Brand New Year, Brand New Look!

For our house, at least! :)

Oh before that, HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!!! :D

The last time you saw me talking about renovating and buying new furniture for our house was about a year plus ago, since then we have slowly changed a few small things but only last weekend we had quite a major makeover for the house, before we could start buying our baby boy's cot and probably a drawer and other stuff before his majesty's grand arrival.

Let's update the list that we have made earlier:

TOP OF THE LIST:
1) Sofa set
2) Built-in wardrobe
3) Shoe cabinet

THE REST OF THE LIST:
1) Master bedroom's bed+mattress
2) Master bedroom's make-up table
3) TV
4) TV table (cabinet)
5) Dining table set
6) Refrigerator
7) Kitchen work table
8) Curtain(s)
9) Chair(s) for entrance (so that we can sit and wear shoes)
10) Aluminum gate for front entrance grill door (while this is really not urgent, I hope to get this done soon too, if it's not too much to pay)
11) Steel window gate (may ignore this forever)
12) Lights
13) Glass display cabinet (not getting this anymore since we need space for baby's stuff now)
14) Coffee table 
15) Sliding door for kitchen entrance (decided not to have)
16) Sliding door for back toilet
17) Cupboard for keeping of documents, books and etc

Phew~ So glad now we only have one more item left! *punch into the air~*

Deardo and FIL were my heroes over the weekend spending hours fixing what needed in the house.

We finally took down the old, stupid-looking curtain left by the previous owner into something we really like.

No more sore eyes every time we sit on our couch! 

Chinese-style yellowish curtain... 

Now... Lovely lovely splash of colours! 

The classic lace curtain that I've been dying to have in my house!!! Yay! 

We got some quotations from Taiping at those shops that tailor make curtain, but ended up still buying them all from Ikea simply because they are way cheaper (about RM1k difference okay), prettier and most importantly they have the pretty classic lace curtain which I couldn't find anywhere in Taiping!

Ahhhh,,, Now at least it feels more like a country home-style living room! :)

We also finally changed the ugly make-up table in our room. Here's a reminder of how ugly that piece of shit that was in our room for more than two years...

Gosh, so lou tou I don't get it.

And now, drum roll please~!!!

Oh hai! From my new make-up area!

White colour big-ass mirror and a simple white shelf top to replace the old school make-up table. It makes the whole area looks so much more nicer, brighter and neater! 

We also changed the room's curtain into an anti-glare one so now our room feels like those hotel rooms every morning, no direct sunlight at all; which makes it all the more harder to wake up though. LOL.

Also changed some lights in our house. Here's a before photo of our light in our room...

Together with the old wardrobes too... LOL.

Is it Japanese style? Or Balinese? I'm not even sure. The only thing I'm sure of is that it doesn't match our theme of the house at all and it's really dark I can't do make-up or take proper selfie in the room.

New lights!!! So bright yo!!!

Well, the new lights aren't very special-looking lar, but at least it doesn't go too far off the theme of our house and most importantly, they are much brighter! So next time can do make-up, selfie and check out our baby boy properly, even his poo poo's colour! :p

Our old lights at the dining area looked like this...

Oh yes, together with the old dining table set which I hated the most! Urgggh...

Again, I still doubt the previous owner has any taste in anything! *face plam~*

Sorry, I was lazy to clear all the junk before taking this photo. :p

We changed it to a more modern-looking, very-the-dining area type of lights. I don't know about you but I think they look awesome I couldn't help but asked to have a proper dinner last Sunday right at the table (most of the time now we just sit on the couch for our dinner).

Lights are from a shop in Puchong, although most of other stuff you see in the above picture are from Ikea.

We still love buying Ikea stuff a lot and don't see any major problem with the furniture yet so far. Planning to buy baby's stuff from them also soon! Can't wait! :)

Cool Purchases for our House

Ever since we started our wedding-planning end of last year, progress of our house have been slowed down quite a bit. I think until the day we got married, our house isn't completely fix yet. Nonetheless, we have stay in the house for more than a year now and are surviving well with whatever we have at home! :)

Our lovely dining area - Extendable Dining Set was a gift from Deardo's Ah Ma (from Ikea), side table and Billy book cabinet from Ikea as well, picture on the wall from Kaison. 

