[BEFORE]
The furnishings were very old school so we had to get rid of them and start from scratch.
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| Old school mouldings and grills |
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| The other wall |
The lovely view from our living room:
As with our master bedroom and kitchen, our ID provided us with a 3D mock up of our living room based on our description of what we wanted.
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| 3D mock up by our ID |
Our ID was able to incorporate the TV console cabinets that we had already bought from Home's Harmony into the 3D mock up. I thought that was cool so that we can have an idea of how it would look in the space.
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| In the process of tearing down existing wiring and structures |
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| We paid about $2000 to re-wire the whole house with new wires. Definitely a must if you're buying a resale flat like ours where the last time renovations were done, it was 16 years ago. |
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| We chose a bright blue for our walls, the same blue as our master bedroom. As the hubby loves black and I love vivid bright colours, we compromised with a vivid version of his favourite colour blue. |
After the walls were painted, we got Home's Harmony to install the TV console set that we ordered. It was a lot cheaper to get a pre-designed set that still allowed you some level of customisation rather than getting your contractor to customise built-in cabinets from scratch.
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| Building the drawers that will hold our TV |
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| Measuring and installing the cabinets according to our preferred design. You can also choose the type of cabinets and/or arrange them differently, according to your needs and preferences. |
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| The completed TV console! |
This TV console totally works for me because I love storage! I must have lots and lots of storage in my house (OCD you see *laughs*).
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| We also installed Combi Blinds in our living room. However, because we chose black, grey and white, the living room can't be 100% shielded from the sun. Do consider this when choosing the colour of your Combi Blinds. |
[AFTER]
It took a while to get to our dream living room but we did, eventually!
With 3 adults and 2 kids living in this house, the living room was quickly filled with tons of things!
Just so you know, I spent about 30 minutes tidying our living room for the photos in the rest of this post! It definitely does not look so neat ordinarily and this FTWM (full-time working mum) has no time or energy to do anything about it except to close both eyes and hope that I can chant a spell to put everything back in place like they do in Harry Potter!
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| Our very well-used living room |
The kids spend a lot of time in the living room, hence there are A LOT of toys here. The stool cum storage boxes beside the TV console contain most of the toys so that ideally, they can be hidden out of sight when the kids are not playing with it. In reality of course, the boxes are almost always constantly opened with toys overflowing from the edges! It irks the OCD me every time but thankfully, I've learnt to make peace with it.
If you look carefully, I've also squeezed a bag of Lego Duplo under our TV console to maximise space. I like that I can easily clean under the TV console too.
The cabinets of the TV console also allow me to store and display my photos and collection of various things that I like.
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| The top shelves are for my numerous board games, some of which I have kept since I was in primary school! |
I've also got a bookshelf that I had bought from IKEA before my girl was born 8 years ago and it fits nicely into the corner between the windows and the TV console.
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| It has all my soft toys, nano blocks and best of all, my musical box collection |
We also store our DVDs, CDs and Xbox One Kinect in the cabinets. So useful right? =)
On the other side of the living room is our electronic reclining sofa with cup holders (like a movie theatre), an alcohol cabinet, our treadmill, coffee table and my super large ironing board. There's no point in keeping it in the storeroom since I prefer to iron while watching TV. It's a lot more convenient if I have it constantly within reach.
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| The other side of my living room |
I've always wanted the wall above my sofa to be my art wall where I display my paintings such as my Travel Destinations Art Collection. The paintings were deliberately positioned nearer to the windows, rather than in the middle, so as to allow me adequate space to add more paintings on the left. Eventually the entire wall will be filled with paintings and I may have to find another wall to fill when that happens! *laughs*
In keeping with my love for furniture with hidden storage, we got a coffee table that can morph into a full-height table with hidden storage underneath. Super love it!
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| The table top can be pulled up so that you can sit on the sofa rather than a stool. I use the storage space to store our photo albums and scrapbooks. The 2 grey stools come with the table and are really comfortable to sit on. |
Next to the coffee table is my boy's favourite spot in the house: his activity table (bought in USA by his uncle) and kids road map carpet (from IKEA).
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| My boy loves his table and carpet and spends most of his day when he's not in school playing on it |
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| Recently my boy is very into buses so no surprises that his favourite is Tayo the Little Bus. He's got soooo many buses and counting!! |
Moving on to another of my favourites, a built-in floor to ceiling shoe rack for our shoes! As you know, we love shoes and need a big enough storage space for our shoes.
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| Our shoe cabinet inside and out |
I bought plastic shoe racks from CK and Isetan to organise our shoes such that they are extremely organised, maximise the space and make it easy for us to access all our shoes. Yes, I'm an organisation fanatic!
Oh by the way, the stools beside the shoe cabinet also contain hidden storage for socks and floor mats =)
Finally, I have always known that I wanted a way to keep our bicycles off the floor yet still easily accessible. This rod that I bought from Qoo10 gives us a reasonably priced way to achieve this.
The rod is pretty sturdy and has not fallen even once (touch wood) even though the kids like to play around it.
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| Left: The raised bicycle meant that there were plenty of space to put other things like a kiddy sofa and toy car; Right: Round the corner next to the store room behind the front door is a rod with many hooks for hanging all sorts of stuff you may need before you leave the house. I decorate it with a photo collage of our whole family. |
As you can see, the main themes flowing through my living room is storage, functionality, organisation and ease of cleaning! And that's exactly how we like it =)
Continue to >> Our First Home (8): Renovation Journey with NorthWest
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This post is part of my series on Our First Home where I'll share our renovation and home decoration ideas and review our renovation company and various vendors.
Join us on our journey as we make a house our home =)
This post is part of my series on Our First Home where I'll share our renovation and home decoration ideas and review our renovation company and various vendors.
Join us on our journey as we make a house our home =)
You can also follow me on Instagram via the hashtag #houseofkmjj! =)
