PART 5: FINALE | MOVING

Six months after our first visit to this unit during the house hunting back then, we have officially moved into where we now proudly called our first home together. :') Time is always relative, it always seems so slow while we are living in it day by day, but looking back everything has changed and nothing is the same ever again. I remember the three months of anticipation and anxiety waiting for our keys handover in June, I remember taking strolls to the cluster of our then future home way before it become ours, I remember working on Kujiale with bobo to plan our home layout together, as well as all the hesitations from taking items in and out of the Taobao shopping cart every other day. And here I am, sitting right in our new study room, recollecting all the pieces of memories from the past six months. 

To my great relief and pleasure, the living room turned out almost exactly like the 3D render we did below, if not better. Except that we painted the wall grey on the TV side instead of the Sofa. The sorta Scandinavian and cosy feeling is precisely how I feel when I stepped into the living room everyday. With great luck, of our 150 over items from taobao, there were only very few minor hiccups. Most importantly, the colours of all the items are as imagined and fits harmoniously with one another. Ideally I would like to have more indoor plants in the house if we could handle them, and provide that the Singapore indoor environment suits them as well.  

Initially I wanted a raised sitting platform by the window like some of the photos I  browsed online, but we realised it's not practical because our drop down window goes really low. So as a compromise, we have a 12cm raised platform by the window for our tea / lepak corner. Getting the two bean bags on taobao is one of the many great decisions made because they are as good as the $300 MUJI bean bags and sometime I really wonder if they are made in the same factory keke.



I would think that we have quite limited space at the dining area, which is in between the living room and the hallway to the 3 rooms. So we got a really compact dining set that fits into the area without blocking the walkway into the rooms, which so far we find it quite useful and adequate when we have families or friends coming over to cook / dine in together. I really like the wall art pieces and the dining lights in the house though they are a little on the expensive side by taobao standard. In fact, quite a number of the purchases we made on Taobao aren't as dirt cheap as it might seems, but when compared to local price I'm sure we would have burnt a bigger hole in bobo's pocket to get everything close to what we have ordered. 

Directly opposite the dining area is our open kitchen with bar top ( which has been proven to be one of the space we frequent the most thus far ). We are really happy with our choice of hacking away the original kitchen walls AND overlaying the kitchen tiles AND changing the bottom cabinet doors despite the costs incurred which we were much reluctant to spend at one point of the time. 

For the past two weeks we have been having our breaky together at the bar top because it's actually one of the coolest spot in the house, with wind gushing in from the service yard all day long. Ideally I would like to have the top cabinets changed to white laminates but I think overall, we are almost getting a good as new kitchen already. :> And I am proud to say that I have been spotted in the kitchen more than I am expected to cook up a storm HAHAHA. I guess things are moving along a good direction~

One main problem we had with resale unit was that sometimes the original state of things are still very much functional yet not aesthetically pleasing. Like we had pretty much a relatively well maintained kitchen when we take over the unit as below, compared to many other units we have visited. In fact the whole house was very much move in conditions back then, but I think it's a common spoilt mentality that I  wished things were new and not used. Bobo and  I had prioritise certain areas as must go in the house, like the MBR and en suite toilet, and we also had reservation in modifying the kitchen or overlaying the common toilet, which we eventually did too Opps. The thing with renovation I realise is that there will always be things to improve on and to revamp, so playing around with the budget safely becomes a really tough call sometimes. In fact, at the end of the day we probably did everything we ever wanted without any reservation HAHAHAH. 

Moving inward where we spent 1/4 of our day in at least - the bedroom! I envisioned the paint to be a few shades darker but alas, this aren't that bad either. In fact I would have thought that all the paint in the house are lighter than I assumed, guess it's the relative perception when it's on a small sample than on a large wall. Lessons learnt here. :') We have a platform bed in the house wohooo which is what I  have always dreamt of having one day together with big wide windows. There are a lot of things we loved about the unit when we chose it apart from just the location, direction and level, but also the drop down windows and white grillings in the house. 

One of the most prominent difference between our new home and the eight months I have spent in bobo's parents' place is that I feel our house is enormous at times. Back in his place I think we spent most of our time at home nua-ing on the bed in his room, especially at the later part the whole floor was filled with household stuffs to be brought over to the new flat and there was barely room to walk~ While in contrast, we are now suddenly spoiled for choices and bedroom becomes our hideout only when we sleep. 