Remember I made a list of stuff to get for the house here? Let's have a quick look at what we have done and what are still in the list, after a year time! Phew, time flies too fast!
TOP OF THE LIST:
1) Sofa set
2) Built-in wardrobe
3) Shoe cabinet

THE REST OF THE LIST:
1) Master bedroom's bed+mattress
2) Master bedroom's make-up table
3) TV
4) TV table (cabinet)
5) Dining table set
6) Refrigerator
7) Kitchen work table
8) Curtain(s)
9) Chair(s) for entrance (so that we can sit and wear shoes)
10) Aluminum gate for front entrance gate
11) Steel window gate (may ignore this forever)
12) Lights
13) Glass display cabinet
14) Coffee table 
15) Sliding door for kitchen entrance (decided not to have)
16) Sliding door for back toilet
17) Cupboard for keeping of documents, books and etc

Looks like we have done quite a lot! In fact, looking at the list, most of the leftovers require a lot of money to buy, e.g. refrigerator and curtains, which is easy to understand why we have to keep them aside at the moment.

Our kicthen side table from Ikea. 

I think we were lucky enough that we have gotten some freebies from relatives. For in stance, we got our dining table set from Deardo's Ah Ma and our Dolce Gusto Coffee Machine from 4e. We also 'sort of' got our Panasonic rice cooker for free as we redeemed it with our credit card points! Planning to redeem more with our points soon cos I think that's the smartest way to make full use of the points! :p
While we got most of our furniture from Ikea, I also got a lot of decor items from Kaison (oh I love their canvas pictures that we have three of them in our house!), I also got some country home theme-matching decors from mostly online shops. So today, I would like to share some of my good buys!

In the kitchen...

I bet you can guess what's this cute and white little squirrel is doing on our kitchen table? It is a rice scoop I got from White.my. I love it because it is not only functional as a standing rice scoop (so you can leave it standing in stead of leaving it on a plate after scooping rice), it serves well too as a little decor in our kitchen! Best of all, it's RM6 only! I also bought a very good lid holder at RM 5 from them and I must say their stuff are often so creative yet affordable! :)

This 3-in-1 cling wrap-aluminium foil-kitchen roll dispenser is by far one of my favourite buys! I bought it from an on-line shop which unfortunately shut down not long after I received this from them. It was slightly over RM100 but it is a German made product with one year warranty! It works extremely well to me because then I don't need to find extra spaces for the three items in my kitchen cabinet because they are now all mounted on the wall. The blade also cut off the cling wrap and aluminium foil perfectly so no messy cuts! Best of all, they made the top dispenser for the cling wrap removable so you can actually take it up to wrap whatever you want then put it back! How smart! Love it! :D

Hidden in the drawer is this cute vintage box I got from CountryVictoria Decor, I've shared with you guys before as I got my bridal bouquet for my pre-wed shoot from them as well! I bought it because of the compartments where I can store my tea bags in it for easy viewing, especially when there are guests in our house! Yeap, just like how you see them in the hotels! *wink~*

In the living room and our room (duh, that's all in my house man. LOL!)...

Also got this very pretty vintage dustbin (yes, dustbin also needs to be vintage okay) from CountryVictoria Decor and it sits right next to the couch and our coffee table! Lovely, isn't it?

This is another cool item I got from White.my, which is urm, probably not so country home kinda stuff cos it looks kinda modern. This pink (at least the colour is still pastel colour) tissue box comes with small compartments on top (me love compartments) where we can use them to store small items too! How useful, right?

It was really easy when I wanted to look for a basket to put our keys right beside the entrance. I got this cute basket with a polka dots cover from Daiso for of course, 5 bucks! :)

I've purchased quite a lot of stuff from Typo, the brand under Cotton On. I love their stuff because they are often super funky, cool and old school. Unfortunately their stuff aren't very cheap but I couldn't help... :p This mint colour mails holder to me, was a great buy as I absolutely love the colour and it is seriously functional! Flowers at the back from Kaison.

I've forgotten to snap a picture of my hanging clock from Kaison which is really pretty and cheap too. But here are my two table clocks for the living room and master bedroom also from Typo. Just the right old school clocks for our house! :)

Unlike Deardo, I always look for aesthetics more than functionality. I need my stuff to look nice, really. Which explains why I have to make sure most of the decors and furniture are strictly theme-matching to the house's country home concept! Ha! Just me lar, har! Do you like my cool buys too? 

Our Kitchen Experience

So, here's the long overdue kitchen experience entry. We've been using our brand new kitchen for at least four months now and I still feel like there is a need to share my experience because 1) just in case you are also giving your kitchen a makeover or going to have your kitchen renovated, I might be able to give you some advice and 2) It's actually the most exciting part of the house to get a makeover!

So just a recap, here's how our kitchen USED TO LOOK LIKE...

Damn cheap-looking, isn't it?

