Category: House Stuff

Broke but happy.

Today we’ve paid our fourth payment for the house renovation and we are now officially broke. From today onwards we will be reduced to eating dusts and drinking stolen tap water from the neighbours.

Hehehe.

Okay, it’s not THAT bad, but bad enough for us to keep track on every single expenditure. Among the things I’ve been doing are these:

-Separating each facial cotton pad into two

-Buying generic branded handwash instead of Dettol

-Saving leftover meals for days after

-Giving Charlie DIY haircuts/baths instead of sending him to the groomer

-Drive one car instead of two cars to save on fuel

-Eating dinner at food courts instead of at restaurants

-Watching movies at home instead of at the cinemas (unless free, hehe)

-Saving shopping coupons and vouchers

-Entertain ourselves with Nintendo Wii

-Recycling clothes and finding different ways of wearing each item

-Showering 3 times a week (I kid, I kid)

Feel free to dispense any tip for saving money if you have any hehe. Before I go, I just want to say this…

To my bestest friends the #porkgang (KY, Haze, Horng, Ruby, God, Kerol, FA, Suanie, Ringo) thanks for accommodating us. First with going to pet-friendly places ALL the time when Charlie appeared in our lives and now with our anti-socialising, stemmed from budget constraints. And it’s very touching to me that you guys love us enough to foot our bills sometimes just so we could hang out too. I love you all so much you have no idea.

And to mom & dad who just moments ago brought us homecooked dinner all the way from Cheras. I know you did it because you know we’d be pressured to pay for dinner if we ate out and you don’t want to put us in a tight spot.

Yummy homecooked dinner.

Thanks mummy, daddy. /sniffs

So yeah, we are broke but we’re happy :)

Getting an awesome feature wall for your home.

Having a feature wall is a great way to bring in some colours and character to an otherwise boring room. Personally, I’m tired of those boring, mass produced wall decals. They probably look great the first few months but after a while when dust and gunk start collecting around the edges and they begin to curl…yucks.

I loved those Damask wallpapers but it seems like EVERYBODY is using them now. Wallpapers with unique designs cost an arm & leg and I’ve seriously never seen a perfectly stuck wallpaper in my life. There’s always something about the alignment and the faint edges that put me off. So yeah, no wallpapers for me.

I had a drastic thought of asking my contractor to strip off existing plaster on the wall to expose the bricks but long term maintenance issues scared me off almost immediately. Think dusts and the female fickle-mindedness, am pretty sure I’d miss the smooth wall after 10 minutes. What if I’m bored of exposed bricks then, it’ll cost us a bomb to smoothen the wall again :P

Back in the late 80s and early 90s at my parents’ home, we had a bare wall right behind the staircase railing that was visible from the living room. I remember my Dad meticulously cutting out shapes from newspapers and sticking them onto the wall with sticky tape. And then, he’d spray paint all over the newspaper cuttings and when he finally peeled them off, an awesomesauce picture of a sun and black birds emerged on our wall. It was too cool!

I’m pretty sure I have the picture of the wall somewhere, me and my brothers used to camho with it but the pictures are at my parents’ home so you’ll have to contend with an illustration of how I remember it :D

# – Dad’s sun and birds. Hmm, that’s the staircase railing at the bottom :P

Well that’s a feature wall circa 1990 for you. People don’t do these things anymore, do they? It’s time consuming and plus, you really must have an epic bundle of faith in your own creativity before you start messing with your walls (which my Dad had. He’s still got it but he’s channelling it into bedazzling his golf bag, just kidding).

Well, even if you don’t have the time, energy or creativity, fear nothing because my friend Haze and her two friends have created a dream team in transforming even the dullest wall into a work of art. They are called “PaintLust”. Check these out:

# – Whimsical and pretty.

# – Sexy rock & roll. This is KY‘s wall by the way.

# – Sleek and manly.

Yes, these are all painted walls! So you want an awesomesauce customised wall painting in your home but you suck with the brush and rather sleep than dirty your hands with paint, you know who to call.

Before I end this post, I’ll show you one last picture to show how talented Haze is. She drew this in under 15 minutes:

# – She gave me better eyebrows hehehe.

House Renovation Update #3 – Things are taking shape!

Hi guys, do you have any idea what these are? :D

Any idea?

Well they are our windows! Today we went to the house to let the contractor know which directions do we want to open the windows out so that they can install them accordingly.

I love, love, love my windows. I love, love, love my windows. They’re exactly how I had envisioned them to be but better :D

Windows

# – This picture is taken from our backyard. You can see that the window frames have already been installed. Next will be the installation of the panels.

# – Here’s me with one of the first panels installed. My face is pixelated because mornings do not agree with me :P

Backyard

Speaking of backyard, a roof has also been erected there so that I can do my laundry regardless of the weather. I love it so much because it’s supported by these strong & beautiful wooden pillars and beams. Initially we wanted to use polycarbonate roof for the backyard but eventually decided on roof tiles/wood for a more natural look.

# – This is the backyard roof. Do you notice the black cables extending out from under the roof? That’s our telephone line and it’s so ugly!! Anyone have any experience with getting TM to fix it coz it looks so third-world urghhh.

Lets move on to the other progress of the house…

Master Bedroom

# – Remember the masterbedroom? After all the hacking it looked like this.

# – The master bedroom looks like this now. The french door on the left have been covered up so that we can maximise the space in the room. (fantasising on how the room would look like with the king-sized Serta Hilton bed we’ve booked last month)

Master Bathroom

# – The master bathroom: post-hacking, pre-extension.

# – We extended the master bathroom because it was too tiny even for me. Now we have a decent sized shower area at the back of the bathroom and I love this new layout because the toilet bowl and basin area won’t be soaking wet after a shower :)

Wardrobe/Activity Room & Guest Room

# – The sad state right after the hacking out of the old doors and windows.

# – The door frames and window frames are in now. The shared bathroom is also waterproofed, ready for some kickass tiling and sanitaryware installation :D

Pantry

# – This little room in the middle is supposed to be a storeroom. But we’re converting it into a pantry as it’s just next door to the kitchen.

# – The hole on the wall is for a ventilation fan to keep the room dry and cool. I’ve always wanted a walk-in pantry like Nigella Lawson’s and by the looks of it, I think I’m getting there :)

You know this year, we have stopped almost all kinds of splurges like holidays, new clothes, food and gadgets because renovating is not cheap -_- But as we see the house slowly taking shape, it all becomes so clear. It’s really worth it to have our lifestyle suspended for this because by next year, we’ll be living in our dream home, enjoying our dream life :)