Though together with the freedom to roam around in the house without my pants on comes with responsibility for house chores. Where it becomes a matter of you or me and nobody else is there to clean up the house. I think we have heard enough scary tales around us about how couples will definitely end up having lil conflicts on distribution / under- appreciation on housework. It's been two weeks thus far and all I have to say is so far so good. Bobo has been cleaning the toilets weekly while I vacuum and mop the floor, and taking turns to wash and dry the laundries depending on who's free atm. I guess there can hardly be a fixed rule on who's in charge of what in the house and a lot of time it probably has a lot to do with the personality. Some people takes on more initiative while others are just more laid back. And the key idea to me lies in balancing between being appreciative of each other's efforts put in and taking initiatives on our own part. But again, it's easier said than done, though I aim to work towards that everyday~ 

Our 下重本 en suite toilet woohooo~ we had a complete makeover and invested quite a bit of moolah in making a comfortable and bright toilet because we really value showering and washing up together every night~ The toilet size shrunk drastically because we had to do a partition and cut away the slanted end of the toilet due to the building design. And I was really looking forward to have a marble themed toilet which was made affordable by the marble-designed tiles :D

The modern toilet theme probably deviates a little from the rest of the Scandinavian home but I'm taking happy shit in it every morning~ I have come crossed really gorgeous marble themed toilets on Pinterest, there are certain things we couldn't achieve like having a thin black framed one panel screen shower but I guess this is the best a HDB toilet can be made into and I am very satisfied with it already. Feels like I'm stepping into hotel toilet every other day Hehehe. I have occasionally lamented about the space constrain in the shower area throughout the last six months but now that we are living in it, it hasn't been too much an issue. 

And that's how we typically start a day. Nah I kid~ Bobo wakes up before me cause he needs to prep for work~ Though I  have been a good wife as much as possible to wake up right after and make him breaky just in time after he's done with washing up. Been playing around with the usual breakfast ingredient but it's always same same but different~ I did try though~ like how we had Charsiew pau yesterday heheheh. Maybe some other morning he will get a prata~ 

Another uncommon add-on for our toilet - we opted for a seat in the already tiny shower area because I like it like that heehee. Also it makes things convenient when we wash hair for each other, though I lately figured that it's pretty uncommon for couples to bath together everyday but I guess every relationship is different and this is what we worked out to be most comfortable with~ So is many other couple habits, at the end of the day I think a lot of things are really none-of-our-business and people live the life they want. 

Okay house tour is coming to an end~ We had two extra rooms for now so we turned one into a study cum exercise room while the other one is the guest room cum clothes ironing room. We had no built-in carpentry for study room and instead got the loose furnishings from IKEA, taobao and Starliving. And those are perhaps the other items in the house that's not Made-from-taobao Hahaha. Quite a simple layout because 'studying' isn't our main tasks in life anymore so we don't appear in the study room so much neither. I was a little worried with the storage space in the room but guess it all worked out in the end~ Except that one major issue is that the Wifi reception in the room is really really terrible. ( Like how I am actually typing this long post at the dining table with my aching neck and back. ) 

One more thing we did which we did not set out to do was to overlay the common toilet tiles, we were pretty firm on our stance to stick to the original tiles when we signed the contract with the contractor but I guess things changed at the later stage on top of our contractor's kind reminder that the toilet tiles will be really outstanding in the bad ways when our house is furnished HAHAHAH. So yeah, there has been occasionally tough calls between being budget and being pretty. I guess renovation can go really high with sky being the limit if anyone wants to, but at the end of the day we should make out of what we could really afford and live to love what we have made out of it. The renovation alone costs us $25,000 with a main contractor and we are really happy with every part of what we received eventually so Yay. :')

And at the end of the day ( here comes the mushy concluding para ), what made this whole house hunting and renovation journey the most pleasant and joyous one is the man that I walked through the journey together with. For he is always patience and giving in to all my requests, for he never doubts my judgement or questions the cost of the whole lists of 150 over Taobao items, he never said anything I chose was too expensive or absurd or unnecessary for the house, he seldom had any second option and it was always 'I will love what you choose' that comes out from his mouth. We never had to agree to disagree, or to quarrel over the colour of the sofa or the size of the TV. And I am grateful for such a smooth journey with Lnr, which makes me looking forward to spending the years ahead together in our new home~ :')