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janielhome_
welcome to our forever home | 1302 SQFT Wabi Sabi x Balinese Glow-Up 🌾
The Before: Every Home Has a First Chapter.
111
Virtual House Tour
There is something beautiful about the “before.” We live so much of life in anticipation of the after like the polished floors, the freshly painted walls, the furniture that fits just so. But there is a space that exists before change, when every wall and corner still carries the fingerprints of what has been. No one would have thought we would go for this house because of the state it was in. But when we first stepped into these rooms, we tried not to see the cracks in the tiles or the way the light was swallowed by heavy curtains. We tried not to focus on the dated fittings or the scuffed floors that told the stories of years we weren’t part of. Instead, we notice how the house echoed when when we spoke, as though it was waiting for a new voice to fill it. 
The “before” is often overlooked because it is unpolished, imperfect, sometimes even uncomfortable. But we wanted to honour it. To pause and acknowledge that this was someone’s space before it became ours. That these walls sheltered lives, laughter, arguments. That there was a history here, and it deserved a moment of gratitude before we began erasing and rebuilding. Renovations, much like life, teach us that transformation is never instant. There is always a before, a middle, and an after. And in the before, there is both loss and possibility... You don’t yet know how it will unfold, only that it will change our lives forever. 
As we walked through the space, we caught ourselves trying to figure out how and where a table might go, there a reading space, our gym. We slowly slipped into reality that this was going to be our forever home.. And yet, there was also a heaviness in those first steps. The weight of decisions waiting to be made, of costs to be calculated, of dust and delays that would inevitably come. There is always a moment of doubt in the before. Are we truly ready for this? Will it be worth it? What if we chose the wrong tiles or paint colours? 
But then we had to remind ourselves that a home is never about perfection. It is not about creating something flawless, but something lived-in, something true. 
So we took photos, wide shots of the empty rooms, the rawness, the cracks, the peeled paint. Not because we wanted to hold onto the imperfection, but because one day, when the dust has settled and the walls are fresh, we really want to remember how far it’s come. We want to remember that even beauty has a before. 
This house — our house, in its quiet imperfection, is already a home in the making. The “before” is not the absence of beauty it is beauty in waiting. 
21 September 2025
