Stirling HDB Terrace - Home and Decor May Issue!

wee!!!

we are featured in a small part of May's Home and Decor issue!

get a copy to see our little wardrobe feature...

Stirling HDB Terrace - #286 we are on a magazine!

yay! want to share our joy with my readers ...we are on Home & Decor's May issue...
just 2 pages but we are happy about it!

many thanks to H&D - Darren, Nonie & Cindi for making this shoot possible, Dulux- bernard and Decorette - Amanda

Stirling HDB Terrace - Gardening

green fingers?
plants brings lots of chi around the house...or so i heard. So besides being a house decor green item, it brings oxygen, sucks up carbon dioxide (which is a plenty here cos our neighbour behind has such a smelly cat!!! i mean no offence to cat lovers out there but the cat behind our parti wall is phew!! damn smelly!)

sedum and frog joy

a couple of frog joys

our used to barren no grass patch. now still quite barren, wonder when the grass is going to grow back...

Stirling HDB Terrace - outdoor plants

cutesy human figurines in our plant pots for extra fun!

and we added a hot pink plate for it too!

hub's mum brought this big pot of plant for us! and it's thriving very well...hardy plant!

Stirling HDB Terrace - the Master Room

cushions
lately i have developed a craze for cushions and who started putting cushions on the bed as a trend??? Now i have to put them after i made my bed and take them off before i sleep.

gosh.

looks pretty but it requires persistent work.


more updates on my bunny lights.

bet she's (bunny) really happy with her new flower mat.

Stirling HDB Terrace - IKEA HEART rug

Stirling HDB Terrace - #284 Happy Lunar New Year!

HAPPY LUNAR NEW YEAR
As I was away for almost half of the Lunar New Year for my honeymoon, I felt bad that I've neglected my home for such a long time! And it's also our new home's first Lunar New Year! How can we not spruce it up for some festivities especially when we are chinese!

So straight after we came back from Europe, out came everything red, vintage and auspicious!!
Here are some of our photos!

Huat Ah!!! A capsicum red pineapple that greets our visitors right at our door step...even those who passes by turns an eye toward it cos it's so BIG and BRIGHT! hahaha....


lots of chinese bowls and a sweet yellow hot flask for those who needs a hot drink from all that rain that has been pouring down so hard!

some chinese paper cuttings to add some red colour on our bookshelves. Credits goes to my mum who bought these for me!

went down to Chinatown with mum to get some flowers to add some texture to our dining table.

all meals come to the Dining table and what a better way then to lay red table mats couple with a vase with New Year flowers!

more red stuff in the kitchen against our cold hard steel ovens.

Stirling HDB Terrace - #283 Our Home's First Photoshoot!

Hi Peeps!!
Many thanks to those who have voted for me!!! Can't tell you how grateful I am cos the free paint job really helped me to save quite abit of money!

Here's the link to share with everyone our home photo shoot by Dulux
CLICK

Stirling HDB Terrace - #281 Before-After MASTERS and common bath

Previously there were 2 rooms upstairs which we hacked the walls down and turned it into one big master with an attached bath and study area. The study area shall become the baby cot and changing station if we have a little one.

 Here's a look at the common bath vanity area and the revamped one.

 The previous common bath shower and WC and the one we are having now.

Here's the feature wall in the previous master room. Okay this we hacked it down too. I don't really like wall panel feature walls.

And the previous wardrobe area, we placed our bed and a little study nook for me to put my books and novels.

Lastly, here's a look at the entrance of the masters, you will see previously the wardrobe is beside the door, which we have changed and placed our bed.

Stirling HDB Terrace - #281 Before-After Staircase

Stirling HDB Terrace - #281 Before-After Kitchenworks!

The kitchen was on the left which we converted to a guestroom, which we thought was necessary since we combined both rooms upstairs to a big master. So if we didn't have children, we would just rent this room out in the future, if not then our children can have this room!

Here's looking at the previous dining area with the corrugated ceiling board and yellow walls, to the left is the Japanese looking door which is kept open. The After photo shows that we have changed the dining area to our kitchen.

I don't think any young couples out there would appreciate these colourful cupboards, so mine will be white white white!

 

We took down the Japanese looking screen door that leads to the kitchen behind. What we did was swop the kitchen to the dining area and the old kitchen became a guest room.

Here's a look at the previous kitchen cabinets and ours!

Stirling HDB Terrace - #281 Before-After Living & Dining

Here's a look at the previous ex-owner's feature's wall, I call it the crazy wall because of the wooden panel, yellow beams, crazy beige tiles and last of all, a painted deep green coloured wall in the middle. And we removed all that and replaced it with a mirror to enhance the depth of our dining space, creating an illusion to make the space seem a little bigger.

 Here' a view from the dining area, looking towards the living and the front patio. We removed the sliding doors and grille and replaced it with bi-fold doors to create an openness to the outside!

 Here's looking at the staircase previously and now. We took down all the crazy beige tiles, seriously! it's giving my eyes a headache, if my eyes had a head. And we are going to put our tv here, so the staircase wall had all the power outlets and antennae.

Here's another look at the overall, living and dining together. The After photo is not very well taken as it was taken in the night, pardon all the pixellated effect.

Stirling HDB Terrace - #281 Before-After Yard and Front Patio

Some final shots of Before and Afters....This entry is just on our back yard and Front Patio.
Took me quite some time to look for similar shots like these! Was tracing through all the photo folders which are quite many...this made me realised that ...gosh our home reno has certainly taken quite awhile to finish!
Just a recap, we re-did the floor tiles, previously it was the old beige-brown 300x300 tiles, now what we have are 300x600 granite looking tiles. We also raised the overall height of the boundary wall and changed the side gate too as the former one was rusty and couldn't be opened properly. For the roof, we did a new plasterboard with outdoor paint and changed all the doors and windows to sliding doors for maximum cross-ventilation.
For the raised boundary wall, we purchased homogenous outdoor tiles which were the most costly ones among the rest...but it was every penny's worth as many of our friends, neighbours and even wj's parents love this tiling work the most!

The old gride sliding doors at the front patio have been replaced with bi-fold doors to create a bigger space. With sliding doors, what you get is 2/3 of cross vent, with bi-fold doors, you are getting almost 100% opening space. However the down side is, bi-fold doors don't usually last as long as sliding doors...well, we see how it goes.

This has been posted before...so it's a repeat. But nonetheless, I'm putting this up again to sum the Front and Back photos of our place. Hmm...then again, this might not be the last entry on our front gate!!! hahaha...cos Mr Goh hasn't done our Unit number plate yet!! And we are planning to get this last item done before the housewarming. Also, Mr Goh is very concerned with the spacing of our front gate and wants to cover those spacings! He finds it too open for everyone to see!!! And my mother agrees with him...more stuff to do.

The old meter box which was covered in a louvred cupboard is replaced with a full height door... and this little niche has become a very useful space for me to keep my umbrellas, rake and my yard broom!

The space just immediately in front of the gate is replaced with pebble wash...we topped up the boundary wall too for the front, painted the wall for our neighbour too...since we are sharing the same wall. Removed all the grid fence and replaced the front gate.

we removed the sunken planter and replaced with timber deck because we didn't want to clean up the soil mess after a heavy rain which the ex-owners had that kind of problem. See photo below for close up of previous sunken planter cum front garden of ex-owners.

The front garden was replaced with chengal timber deck for potted plants as the silt, sand, dirt and mud keeps coming indoors which was hard to maintain. Some of the plants we moved it outdoors where possible. The soil in front was kept throughout the renovation process and moved to our yard when the planter box was ready to receive it.