Sunday, November 21, 2010

Re-activating Project House

Remember that time when we were still childless, boleh lompat2, had oodles of money stashed in the bank (haha!), so much free time at hand that we went on many, many honeymoon trips, and dreaming of renovating our very first property? Yes, that was one year ago exactly. Read here.

So we waited. And waited. And waited for the house to be completed and the keys delivered to us. When we decided that we had enough of putting our lives (and other plans) on hold for the sake of this house, we then decided to move on to our second third big plan - taking MBA. Oh, the second big plan was getting pregnant and that too, took a while to materialise so we skipped to Plan #3.

There's a saying that says, 'Man maketh grand plans, but God has the final say." (Manusia mampu merancang, tetapi Tuhan yang menentukan segalanya). While we view our lives in stages and in chapter by chapter, God does not necessarily makes it that way. This year is a testament of the saying - suddenly we find that Plan #1, 2 & 3 materialised concurrently! So, lesson learnt - always be prepared for whatever possibilities.

Suddenly we found that our plans are executed in reverse order - Plan #3 (study) came first when we enrolled in the MBA programme, then came Plan #2 (pregnancy) which was discovered after we had registered and accepted the offer. Recently, Plan #1 (home renovation / moving houses) came along, making our lives even more interesting.

So back to this posting topic - the project house. You would have think after having so much time at hand we have planned and decided on our interior decoration ideas, shopped around for best buys of whatever items needed for the renovation and looked up for the most reasonable contractor to source the job to. Unfortunately, being slackers that we are, we left everything to the last minute until the house is ready to move in. By that time, we are heavily pregnant and preparing for final exam. Hmmph.

Tapi sempat jugak pergi survey electrical items and household items and sourced for quotations from contractors! I mean, not that we have much choice since:

A. We already have to pay full monthly installment to our bank upon receiving our house keys;

B. Which means we have to move out of our current rented place to avoid having to pay for two houses;

C. And, we have to act FAST coz the baby is coming!

So, in between revising for final exam, we managed to find the shop selling the most reasonable price for ceiling fan and aircond, bought cheap lightings from my favourite store, IKEA (they costed only RM10.60 each! These are for the bathrooms) and signed on a contractor to do major renovation works such as install plaster ceiling for the living and dining area complete with in-lightings and down-lights, do wiring works and install the fans and lightings, change the kitchen floor tiles so we can install kitchen cabinet later on and install grilles.

Since we now have to keep some funds for the baby and for our studies, we have to slash a big chunk off from the original budget for home renovation and do the renovations by phases (so expect phase 2, 3 & so on until our plan is completed). Sadly, that means postponing the following:

1. Kitchen cabinet - the one our contractor proposed is not exactly up to my expectations, plus it exceeds the budgeted cost by RM1K. We spent an hour discussing our wish-list for the kitchen cabinet that fits our 'comel' kitchen with IKEA kitchen consultant and the price was double the budget - so I am willing to wait and save up more for that kitchen cabinet that will bring more joy and happiness to me rather than just a 'tangkap muat' kitchen cabinet.
2. Bathroom - apart from installing the cheap lighting, we will have to do further renovation at a later stage i.e. full tiling of the bathroom wall up to the ceiling, install shower screen and change the sink. Of course Suami Terchenta will do some plumbing work himself i.e. install new rain shower head and water hose for the toilet.
3. Painting - we have not decided on the colour for our feature wall at living/dining area, kitchen and master bedroom. I am also seriously considering wallpaper but it is costly.
4. The curtains - have to use current one.

Excuse me, I go sleep on the rest of our decorating needs first. Nite, folks!