I can't say it was awful but I hate the colour a lot and the material used are simply of very low quality. Deardo and I, both food lovers, just couldn't handle it to have such a failed-looking kitchen in our lovely house.
Since Deardo agreed with my choice of white colour for our kitchen cabinets, it was easy for us when we went out to do our survey... Ah, if two places still considered  as survey!
Yeah... We only went to Ikea and Aino and decided on the former for one very obvious reason -- cheaper price. Including delivery fee, dismantling fee and installation fee, the entire kitchen cost us slightly over 10k. But the best part was they were having a special promotion for the kitchens where you get a gift card worth 10% of your total kitchen price (excluding the services fees), which we happily used to partially buy our gorgeous sofa! Check that sofa out here!

Looking excited to use the gift card to buy our sofa set!

We started our kitchen journey by seeing a consultant at Ikea, who drafted a design for us using their amazing and absolutely user-friendly software. Deardo was especially impressed as we got to log into our account to do any changes that we needed to and it was pretty simple to use! It can even give you a rough total of your bill based on what you've chosen to be used in your kitchen! Now this one I must admit it is way better than Aino, which had to take more than a week to call us back to see the design and the estimated price! We didn't even bother going back to them to see the design! Talk about efficiency!

My man discussing with the guy at Ikea on our kitchen design.

We then took about two weeks to finalised our design and materials and paid for everything necessary. But because apparently they only sell the cabinets and sinks, we need to get their contractor to come and install them for us. So the cabinets and sink were delivered much earlier before the busy contractor can come to fix them for us.

Our cabinets still in pieces were seen lying on our floor for at least one week...

Well that's not all, the contractor who put the cabinets up can only put cabinets! They don't do the table top! So we had to then call up the contractor to first come to measure our cabinets then go back and cut the table top which take them another week to come back to put it on! 

I call this the handicapped kitchen...

Obviously at this stage we were both quite frustrated. I mean that means not only were we getting our kitchen fully done very much later, but it also means we were kinda handicapped without being able to use the water from the sink! And talk about the mess that we had to clean over and over again every time these people left! I think it was even worst because we were already moved in so there was no way we were leaving the house messy! 

 

Those guys messing our kitchen up like playing with toys!

So yea after  the table top was finally done, the contractor for the cabinets came back to fix our sink... Not the end of the story yet!

Adding another mess for me to clean... LOL!

We had to call up another guy to put the hose for the hood for us, which obviously made another big mess to our house because of the drilling of the hole on the wall... Phew~~~!

When everything was finally done, not only did we seriously admire our kitchen happily, there was also a sense of relief after more than a month time just to get everything done! It was a really exhausting journey which took us longer than expected to get the kitchen done. I mean I'm not sure how other people do their kitchen but the fuss of calling contractors separately to arrange for them to come do their work was really tiring. I'm sure some professional kitchen cabinets makers can do everything without much of their costumers' effort! 

Still love our kitchen a lot! :D

Well I guess that was just Ikea's principal-- You are supposed to DIY! So cheap stuff comes with a price I guess. Having to say that, I have so far no complain about the beautiful kitchen honestly. So if you ask me, I would still say go ahead with Ikea, providing you have not move into your house yet and you can afford to have a messy house for about one month time and of course that means you must have a lot of annual leaves left cos you need to take quite a few days off from work just to fix your kitchen!

I know a lot of people, including ourselves were doubtful of Ikea's products but the truth is we have been buying a lot of stuff from Ikea! I mean we tried looking elsewhere but not only their prices are often (not all the time) cheaper, their design are also million times better than those at the random furniture shops! Well, quality wise, perhaps still early to say but so far okay lar! But hey our kitchen is under 25 years warranty so we aren't too worry! :p

So, what do you think about our kitchen?

Our Country Home

When we first bought the house, we knew it will definitely take up a lot of time in the name-changing process, thus I wasn't feeling excited at all. Ya know me, always too realistic sometimes! So I had no plans or idea at all on what to do with the house until I watched The Help, the one movie which I love almost every one of the cast members, the story and the entire settings of the American homes during the 60s'. 

If you ask me, what inspired me to the theme of our house? I would proudly tell you it was The Help. 

Look at the kitchens! Love the combination of the colours man! 

In fact I think the modern American houses we see on TV or movies nowadays still have quite the same old American country-styled design. White colour wooden furnitures, cabinets, doors, plus some lighter colour or flowery wall paper and curtain to go with it. I FELL IN LOVE right away watching the movie and I told Deardo my decision (firmly) to have American country home as our theme of the house and luckily, he agrees! :)
Of course, my love for it cannot go too crazy! For instance, there is no way I'm going change my window frames from metal to white coloured wood. I cannot have too flowery stuff because hey it will look damn girlish for Deardo. Of course I think most importantly I don't want the house to look overly-old school because who knows one day when we want to sell the house off people find our house's design too old-fashioned?

