Category: House Stuff

House Renovation Update #2 – Backyard

While my last post on our house renovation was about all the demolishing work, this time, I’m going to focus on the backyard/laundry area.

In the beginning, the backyard was horrifying. It was covered in weeds and heaven knows what species of creepy crawlies. In fact, it looked so scary that a neighbour who happened to be doing her laundry in her backyard asked us if we could get someone to clean it up because she’s dead afraid of snakes lurking in the massive bushes.

# This is the backyard before.

Well, my contractor said there were no snakes although the guys whom he hired to do the cleaning up were pretty cautious threading around our backyard. Great news for me because if there were any snake found at all, I would never be able to live in the house peacefully for the rest of my life because all I’d be thinking off are snakes in the sewage, snakes behind my washing machine, snakes in the drain, snakes slithering into my kitchen, snakes hiding in my toilet bowl, etc.

Okay, that’s it about snakes. Lets see what our backyard looks like now :)

# The chicken fence has been removed and replaced by a brick wall.

# The wall with rectangular holes for ventilation will be plastered eventually and the chicken fence door will be replaced by a steel door.

# View from the inside of the kitchen. So clean, sunny and bright now.

I’m very pleased with the results and can’t wait to see the final outcome. The next time, the backyard will be filled with plants in POTS where snakes cannot hide.

Great Free Kitchen Design Planning Software

I find myself at a dead-end whenever I try to figure out what I want to do with my new kitchen. I mean, I have a general feeling and idea of what I want: industrial, heavy duty and still cosy but for the life of me, I’m not able to find any remotely close inspirational pictures on Google images. I guess it’s not easy…how the heck do you combine industrial and “still cosy” together aye? I know -_-

So I searched around the Internet for a software that allows me to design a kitchen without needing to know any 3D rendering skill. The most popular one seems to be the one from Ikea, but I found the kitchen planning tool limited and the 3D render not so impressive. I’ve also tried Google SketchUp before. Well, it’s not for the fainthearted as you’d end up with a gigantic fridge and a oven fit for the use of an ant. Crazy ratios -_-

After searching around more, I landed on a website called Free Kitchen Design Software. To be honest, I was very skeptical because of how the website looks like. It’s dated and looks more like a spam site then a genuine website. The URL alone screams spam central. I don’t know what possessed me but I thought I’d give it a try and I’m glad I did.

What I found far exceeded my expectations!!!

#1 – You can customise the size of your space, number of windows, doors and their positions.

#2 – Then you can drag all the wall cabinets, floor cabinets, appliances and other things onto the 2D plan of your kitchen.

#3 – You can also customise the colours of almost everything including cabinet handles, floor finishes, wall finish, cabinet material, worktop material etc. It’s awesomesauce to the max!

#4 – You can only drag the objects onto the 2D plan but you can view the results in 3D. This is my favourite part of the software :)

Think the colours are a bit depressing eh? No problem! Just click the Design button and fix it there.

#5 – Wooden cabinets for a fresher look. You can also rotate the 3D render to view it from a different perspective.

You see what I mean by how versatile this software is? It is also very stable, unlike the Ikea kitchen planning tool which have a tendency to hang on my computer. That said, there are still several things that I feel are lacking on it, primarily the objects. I want wall cabinets that suspend from ceilings as well as aluminum shelves, which they don’t have. I don’t like the gap between ceiling and cabinets cause it’s gateway to dusty-ville.

So, while I can kind of visualise more accurately how my kitchen will look like with this application, it’s still not 100%. I’m leaving that to a good friend who is a kitchen designer. Happy kitchen planning!

House Renovation Update #1- Demolishing

This morning we dropped by the house to check on the progress and also to discuss with the electrician on how many power points, switches etc that we want.

It’s quite surreal to see the transformation. Just two weeks ago the house was in a sorry state with ugly as hell tiles and overgrowth of shrubs and unidentified insects crawling around. Now it’s almost completely bare.

Here are some pictures:

Kitchen

# This is the kitchen before.

# We demolished a section of the wall so when it’s done the kitchen will extend into what is used to be a wash area. All the old tiles have been stripped off. The entire kitchen except one wall section will be tiled floor to ceiling. In fact, the kitchen will be the biggest space in the entire house, that’s how serious we take our food, hehehe.

Stairs

# This is the staircase before.

# We have ripped out all the parquets and old wooden railings from the staircase. We are putting laminated wood flooring for the staircase and the entire upper floor.

Living Hall

# This is the living hall before.

# The old tiles have been ripped off. The concrete bench under the windows have been demolished. We’re also putting in new doors, windows & grills. As for the ground floors, we’re not tiling the them at all, just going for smooth cement render.

Master Bedroom

# The master bedroom before.

# The parquet flooring has been removed and will be replaced with laminated wood flooring as with the rest of the upper floor. The old door frame has also been hacked out. The french doors on the left will also be removed and turned into a wall.

Room 2 & Room 3

# The rooms before.

# Room doors, bathroom doors and old bathroom tiles have been hacked out. Parquet flooring also removed. These rooms will be my wardrobe/vanity/activity room and guest room.

So there, some updates on the progress of our new home :)

And also, if you’re not into this sort of things, here are some pictures of me mucking around:

# Say no to fugly grills :P

# Here’s me dressed up in solidarity with my contractor. Hehe.

# And another one in the now bare toilet.

Till the next update, happy house renovating!

To read about what you should do before buying a house, check out my partner-in-crime, ShaolinTiger’s Guide to Buying a Property in Malaysia.