tans.humbleabode
My chef husband and I in our humble 4rm Modern Contemporary BTO
Home tour: Inside our 4rm Modern Contemporary BTO
82
Virtual House Tour
Hi all! We are a married couple who have been together for 12 years and married for 3 years, we have been together since 18/19 and we’re basically childhood lovers! This is our first home and we’re determined to design a home that is outside of the HDB cookie cutter layout. We are also big on utilising dead spaces and making full use of our 94m2 home. I hope you love it as much as we do! 
When we first saw the floor plan, we weren’t very pleased about the lack of service yard and the idea of an open kitchen. And the tiny kitchen isn’t gonna do much since we both cook a lot and we wanted a closed kitchen. It felt like there was nothing much we could do until we went out sourcing for IDs and we came across a brillant idea of building a wall and closing the kitchen. Since we already had the idea of hacking one of the bedrooms to make the living room a larger space, it felt like it was possible. 
After meeting about 12 IDs, we finally decided on an ID, she was new to her role however, with a design background and drawing was her specialty. We trusted her and took a leap of faith. It was the best decision ever. Throughout the whole renovation process, she kept drawing, helping us visualise in the best way possible, and we were excited to start this little project of ours! 
We faced many criticism of hacking the wall and ultimately, we decided what was best for us. With the walls hacked, it opened up the living room space so much, it was then we knew we made the right decision. 
The kitchen wall was built with solid brick and concrete to ensure no water seepage and damage over the years and even with the walls up, we felt that the living room was large enough. The door opening was measured with an oven tray to ensure we can still move in and out of the kitchen with ease. We also opted for half glass half wall for a more conducive and bright kitchen space. 
When the glass and the carpentry were up, it felt like a dream come true. Since the kitchen is where we will spend many of our days cooking, storage spaces and lots of countertop space was important for us as well. The length of the countertop is a whopping 2.7m long and we have more than enough space for bread making, pizza making, or just to hold extra dishes for when there is a large family gathering. 
One of my non-negotiable is this island table and the display cabinet in the living room. Growing up, my family home had a display cabinet for snacks, it was always full and there was little space for actually displaying anything. So I knew I wanted a display cabinet for storing snacks and displaying items. The island dining table is for hosting both of our large families, its 2.4m long, it can sit 8 pax total and 4 high chairs on each side. The record has to be 20 pax gathering around the table at one of our hosting events. This is definitely one of the highlights of the living room. 
We had a lot of issues with this part of the kitchen and we were glad we solved it… this part of the kitchen was supposed to be the cooking area and the sink. However we shifted the whole layout around and the pipes were all wrong but that’s story for another time.. 
Moving to the bedrooms, we kept the common bedroom minimal, just a work desk and a daybed. Nothing to shout about. The master bedroom, however, an open niche and a drawer with glass panel was our non-negotiable. We both never had proper desks growing up, it was the maximalist lifestyle in our family homes, so we wanted a glass panel to display our accessories and watches, so we can see everything in one glance. (otherwise i keep buying more accessories…..) The open niche is just for easier access to skincare products, perfumes and the like. 
The final result, this was taken by the ID company about 7 months after moving in. With lots of staging of course. It was eye opening seeing what goes behind the scenes in these home shoot. 
Thank you for taking the time to read this post, I hope to bring more unorthodox ideas to this space.
13 days ago
