Black, White And Red

[Flare 0]

Actually my renovation work is done and the furnishing is almost complete too, but I thought I'll share some of my thinking process and information I've gained through this experience. Although not really a blog from the start, I thought this section is the best place to share.

First section, the floor plans:

This is the floor plan and orientation of my apartment provided by HDB once I completed my option to purchase.

And this is the floor plan we found in the apartment, with the architect's planned layout. (Okay, it's the flipped orientation from my actual apartment)

Just like almost everyone who got similar layout, they would zoom into the odd shaped living room and think that it's the greatest problem in planning the layout for their home, which actually isn't true, the biggest problem is actually the tiny kitchen. Back to the living room, I decided to use round or curved shaped furniture to solve the problem of the odd angles in the living room, so I'll get a circular dining table which cleared up the problem in the dining corner. But what about the TV area?

Well, I can straighten the wall for the TV console, but I'm totally against that.

Firstly, I'll be wasting floor space of the area behind the straightened wall/tv console. Why pay for the floor space only to box it up later?

Secondly, The long living room is already dimly lit during daylight, with only 3 windows at one end. I'm not taking the corridor window into consideration as it would probably be covered by a curtain or blind most of the time. If I straightened the wall, I would definitely end up blocking 1 window or 2 windows. The dining area will end up even darker in the day. So initially I thought of building a platform type console, all the way on the floor with a as small as possible 'pillar' to straighten only the TV. But even this way, 1 window would be blocked. (See above)

But then, while window shopping for furniture with my wife, I came across my solution at Cellini:

Cellini Calypso Modular Sofa. It's nice and it's curved, it'll not look out of place even if it's not placed perpendicular, it'll counter the effects of the odd angle in the TV corner~

As for the master bedroom, one will notice the large space between the bed to the wardrobe in the Architect's drawing (2nd floor plan above). Having no idea what we can do with the area, My wife and I agreed with the ID's idea of a walk in wardrobe. The Desk will be replaced by a cozy corner.

Now back to the greatest problem, the tiny kitchen. It is really too tiny, and the architect's proposed placement of the fridge seems really out of place. Placing it elsewhere would result in a kitchen with next to no worktop. How are we gonna do our food preparation? How am I going to bake my cheese cake? Well my ID proposed to us a C-shaped kitchen. Which you'll see below:

Fast forward past sharing my idea with the ID, he came up with this floor plan:

As for the study area behind the TV corner, it's my requirement as I intend to use the other 2 rooms for other purposes. If anyone likes to have a bar counter, I thought that the area where my study is would make a perfect bar counter. It'll be close to the TV area where you and your guests will probably be. Further more you can even run pipes from the Master Bed Room's toilet, hidden behind the wardrobe and have runing taps and sink at your bar. But well, I don't drink, and I'll prefer my study.

With this layout, I have a huge activity area between the TV and Dining areas where we can set up Mahjong tables, dance or just have some friends sit around and play guitars or games.

( Wow, Wall of Text! )

Edited July 15, 2008 by Flare

[BunBun 5]

Spam chop here.

Looks like you've planned ahead with your layout. How about showing us the pix now?

[Flare 0]

Fast forward 5 weeks of renovation works and another few weeks of shopping, my home is almost done. I do have some pictures, but they are all taken in the dark with a camera phone, so can't really see anything. I'll skip the 3D drawings, why look at 3D drawings when you can see the complete product, further more, they looked almost identical.

Well, you can see how tiny the kitchen is here. The extended arm is not so long that I have to make detour round it to get to the fridge and it provides me more of the much demanded cabinet space and work surface

My dining area. I don't intend to decorate heavily, just hang up a framed movie poster and some framed movie chirashi (Japanese movie promotional flyers). The living room is large enough that I can use grey without worry of making it look really tiny. On the contrary, I thought that the grey makes my living room looks less empty and more cozy.

Here's the poster for the dining area. A Food area needs a poster of a great food related movie. We were debating over Ratatouille and No Reservations and we decided to go with Ratatouille.

The view across my living room from the dining area. It don't look as empty as the floor plan suggests. I guess that the grey walls helped.

More posters to decorate the walls with. I picked movie posters over artwork as movies are something that I really enjoy compared to art work which I may not truly know how to appreciates. These 3 are actually more or less randomly picked out from my tiny collection, I thought that they don't really go well as a series and I'm intending to change them, still running through some choices.

Opposite the posters is the feature wall hiding my safety shelter. My ID came up with this design and I must say I love it.

My TV area. I love glossy laminates, but they are really a dust magnet... There's no coffee table, I'm intending to get the side table which accompanying the Calypso sofa and perhaps a tea trolley to use as a side table when guests are around. Sadly I've burst my budget long ago...

Another view from my TV area to the posters in the activity area/gallery (what I call my activity area, Gallery as in the meaning of "Hallway", not as in"Art Gallery")

The view from my TV area through the gallery to my dining area. As you see from these pictures, the odd angles are not obvious at all with this layout and I get every single square feet of the flat.