Some photos I found online which looks damn close to my dream house! 

But ideally my house's wall should be a mixture of white and some light colours paint. Following my family's tradition, I've always prefer light colour than dark because Papo and Mamo believe your house will look bigger if it's brighter. So even before I decided on the theme, I knew in the first place, things like the brownish Balinese style is a no-no to me. Sky blue and mint were the first two colours that came into my mind and we have already made them colours to our room, kitchen and living room.

We spent nights to finish the painting! 

We always thought painting the house would be peanuts to us because hey, it's just a small condo unit! It turned out to the other way round! Freaking tiring okay! One piece of wall probably takes up half a day to paint! In fact, Deardo's slimmed down a bit painting the house! And we grew lazier and left the second room unpainted until today! LOL! We are planning to paint it this weekend and I'm thinking of doing the same sky blue or choosing another light colour to go with it. What do you guys think? 

Found the perfect look for our kitchen in this picture found online! 

At the moment, our kitchen looks like it's the most completed part of the house. And yes, the cabinets are white in colour and the wall is mint! So far, I only need to buy a new refrigerator because I totally hate the old one (being very anal about it and I want my Panasonic refrigerator!!!) and I'm going to buy a small moving table as an extra work station and storage space. I will share the kitchen experience in my later post. So at the moment, enjoy the snippet of our lovely kitchen in-the-making in the photo! :p

Can you already feel the country-ness of our kitchen??? 

Our living area is kinda complete because the painting of the wall are all done and we have our Ikea sofa which I personally love to the max and had to put them all up by ourselves (Papo and Mamo are the partial sponsor of the sofa set) and a new TV. Now what we need for the living area are a new TV table and coffee table which suits the theme nicely, which means they must be either white or light brown!

Still admiring the sofa set everyday now! LOL! 

If you ask me, I would say if you don't mind paying, it's better to get professionals to paint the house for you. But to be honest, there isn't regret of painting our house ourselves. You get a sense of satisfaction looking at it and most importantly our work isn't bad at all! Deardo's dad has been very helpful helping us to settle all things electrical because well that's his profession. He and Deardo also dismantled the old kitchen cabinets so that we can paint the wall before the Ikea people came to put up the new one. So we save a lot with his help too. :)

Deardo's dad even moved our door bell's speaker (whatever you call it) from one side of the wall to their other side! 

Next thing to come is our built-in wardrobe and built-in shoe cabinet. Although they won't be too country due to the limited choices we had to choose from, I'm still very excited about having them finally in our house! Then I can put up all my clothes and shoes properly, OFFICIALLY!!! No walk-in wardrobe like Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City has but still! Having them built-in in stead of those small wardrobe and shoe cabinets is still damn cool! So I'm definitely not complaining!
More updates in my coming posts! :)

P/S: If you have unwanted home appliances or furniture which are still usable, you can call PASSO at 03-9021 1888 or 012-686 1633. They will come and carry the stuff away without any charges and bring them off for charity. I figured that is totally cool because even though I hate those old furniture in the house, they might still be useful to others! So far we've got them to take away the old sofa, a make-up table and an old mattress. I'll be calling them up soon to take away more stuff when we have the money to replace the old ones!

Broke but Happy :)

We just paid for our kitchen about two weeks back (and yea we were like clowns paying with three different credit cards at the IKEA cashier) and there is literally a super big hole in our saving account now! Worst, we still have a looooooooong list of stuff to buy for our little house before we can finally call it a comfy house of our own.

The list goes like this...

TOP OF THE LIST:

1) Sofa set
2) Built-in wardrobe
3) Shoe cabinet

THE REST OF THE LIST:

1) Master bedroom's bed+mattress
2) Master bedroom's make-up table
3) TV
4) TV table
5) Dining table set
6) Refrigerator
7) Kitchen work table
8) Curtain(s)
9) Chair(s) for entrance (so that we can sit and wear shoes)
10) Aluminum gate for front entrance gate
11) Steel window gate
12) Lights
13) Glass display cabinet
14) Coffee table
15) Sliding door for kitchen entrance
16) Sliding door for back toilet
17) Cupboard for keeping of documents, books and etc
The list is already minus the smaller appliances which are cheaper. We have already gotten some quotations for those that we know we want them or we know are necessary to buy. Hahaha, even those not really necessary...

