Venturing into the next chapter of our marriage life: planning for our renovation for our new flat which we will be collecting our keys later end of this year. We are really pretty excited because applying for BTO is really such a long wait! We have already engaged our IDs, Cherish and Weng, from Sky Creation last year and now in the midst of doing the planning with them. They are pretty easy going and despite all the negative reviews about the company that have been going around, so far we have no issues with them and pretty much comfortable with them as well. They even showed me their workmanship by inviting us to view one of their clients’ flat before we decided to sign with them. Well, keeping our fingers crossed that the whole journey will be smooth!
So this is the proposed layout by the HDB for our floor plan:
We choose our BTO such that we have a squarish living room rather than an L-shaped living room as we preferred to have a dining table behind the sofa so that we can watch TV and eat at the same time. We actually visited our BTO site and to our disappointment, the whole house is incredibly SMALL! So the planning of the design is really important to maximise our space as well as to incorporate our styles of preference perfectly too.
Initially, we have problems trying to tell the IDs exactly what we wanted because both the husband and I have very different tastes. I have an eccentric taste and I like to go for luxury modern styles, with glitters, textures, contrasting colors and metallic. The husband is more down to earth and he prefers simple and light earthly tones with wood elements. And the problem is both of us do not like each other preferences! Aiyo!
So here’s 2 examples of our preferences which I collected for mood boards. This is the kind of style I like to go for:
As for my husband, he does not have the habit of collecting examples for mood boards. So I do not have any idea what he really like but based on what he said about his preference, I think this is the style my husband will go for:
Is our styles pretty much conflicting?
I think it is because even the IDs also have a headache trying to accomodate both of our styles. I tried finding pictures of both luxury and wood elements but most examples all turned out either too dark or too asian.
I leave it to the IDs to try designing. After few weeks, they showed us the first 3D drawing for our living room:
Verdict: Both of us dislike it.
I think the IDs were trying to combine our tastes together, mixing the wood elements with a bit of modern style. I got many of these examples from searching in the Internet as well. I didn’t like it because it looks too woody and he said it doesn’t look very appealing either. So we tried to compromise and being a good husband, he decided to go for my style for the living room with addition of wood furnishings .
In return, I will give him our master bedroom to do according to his style instead and he let me have my color of choice for the wardrobe. Our kitchen will be a combination of luxury modern and wood elements which the IDs have done a good job. I will show next time once we have finalise the drawing.
At first, I asked for a feature wall with contrasting patterns of gold and metallic but even the IDs think my taste is weird. Haha! So after few hours of discussion, we decided to add in bronze mirrors to the tv feature wall instead for a luxury feel, and maybe add a bit of wood elements to the tv console to make my husband happy. I tried to compromise to minimize textures and huge contrasting colors as he find having textures is abit too loud. I also suggested to change the lighting from warm light to white light in the drawing as I prefer a brighter room (the husband prefer warm light though! That one we shall nego again in future).
So the IDs came up with the second drawing:
Yes, definitely better than the first drawing. The IDs tried to put a little of wood grains here and there. But somehow, I just feel something is missing for the shoe cabinet and TV console but I cannot put my finger to it yet. Maybe the colors overall are a little dull? We will have to play around with nice furnishings and art decor in the near future when all these are done. We will also have to source around for some wood furnishings with nice glossy or metallic surface if we can find one.
The dining table will be behind the sofa, which we have not discuss in details yet. But I want to put big textured GLITTER wall, but the husband was quite against with the idea as he prefers plain and simple. He is being very firm with his decision of not letting me have my way for a GLITTER wall. I am still trying to negotiate my way through. I caps the GLITTER because thinking back, it was quite hilarious seeing his ashen face when I first suggested having glittered wall. Instead, he said he preferred me to do big paintings on canvas and hang my paintings on the wall instead.
He is really my big number one loyal fan of my works.
He reminded me that he was already letting me having a little glitter on our master bedroom wardrobe so he is not letting me have my way with our walls too. Oh well.
I think this drawing is okay for now. I am still thinking there is something missing about the shoe cabinet! Can someone tell me what’s it? The husband thinks it’s fine though. It has been like 2 months and I still cannot figure out what’s wrong. Is it the colours? The patterns on the cabinet? Something is definitely missing!
On the side note, I have actually created a mood board for combining wood with white, very much similar to our combined styles which you might want to take a look: Home inspiration – Loving Whites.
Shall end my thoughts here and continue with the rest of the rooms next time!