Hi everyone! My hubby and I are so excited to share with you the journey of our renovation. It may be different from the usual space planning and decorative styles, but who knows if some of these quirky ideas could be useful for you 

Our home is about showing personalities and being ourselves. We want beach resort feeling with outdoors sittings and palm tree, yet modern and comfortable living room and kitchen. Pretty tough to combine both in a 900sqf HDB ya? Not to mention that our flat is an old model, more than 40 years old. Yes, you heard it right, 43 years old to be exact!!

As you guys all know, the pros of an old HDB flat is squarish and relatively good size. The cons is, in our case, the two tiny toilets in the common area – one for WC and one for shower. I’m not sure if you have seen such configuration before. I remember coming across only a handful of threads here with a similar toilet arrangement.

Here you go, this is our original floor plan:

Our inspirations of a beach house:

Given a budget limit of 40k, and a long list of what we plan to do, oh well, we just have to be creative . We use a free software called Sweet Home 3D to visualize the various furniture and fixtures arrangements. Trial and error – that’s how we kids learn 

After a few attempts, we are happy with this version before meeting with ID / contractors.

This plan would involve:

1) changing flooring of the whole house except for the living / dinning room;

2) hacking a few walls to connect the dining area to the kitchen to the utility room

3) there will be some beams on the ceiling of the dining area to mimic a covered patio

And hopefully we can build a small vanity area to connect to a bedroom, making it more like a master bedroom. Let’s see how much of that could come true 

By the way, Sweet Home 3D is a really cool tool. It shows the 3D view from the angle of that ‘little person’ icon you see in the 2D floor plan above. Example is the picture below. And hey, Sweet Home 3D is completely free!!

20 hours ago, SahraChiu said:

Given a budget limit of 40k, and a long list of what we plan to do, oh well, we just have to be creative . We use a free software called Sweet Home 3D to visualize the various furniture and fixtures arrangements. Trial and error – that’s how we kids learn 

After a few attempts, we are happy with this version before meeting with ID / contractors.

 

 

wow!!!! so smart of you, not everyone can make this even with trial and error! 

i wish you the best in turing this to your dream beach house!

Goodluvck with your reno plan. looking firward form some updtaes.

First time reading a plan for a beach house reno looking forward for some ipdates on your progress sahrachiu.☺

Interesting idea and look forward to your beautiful beach house comes true! 

 

Thanks so much guys! Also if you have any questions about Home Sweet 3D, I'm more than happy to help

Off topic sahrachiu how do you do interesring emoticons on your post?

 

On 11/25/2016 at 11:21 PM, jaiyerika said:

Off topic sahrachiu how do you do interesring emoticons on your post?

Hey Jaiyerika, I just used those available here actually...   see below!

4 hours ago, SahraChiu said:

 

Hey Jaiyerika, I just used those available here actually...   see below!

 i didn't notice. thanks

Hi, we are back!! We have many news to share with you guys 

We’ve got a bad news: HDB does not allow us to create a vanity area connecting to a bedroom. They seemed to be pretty strict with the separation between dry area and wet area.

However, the good news is, we CAN ADD ANOTHER TOILET BOWL in the shower toilet (woot woot). This is amazing, since we now can have 2 fully-functioning toilets. Although the space would be really limited, we are happy that we won’t need to queue for the toilet every morning  

On 12/15/2016 at 11:04 AM, SahraChiu said:

Hi, we are back!! We have many news to share with you guys 

We’ve got a bad news: HDB does not allow us to create a vanity area connecting to a bedroom. They seemed to be pretty strict with the separation between dry area and wet area.

 

However, the good news is, we CAN ADD ANOTHER TOILET BOWL in the shower toilet (woot woot). This is amazing, since we now can have 2 fully-functioning toilets. Although the space would be really limited, we are happy that we won’t need to queue for the toilet every morning  

 

Very nice! whats the reson for the restriction?