*finger points finger~~~* It is seriously tempting!!! Even though I don't always drink coffee but this machine makes things so much more easier whenever I have sudden crave for coffee! True or not???

So because we are almost broke and still have a whole list of stuff to buy, we always remind ourselves to not overspend.

Here are our plans to save more money...

1) Eat more at food courts in stead of restaurants (we still enjoy nice restaurant food once or twice a week though... :p)
2) Spend less on snacks and drinks, only eat proper meals.
3) No shopping for clothes and shoes (oh gosh you don't know how I suffer from this man, looking at those 'SALES' words all over the place... Hence I succumbed to temptation and bought a skirt and a pair of sandal over the weekend! LOL!)
4) Watch movies at home in stead of in the cinema (well, nowadays either we spend time fixing the house or go out to buy or survey for stuff for the house so we have yet to find time to really go watch movie anywayz), I actually hope to catch up with some latest movies though...
5) Read free magazines at the bookstore in stead of buying them home (kiamsiap to the max~).
6) When kitchen is done, eat at home more.
7) Redeem appliances with credit cards or membership cards points or utilise cash vouchers to buy small appliances.

8) Beg for help! So yea, money and gift cards aside, you can also provide me with contacts to cheap places to buy stuff for the house! 

Staying in a partially done house, which is without a sofa at the moment, I'm very much eager to get everything in the house done so that it can be a real functional house! But until we can afford them all, we will do things one by one, step by step and enjoy the process as it is. So although we are spending very wisely nowadays because of the house, I trust that we are happy going through the process of creating our dream lovely home for ourselves! :)

Stay tuned for more updates peeps~!

Long Wait Ends

Since leaving home for my studies till now, I've been nomad for more than a decade, moving from one house to another in KL and of course in Perth too.
I must admit I'm not an easy housemate or roommate to deal with most of the time because I'm a very light sleeper who can't take noise or light when I'm sleeping. When I was studying in KL I used to have roommates who have a reversed sleeping timing so they would wake up midnight and start taking shower, chatting with each other before deciding to go leave me in peace and have their meal at the nearest mamak when I'm sleeping in the bloody same room! Then when I was in Perth, I used to have stupid Aussie guys who would get themselves drunk almost every night and would be home to try their very best to destroy all furnitures available at home.
In Perth these Aussie guys also love to cook but never washed their dishes and would leave everything rotten and stinky. I couldn't help but punished them by throwing those dishes straight right into the rubbish bin. And don't even mention how they made some racist statement too on my face. Urggghhh... Seriously made me hate Aussie guys for a long while!

Aussie guys whom I had a love and hate relationship with. LOL! 

Of course the most recent one was the experience with Ken the kid and the conman Daniel a.k.a Jerry Tang (and god knows if he has change his name again for his house rental business' sake?) which ended up in a very interesting way...

It is just me? Or you guys also have difficult experiences dealing with your housemates, roommates and landlords? 

Ultimately, the best way to get out of all these nonsenses is to get yourself a house and I'm really glad that Deardo is one fiancee who is good in planning for our future and had decided that we would buy a condo unit for ourselves. It wasn't easy though dealing with the entire name-changing process and a very calculative ex-owner of the house but finally after about a year time, we can call ourselves owner and resident of the house! Yay~! :D
The house is small but comfy and enough for the both of us once we really settled down. We are slowly changing stuff in the house. I said 'slowly' because we do not have that much of money to make such a big make-over to the house yet. And we are doing a lot of things on our own, with the biggest challenge being repainting the entire house. I will share more of our experience in fixing the house in the near future as we progress so at the meantime you can think of what you can give me as house-warming gifts! Ha! But then again... I'm damn anal about what to buy and put in the house to match the theme, so if you are really planning to give me anything, money should be the best gift so that I can buy the furniture or appliances that I love. Hehehe... Thanks in advanced yea! :)

These ugly-looking dining table and chairs always make me wonder what on earth was the ex-owner thinking when he bought this set of stuff? I mean, yellow chairs, seriously?

Kitchen cabinet is the first one to be fixed and I'm so excited to get it done soon!!! Can't wait to use my lovely kitchen to do more cooking experiments!!! Behold people! :p

The stupid-looking coffee colour and maroon red sofa is now gone. We sent it off for charity! Ha!

Seriously, I can't wait to invite my friends and relatives to my house for a little party where I would cook up some nice food with my new kitchen (which by the way, not done yet)!!! But that really has to wait till the house is nicely done! So stay tuned, guys! :)