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Evening! Due to some screw-ups from HDB. Our final appointment for the place actually got pushed back slightly. As we both bought and sold our old place at the same time, we are stuck in a position where the reno project had to completed within 7-8 weeks. I had my ID tearing our his hair as he mentions that a project this size with a house this old, usually takes ~3mths to complete. So our solution was for him to rush out the top floor so we can move all our stuff over. And at the same time, get mother in law's help to house the little one for the remainder of the renovation. We dont really want our kid to be breathing in any of the by products of the renovation. Fingers crossed we wont have to resort to that. Sigh. ANYYWAAAYYY, on to the good news. After countless space design changes and trillions of whatsapp messages. We finally more or less settled on what the foundation of our reno will be based on. 1. We will tear down the additional room on the first floor to create a combined kitchen and dining area. 2. Build up a small study room on the first floor just beside the staircase so that daddy can have his mancave (check!) 3. Leave the balcony open to be a usable area. Unfortunately, we'd have to resort to using a clothes dryer to keep the clutter away from the balcony. Never tried that before so hopefully the family can adapt to that. 4. We've been living with 2 toilets in our current place and as with all EM's, they come with 3. So we decided to do away with the ensuite toilet and make it into a walk in wardrobe for the missus (check 2!) Thats basically the main works we will be doing in regards to space planning for our place. Next stop, theme, colors and addons!

We wanted some kind of feature wall for our balcony and stairwell so started sourcing around for the different options available. The more common ones were wall paper, craft stones or stick on wall art from korea. James managed to find a particularly interesting product that was fairly new in the market. This company called DECOART apparently does wall painting/mouldings using special paint that was apparently brought in from Turkey. I was skeptical initially on the outcome of such methods. We decided to pay the showroom a visit to look at the samples available and judge for ourselves. Apparently, Roy is the boss of DecoArt and he is bringing in the product called SAN DECO from Turkey. He trains specialist to apply such techniques to wall to create different effects eg, wind effect, brick wall etc. The one technique that interest me the most was slab molding. I wanted the effect of huge slate concrete pieces on my stairwell and balcony wall. At the showroom, we were amazed at the different methods being used. However, this isn't like tiles were we could see the end product straight away. The final product would really depend on the skill of the artisan being employed. Definitely interested! but at the same time super hesitant on being too adventurous

The layout of the place we choose. We really wanted this particular layout as we loved the double volume balcony. There are so many possibilities when it comes to how to best make use of the balcony. Some have built a roof over the balcony to convert it into a room. It was a straight toss up between leaving the balcony open and making it into an outdoor area vs sealing the balcony up with full height windows to make it into a double volume dinning room. That is but one of the many many decisions we had to make in trying to convert the original layout into one that will serve our needs, yet at the same time, unique. 1) Open balcony (more or less decided after a coin toss ) 2) We wanted a slightly open concept kitchen with and adjoining dinning area. Hacking down the study room wall would open up the place and make it more functional, however, we needed to make sure we kept 4 usable rooms, else it would have defeated the purpose of us moving to a new place. 3) We love staircases, hence, we had to brainstorm on how to make the staircase not just functional and safe, but also pretty! (for the lack of a better word) 4) We came from a house where half a room was converted into a walking wardrobe for my wife. Somehow, i'd have to find a way to squeeze that out for her as well. My mantra has always been "happy wife, happy life" 5) Noticed that there wasn't any designated storeroom in this particular layout. Hmmmm.. more headache.