housethingsgoing
A frog and a duck living in a 4rm resale flat
3 reno decisions we made based on our renders
5996
Fun fact: we actually have two sets of renders from two different IDs because of our long and challenging ID hunt (it was a painful story that cost of $500 T.T) so here's a quick breakdown of how we used our (many) renders to support our decision making process. And while we do have many renders, they are mostly for the entryway/kitchen/toilets as we didn't have any carpentry or major renovation works done for our living room and bedrooms. 
1. The renders helped us realise the impossibilities in our carpentry (and our dreams) Duck has always DREAMT of having a full mirror with hidden storage in the master toilet to give off some #fancyhotel vibes - so this is what we initially planned for (as shown in the render on the left). However, after seeing the render, we realised that there wasn't enough wall space between our toilet window and the wall to allow for any type of cabinet (unless it was a super slim and useless cabinet, which defeats the purpose). Our ID proposed the solution on the right - having a single standalone mirror instead of the full sized one. This was nice BUT it didn't achieve our aim of having the bathroom look spacious. Duck works in a creative agency, so if there's one thing she learnt from her designer colleagues, it's that you have to guide the eyes with visual cues to help a space look bigger than it really is. And so having the toilet and sink as completely separate units would break up the bathroom wall into 2 parts, which makes the toilet look less 'connected' and cohesive. Our solution (after lots of research....): 
We had an ordinary standalone mirror like our ID suggested, but we also built this shelf that stretches all the way to the end of the bathroom - this draws the eyes to the far wall and helps (WE HOPE IT DOES!!) the room look deeper and more spacious than it actually it. (Also, no idea why our actual bathroom is so much darker - should we have invested in some more powerful LED lights or something LOL) 
2. Our renders also helped us find the right colour combination for our kitchen Duck was SET on having a blue kitchen - so we tried out different variations of blue in our render, from light pastel blue to kindergarten walls happy children blue to a super dark navy blue.... We even did one variation with grey because you know, sometimes women don't really mean what they say :p (#justkidding don't cancel us) The pastel/lighter blues seemed too 'fun' and optimistic for us (we are not fun and optimistic people) and the darker blues and greys felt very heavy - overly heavy in the sense that they made the mood of the kitchen too sombre and also seemed to make the space smaller. So... after visits to laminate galleries and staring intensely at different colours and reaching the final stages of decision fatigue... 
... We ended up with THIS. Which we also completely did not render at all - Duck woke up one day and said ok I'm going to make a two-toned kitchen, this is IT. (Sort of like how you fall in love and realise one day that this person is THE ONE <3) So we went ahead with this decision, powered only by Duck's imagination and Frog's, uh... trust in his wife. It turned out... pretty ok we would say? We love the colours in the kitchen - how the blue is dark enough not to look frivolous, and how the white works with the ceiling to hopefully elongate the height of our kitchen. 
3. We also used our renders to prompt deep thoughts about how we wanted to use certain spaces The dry pantry is Duck's pride and joy - it had to be perfect because she designed it by herself (and her pride is at stake here!!!) One thing we also looked at in the renders was how the carpentry would look like - as you can tell from these two renders, we struggled between not having any open shelves (who's gonna clean them!!) and having an open shelf (but it looks so huge and... why would we store so many jars of stuff there? Jars of what?) The bar stools also seemed rather close together, and we weren't too sure if there would be enough space for two people to sit comfortably without causing grievous hurt and injury when one person suddenly turns around? 
And... here's what it looks like in real life! We opted for a HALF open shelf (life is about compromise right HAHA) so we have just enough space to display things without having to clean too many open areas. (Joke's on us because we've recently been using it to display the most important things in the life of 30-something year olds, which are our vitamins and supplements because we keep forgetting to take them) We also cut the seating area to fit just one (because it's mostly Duck working from home most of the time) and extended the storage area. We have two huge drawers now to contain all our snacks and breakfast items :) 
By now you might be wondering... this Duck keeps changing things! Is there anything in their house that actually looks like the render? and well, the answer is YES! Our common bathroom looks 95% like the render apart from the colour of the shower set - we really liked the render for this bathroom (and in fact went to find tiles of a similar grain/design because we thought it worked quite well here) So yes, that's our journey with our renders. While the process took quite a while, and we had to scruntinize the pictures (way more than we've scrutinised our marriage, ever LOL) and do a lot of thinking and imagination - we gotta say the renders have been really helpful, even if the reality at the end doesn't look like that. So definitely recommend rendering your home first if you're planning your reno - most IDs can do it, but if you're not using an ID, there are options on Taobao as well! Heard they are cheap and fast - we definitely want to try those for our next house! 
Ending off with a picture of our common bathroom (aka the winner of the "Looks most like the renders" Award!
18 May
