it all up.

We cooked and had our first meal of the house that night. Simple, but delicious.

And to complete the moving in ceremony, we spent our first night there at our new home. No longer do we both need to squeeze into a single sized bed. We now have a larger queen sized one which was just comfortable for both of us since we ain't that big ourselves. Beside, hubby commented that this means more coziness because we have to be closer together when sleeping haha!

WE ARE OFFICIALLY WOODLANDERS!