Rolling off this post with our reno must-haves and regrets! We collected our keys on 31-AUG-2025 and at the time of writing, it is 12-SEP-2025. We would like to delegate this post to some regrets that did not cross our minds at the stage of designing and purchasing fittings for our place, as well as some unexpected must-haves that we have come to realise after staying here for 1 year. Starting off with our first must-haves, concealing our corridor! 
What initially started out as an aesthetic idea has found a functional use for it. Our originally purpose of concealing the corridor is to separate the living space from the bedrooms so that we are able to contain our guest within our living room during hosting sessions. However, we realised that it is able to contain the cold air within the living room as well. This allows my living room to cool much faster and lesser electricity usage to continually cool the space as the space is confined. 
Up next on our must-have list, we have the Wells water dispenser! Having a water dispenser completely eliminate the need for me to boil water and cool them down to drink it. This saves a lot of time. It Is also self sterilises the dispenser nozzle by UV every couple of days, so this ensures that the nozzle is always clean. Just wipe it from time to time will do. Their customer service is great as well and responds quite fast should you have any issue. NGL it comes with a price tag, so do weigh the cost and benefits you’ll get out of installing this. 
Moving on, our steigen laundry system is our next must-have! - Given recent weather conditions, I have a much better appreciation of my steigen laundry system. I am able to “sun” my laundry whenever I want, however long I want, without having to worry about whether the weather is going to play jokes on me in the next instance. This is the steigen solar pro in blush pink :) 
Next on our must-have list for this post - corner fans. Singapore is soooo hot! I’m sure many people are able to relate to this. We installed 2 corner fans, 1 facing the dining area and the other facing the kitchen. This has allowed so much ventilation and airflow that the house does not feel hot and stuffy. Best part? We’re able to direct all the smells and smokes from our kitchen to our service yard and out through the window. Cooking in the kitchen can sometimes feel really hot from all the heat during cooking and this greatly helps alleviate that. 
Last on our reno favourites/must-have - Only hacking a door space to link our master bedroom to the adjacent room Quite a few people asked this when they visited our space, “why didn’t you fully knock down the wall between your master and walk-in wardrobe? Why only hack a doors’ worth of space?” We had wanted to hack the entire wall initially. However, that would mean we would need to spend more on a stronger aircon, given that the space is now bigger. Also, this translates to more cost per night of aircon usage in the long term. As such, we decided to only hack a doors' worth of space to link 2 rooms. Additionally, the part of the wall we didn't hack end up being a useful divider and allow us to mount a TV for our master bedroom, so we can snuggle under our tencel bedsheet and watch netflix together. 
The 2nd regret we have is changing our toilet doors! We replaced our toilet door after finding that the toilet doors that came wth the apartment to be flimsy and noisy upon closing. We also didn’t like the 2 panel folding doors due to some steric hindrance between the 2 panels. So we changed both our toilet doors. We love our new toilet doors, so why is this a regret? We picked a door that allows light to pass through. This may sound like nothing worthy of a regret, but it quickly become an obvious regret when either of us goes to the toilet in the middle of the night. As the light is able to pass through the acrylic, light sleepers such as my husband becomes easily awaken due to the light. On hindsight, we should have chosen one that is completely opaque and doesn’t allow the light to filter through. 
We are going to share 2 somewhat regrets that we have installed in our place. The first one is...... solar films! Why did we install solar films in the first place? We found our place to be pretty hot in the morning and afternoons. Sitting by the sofa beside the window makes us sweat. Therefore, we decided to install the solar films. However, the house kinda looks perpetually dark all the time now. 8am mornings will look like 5pm when the sun is going to set. A huge bummer if you want to take photos and need good lightings. Did it cool the house down? I would say yes, my house is no longer a greenhouse that traps heat. On hindsight, maybe I should have installed a lower % solar film that still allows light in so brighten the house.
12 September
