housethingsgoing
A frog and a duck living in a 4rm resale flat
All the things we DIDN'T renovate in our 4RM resale flat
2379
“We’re going to completely overhaul this resale flat and turn it into something amazing!” That was the initial thought we had when we collected the keys to our house - but after looking at quotations and reviewing our options, we decided that… it might be more financially prudent to retain some of the existing features. So here’s a list of what we’ve kept in the house - and how we feel about our choices (TLDR: not every choice was a good choice LOL). There were so many elements that we’ve split this post into two, so do keep a lookout for part 2! 
1. The main door and gate (ft. an Anytime Fitness thingy because we're all about keeping our photos realistic HAHA) The door and gate are 100% clashing with the colour theme of our house AND the previous owner of the house decorated the back of his door with a huge height chart for his kids, so there are also some funky remnants of adhesive on the back of our door. (If anyone knows a stronger adhesive remover than GooGone, please hit us up in the comments section!) BUT aesthetics aside, there’s nothing actually wrong with the door and gate - they’re even so well oiled that they don’t make any creaky/squeaky sounds so we decided to close one eye (Duck had to close both of hers LOL) and not replace them. The only downside is that the magnetic stopper thing behind the door mysteriously disappeared (how even??) so we’ve been experimenting with various door stopper solutions. So we’re keeping those in the meantime but Duck will probably request for them to be replaced as a future birthday present from Frog. (Is she the only wife in SG who wants a door for a present? I imagine most ladies would want Diors, not doors) 
2. The DB box Please to announce that we are the proud owners of…an entirely original mint condition HDB BTO DB box cabinet! The previous owner actually didn’t do anything to the DB box at all - no shelving was installed and the doors were kept in their original state. It was used as an… umbrella and Nerf gun storage we think :) We initially wanted to turn this into a fun home project, but then life and wedding things got into the way so our DB box is still as empty as the day we moved in. We haven’t had the need to use it for storage so far, but who knows? We might actually get down to that home DIY project one day :) 
3. The kitchen floor tiles KEEPING THIS WAS THE WORST DECISION OF OUR LIVES - not even kidding. Initially the tiles were in great condition when we took over the house, so we thought perhaps we could just retain them (tiles are expensive T.T) but someone during the reno process something happened and we started realising after we moved in that the tiles would get stained super easily. So instead of scrubbing them every week and almost breaking our backs, we chose to be… ostriches and cover the kitchen floor with a PVC mat (that also matches our kitchen cabinets much better than the original tile colours) 
4. The household shelter wall and door OK technically you’re not supposed to change up anything about this because of the regulations, but we opted not to tile over it or build carpentry to conceal the household shelter because carpentry is expensive and we didn’t see the need for any concealment. Thank goodness the tiles used for this wall are in a relatively inoffensive design (couldn’t say the same for our toilet tiles, which 100% had to go) so we’ve just kept the whole wall as it is. Not having carpentry has also been helpful in making access to the household shelter easier too as there’s only one door to open - it’s where we keep some essentials like paper bags and our vacuum cleaner charging station so frequent access is needed. 
5. The service yard/kitchen door Our service yard door is actually… spoilt LOL. It can’t lock fully so it always looks a little ajar :) But all the IDs we spoke to told us that if we wanted to replace the door, it would make more sense to replace the whole aluminium frame thingy that includes the louvred windows and the door - which was a lot of money out of our not-very-large budget. Fast forward to today, we’re actually not too bothered by the door - we don’t usually close it anyway because we want the ventilation from our super breezy service yard. The cleaning of the windows though… all I can say is that it’s a huge pain and we’ve conveniently outsourced it to our helpful cleaning service. So TLDR for all new/aspiring resale flat owners: It’s always worthwhile to sit down and think about how you can work with some existing elements of your house, instead of going ahead to tear down everything and completely overhaul the place. Cost is a major factor of this (have you seen the prices of renovation these days!!!) but reno is also a process of endless decision making. Decision fatigue is REAL so we kinda ‘slacked off’ by focusing on the most important things we wanted to change, and leaving some more modular items that can be done without affecting other parts of the house (e.g. changing the front door, doing up the DB box) as like future “To-Dos” that we would slowly come to when we were less tired (and less poor).
22 June