Well, my rug may look like it's maroon coloured, but actually it's black and red like everything in the TV area.

My study area behind the sofa.

It's a table from the Galant series at Ikea, it's cheaper than having one fabricated.... Budget... Budget...

My master bedroom with a bed from Cellini as well. I've not put on the sheets etc yet, just placed the quilt cover over the bed to get an idea how the bedding looks with the room's reno.

The cozy corner. Think I should get some cushions to go along? And yes, Roller blinds all the way due to ease of maintenance.

And finally, my walk in wardrobe with a string curtain across the entrance.

And that more or less sums up my apartment.

A few things to share. If you intent to mount your speakers on your false ceiling, decide on the position early and make sure you relay the information to your ID and/or contractors clearly. Other than the obvious need to run wires to the surround speakers and have them add wood to the mounting locations in your false ceiling so that you can mount the speakers easily. If it's too late to reinforce the false ceiling, don't sweat, you still can get special nylon plugs that will allow you to mount them to the fragile gypsum boards, but wood reinforcements are much better. There's also a specification on where to place your speakers. Check it out here. Of course it depends on personal preference and priorities of whether you want to stick to the specs or neatness of the placement especially in odd shaped rooms like mine.

[h4happy 1]

Congrat for your new renovated house.

Btw..how do you maintain the rug you bought?

Thanks!!!

HAPPY

[Jessie 0]

nice house!

my fav area in your whole hse is your MBR.....really cosy!!!!

[tckrto 0]

Bought the same sofa as you. expensive pc of purchase

[BunBun 5]

nice nice, looks very cosy also!!! Like the MBR better cos your bed looks really inviting and you manage to squeeze in a settee also.

Kitchen does look very tiny with the carpentry up. I remember I went to the showflat there to see & I was thinking "wao, so small".. lol. The 5 room flat's kitchen area is bigger in comparison.

[Starscream 0]

Flare: Your planning is just as fabulous as the house nice movie posters and cozy corner! We got the same bed frame too. Be good if you could show us more pictures.

[junxian 0]

hello to another jw st 64 neighbour....

do drop by at our thread here Jurong West St 64

anyway i also gt the same layout as you. Nice idea of having a round shaped sofa... =)

[Angel81 1]

Congrates! Very nice house u got there. Love the movie posters and the bedroom settee. Definitely should have some cushions to hug there!

[Flare 0]

Hee, actually I'm really happy with the reno, my designer manage to give me something quite amazing at the tiny budget i have. So we try to incorporate everything HDB has done and thus we did not change the layout much.

Congrat for your new renovated house.

Btw..how do you maintain the rug you bought?

Thanks!!!

HAPPY

Well, I just vacuum it at least once a week at the moment... It's a 'cheap' machine made carpet, not very thick and the individual elements are quite fine, I think vacuuming it would be quite okay.

Bought the same sofa as you. expensive pc of purchase

Haha, Cellini having a GSS promotion, they are throwing in the side table now, sad. But I ordered the sofa when it's still new and the very nice sales person already gave me a huge discount off the listed price...

nice nice, looks very cosy also!!! Like the MBR better cos your bed looks really inviting and you manage to squeeze in a settee also.

Kitchen does look very tiny with the carpentry up. I remember I went to the showflat there to see & I was thinking "wao, so small".. lol. The 5 room flat's kitchen area is bigger in comparison.

Hahaha, this IS a 5 room flat. But, yes the corner units has a larger kitchen, but the rooms are smaller, especially the MBR and I preferred the wider living room vs the long one for the corner unit, easier to work round the slanted wall. Well, as I said, the biggest problem is actually the kitchen as it's really tiny, the Living room is very large so there's many things one can do to rectify the problem of the slanted wall.

[shutiao06 0]

Hi there,

Nice place u've got there! we've got the same layout juz tat mine is the mirror image of urs. hmm now lookin at wat u've done to ur slanted wall, wow tink tat's another gd idea of not straightening it. we straightened ours and i muz say our livin room sure became smaller.

btw, can i check where u bought ur rug from and a rough price range? been lookin for one but somethin like urs are all quite expensive. thanks

[wolverine_x 0]

Nice posters you got there... u and your wife are movie / anime lovers? I have quite a number of original double-sided movie posters... but i will only put it in my study room...

[BunBun 5]

Ah a 5 room flat? I thought this is a 4 room flat le. The floorplan looks exactly like the 4 room layout we saw on the showflat.

But yes the kitchen is really small but means you save some $$ on the kitchen carpentry costs since not big le.

Hahaha, this IS a 5 room flat. But, yes the corner units has a larger kitchen, but the rooms are smaller, especially the MBR and I preferred the wider living room vs the long one for the corner unit, easier to work round the slanted wall. Well, as I said, the biggest problem is actually the kitchen as it's really tiny, the Living room is very large so there's many things one can do to rectify the problem of the slanted wall.

[applefreak 1]

spam chop

don't know why but your tv console reminds me of ferrari

vroom vroom...