Finally. After several long months of negotiation with the engineer, architect and contractor, we started the renovation of our new home in February. Although it’s classified as ‘A&A’ works, there’s quite a lot of drilling, banging, sawing, building…and the place is in HUGE mess.
During my weekly visits to the new home, I bring along my trusty digital camera to snap pictures of the transformation process. Will probably make a scrapbook of the ‘before and after’ look. Figured it’ll be something worth flipping through when I’m slurping porridge while sitting in my wheelchair and watching the grandkids doodle on the walls (by then I'll be too weak to stop them from wrecking havoc)
The damage done so far: extended the back of the house to incorporate a granny room and extra toilet on the first floor, knocked down the wall between two bedrooms to enlarge the master bedroom and extended the space for the other two bedrooms on the second floor, added an additional floor (for the attic) and ripped off the old roof tiles.
And that’s just only the beginning.
Once the structures are in place, we’ve got to add in the sanitary fixtures, wall and flooring tiles and carpentry works. Over the last few weekends, the whole family’s been going to warehouse sales and managed to grab some stuff at bargain basement prices. The hub’s excellent at keeping tabs of our expenditure and rather than leave everything to the contractor, we’re sourcing the fittings ourselves. So far, we’ve already bought the toilet bowls, basins and other bathroom accessories, the marble flooring, microwave, oven, cooker hob and hood. Last Saturday we selected the wall and floor titles. The targetted date of completion is sometime in June 2006 though for official purposes, the estimated date's in August 2006. My peanut will be able to celebrate her first birthday in our new home.
Some homeowners find this process very troublesome and tiresome, and prefer to rely solely on the interior designers to do the work. We’ve almost cleaned out our entire savings so we really haven’t got the luxury or budget to engage a designer to add the finishing touches to the home. And I get a kick out of doing-up my own place, my way anyway. So this arrangement is working out quite nicely for us.
We’ve still got some of our old furniture and appliances from our previous home – the sofa set, dining set, washing machine and refrigerator etc that means we don’t have to fork out unnecessary money to do up the place. The bare, basic minimum is what I aim for. Planning to leave the girls’ and guest rooms empty, save for cupboards and mattresses. Figured I'll not spend too much to decorate the girls' room. Probably throw in a couple of IKEA kids chair and table. They'll outgrow everything before you can say "Isengard Orc Captain!"
What I'm really looking forward to is "Project Attic". That's where I'm going to put up shelves to display my LOTR collection. Yes, I haven't given up collecting those figurines much to the chagrin of poor hub..."Where are you going to find space for your toys?"...and the disgust of the MIL who thinks I'm a spendthrift nut-case besotted with the "ugly" toys. Well, beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.
Needless to say, I'm still splurging on my LOTR action figurines. Went to the extend of buying some of the toys direct from USA although the shipping costs MORE than the toys themselves. Plus the US$ is so high, damn it! Of course, when I rip open the brown package wrappings and find myself staring into the well-sculptured faces of my LOTR heroes and monsters, I go weak in the knees and have no regrets despite chalking huge bills on my credit card. *Sigh*.
This weekend will be spent pouring over the classifieds for metal or wooden gates. I'm already rubbing my hands with anticipation. And yes, I have to agree with you. I have NO life.
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