HomeHow we spent $10k in our living room
How we spent $10k in our living room
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Virtual House Tour
- Minimalist
- HDB (BTO)
- ~1,200 sqft
- 3 br
- Couple Living with Kids
Hi, in my second post on Communa, let’s talk about living room. We spent about $10k on living room carpentry. Read on to learn where the money went, and how we planned carpentry for the living room. We adopted the following framework for our carpentries, for each space: 1. Define our expected workflows 2. List expected functions 3. Fit requirements from #1 & #2 into our floor plan For living room, some of the workflows include: * Coming home from grocery shopping * Coming home from work * Heading out for outings * Chilling while watching TV Some of the intended functions for living room would be: * Chilling * Entertainment * Play area * Dining space * Foyer * Hosting * Storage as needed Our living room is roughly squarish. We divide it into rough quarters. 1. Door area - foyer 2. Dining space - right outside kitchen 3. Entertainment / Hosting 4. Play area 
L-shape sofa is roughly in the middle and demarcates the entertainment area. Behind the sofa is play area, large enough to put playmat/fence. It is intentionally behind the sofa to minimise screen time. Our full length bay window functions as: 1. Storage: kiddo to easily access/keep toys. Board games for grown ups. 2. Seating area: our house can sit 20 pax without stools 3. Play area: kids love to use it as surface top, climb area 4. Tabletop space 5. Reading nook 
This side of the house is our foyer & dining area. The foyer has a robust storage system that contains things that will be needed when heading out or coming back. This is to prevent having to run all the way in the house just to fetch a forgotten power bank, tissue, umbrella etc. We didn’t build any settee in the house for wearing shoes because it’s kinda gross to have shoes inside, and it might be hard to prevent kiddo from not smearing dirt from foyer to the rest of house. Also, we wanted to keep it spacious, so no partition. Living room carpentry are built along the perimeter, hiding uneven walls at the same time. This also helps with maintenance as the living room is just one big connected space. Dining table is next to kitchen cos we are lazy to walk after fetching drinks and meals. There is a small corner fan for the dining area because mister doesn’t want ceiling fan to cool down our food too fast. No fancy pendant lights cos we still want flexibility in case we want to change layout in future. 
Bay window area. One main function for our bay window is toys storage. So the contents must be accessible at toddler eye level. Between casement doors and drawers, we think casement doors are easier to access compared to deep, large drawers, which u have to open the whole drawer to access innermost area, and view from top (user must be tall enough) to accurately retrieve things. First 2 doors holds board games and entertainment for grown ups. The rest are catered for kiddo. Middle area stores large items that are not frequently accessed, or toys waiting to be rotated in. Flip storage so it can be accessed without moving sofa. Also comes with sockets to charge phone, laptops etc while chilling. Tip to save costs. Don’t get “package” unless you are very clear with what you want. And be very firm in what you want. Don’t waver. We lost about $450 because we didn’t insist on casement door during quotation. We knew we wanted casement but ID assured us that she can minus the fees from the drawer “package”. In the end she only deducted a small fraction of what it would have cost to top up for drawers. 
It is very important to tally your carpentry measurements before carpenters fixed it to the walls. We discovered a major error - 1.6m flip door instead of 1.1m - during our first few trips to check out the carpentry. Lucky we brought measuring tape to verify the measurements before it was fixed and realised the mistake. The 1.1m flip door already closed too fast, imagine 1.6m flip door. For kiddo’s safety, we negotiated a few times for the ID to add in soft closing. This area is for large toys and the toys that are waiting for rotation into the casement areas where it is easier to access. The double sockets are for charging phones, laptops and stuffs while seated at sofa. 
This was originally a box up. During carpentry review, we suggested to convert this area into usable space. ID suggested opening casement door to access inside, or do display shelves on top. This area went through a few iterations until this final configuration. 
We didn’t synchronise carpenter and TV installation, hence the hole in feature wall was generically cut at our eye level while seated at sofa. Coordination was done by imagining how tall our sofa would be as it hadn’t arrived when carpenter cut the hole. Used the TV stand for a month before we decided on getting a wall mount. Best decision ever. MUCH easier to maintain as there are no more nooks and crannies from the tv stand to wipe when I clean the console. The bracket allows extension, tilt up/down/left/right. It also comes with cable management, see there’s only 1 wire coming out from the TV. I did a reel on Instagram about our TV bracket if anyone would like more details. 
Worth the top up to Legrand Gallion champagne / rose gold series for sockets and switches on carpentry. This socket was for robot vacuum but now under-utilised. On hindsight, we should plan for cleaning tools to be placed in service yard. Some better robot vacuums require water input/output, so service yard would make more sense.
