Home Sweet Home

Making my first permanent home (outside from parents and rental apartments), I took several months prior to my wedding for total renovation. The townhouse is a small space of aprox 90m2 (900 sq ft) with three levels, totaling to aprox 300m2 (3000sq ft) house.

I have repainted the exterior from a dark shade of grey, to which my husband said it looks like concrete, to a light grey and finally to a nice clean white color.
Had plenty of fun making our new home without spending too much money.

Before- Waiting Area
AfterBefore - Making the DeckAfterBefore- Making for 2 personal spacesAfter

Before

After
Before

After

Chic Geomatric Lines

The blinds, wallpaper and carpet on these 3 pictures does enliven the place and making the place more chic.

Black and Red

I like the bold color of red somewhere in my home but I have always tried to play it safe with muted colors of ivory and light greys. There's a red feature wallpaper but its a small space of red.

The ones featured in this posting seem very inspiring. Not only the homes have red walls but also black. It makes small space homes much more interesting to stay in.

Pictures source from US Oct editions of House&Garden and Elle Decor

Spice Up Small Spaces

It would be great if this table comes in white. I like things in white as I always thought white brings out the colorful accessories but looking at this dining table, maybe black is good too. I love the table legs and it comes with black glass top Table by John Reeves

I think bold and graphic carpet like this from Roubini Rug can make my small townhouse into a swanky one. I like how the flower edges are irregular.

I got a stubborn stairway that I ran out inspirations what to do about it. This seems quirky and interesting way to light it up. Designed by Muriel Brandolini.

Image from House & Garden

Maybe if I cover my stairs with a printed carpet as below. It seems wild but I think the colors play together with my white and grey walls.

New York, New York

Ahh, I have to say, I'm so glad to be back home. I decided I'm not a jet-setter after-all. Lots of girls would love my job, flying around cosmopolitan cities to buy designer collections for boutiques. Nah, I ran out of energy and spirit.

Arriving in New York, I have an angel of a brother-in-law who drove down from Boston to pick me up in the airport and sent me to my hotel. The hotel rates during fashion week were in ridiculous rates but I managed to get myself a 3 star hotel in flatiron district- Marcel Hotel.

Its a bit out of my way of shopping but I stayed in this hotel before and find it very decent, other than the annoying automatic mini-bar that will charge you if you take out items out from it or open the bar for a quick peek.

The bedsheets were clean, the operator replied to my questions, there's a bistro (no room service) who delivers 24hrs when I jet-lagged and had hunger pangs at 2am, the place was easy to find once you are familiar with the area, the price was okay... would I stay again here? The answer is no.

There's so many hotels in New York! But there's a hotel where I love to stay over and over again. Shoreham. Unfortunately, their prices increased when they renovated. Ugh.

Clouds 3D

This is becoming my favorite room after the living room of course. I feel so much at ease with the clouds on the walls and ceiling. We have designated this room as our changing room and in future our baby's room. We think it will be nice if the baby can stare at fake clouds rather than blank white ceiling.

Extending Space of Our Own

image from inhabitat

I had this fixation since young with a small space outside the house, that small space you can mark your territory or as a hideaway from the family. When I was younger, I was under the study table for quite some time, imagining that that's my space, doing the regular mundane stuff and away from the homeworks. Maybe it was the Enid Blyton's books that fed these ideas to my young mind. The tree house she wrote was such a romantic idea for little children.

When I saw this wood hut from Modern Cabana, I thought it was quite a sound idea,. One would make it as the working area if he couldn't work inside the house. I personally love working in the house, especially when the TV is in front of me.

This little wood hut will be good for my husband. He love music and had always wanted the time and place to practice playing music. Although we have spare rooms, they are not sound-proofed.

image from inhabitat

My husband would drool over this picture: out it the grass, playing music and the big cute dog inside the space.
Maybe when we have kids one day, we would both look hard at this picture, wishing we can escape the housework and run into this nice wood hut to stay for few hours.

Putting in the Furnitures

After installing the wallpaper and lighting, next thing we did was to furnish our apartment with furnitures. For 6 months, we were without much furnitures other than our beds and wardrobe, it was cozy but everything seemed so messy and cluttered.

I had done my homework of pre-selecting the pieces from Casamia , a furniture concept store quite similar to US Crate & Barrel, in Bundang area and cutting the furniture pictures from their catalog.

From the hand-drawn grid page paper, it was so much easier to place all the furniture measurements, making sure they fit our rooms.
I had to convince my husband that the L-shape sofa will fit the room by showing him this draft too. He was a little dubious of the sofa until it arrived and placed in the living room.

And so the L-shape sofa fits. We even got it sit comfortably in between the AC and bookshelf. I even get to have my workspace in the living room. My husband did a great job organizing my mess and actually, he's the one who organized most of the spaces.

Kitchen & Dining Room Makeover

Kitchen is the space where I feel I'm in control and also the only space that I constantly clean. The original tiles were from the 90s and are quite bland with the whole country look. I decided that clean white tiles would make the kitchen look cleaner and wider.

My husband has a preference of stripes. He chose this stylish white on matte white tile and rust-colored mosaic tile for the "point". The white tiles makes the kitchen look cleaner and the mosaic gives a little punch of color.

Since I picked a grey sparkly wallpaper for kitchen and living room, we try to furnish with colors to make it less bland. I have a little problem of how the kitchen is too open... I think I will try to shop for a nice screen seperator to cover the sink background.

My mother-in-law took me for lighting shopping after the wallpaper. We went to Eujiro area for the lighting. It was drizzling so it was not the best time to stroll to find a nice store. I'm relieved that I managed to escape the 1st store we stepped in. My mother-in-law is a sweetheart, she dislike making inconvenience to others, meaning sales people too. We saw some things and she would feel obliged to buy from the store.

Our second stop was a gem of a store, I was glad they carry some nice, straight-forward pieces that I knew I would like and thus, our stop to settle for our lighting shopping.

As impressed as I was with the store, I spot this chandelier and I knew I have seen the exact same thing somewhere before but I couldn't remember just what brand it is. Its price tag was above what we are able to afford and the kindly salesman took us a floor down to show us another "similar" piece.

That "similar" piece is an imitation with swarovksi crystals but one tenth the price tag. I had never been so happy with an imitation!So while being happy looking at my chandelier in my kitchen, I search for the original chandelier.

Its called Cellula and the real thing looks like this

Our humble dining area

Wallpaper Effect

I just love artistic wallpaper with yummy colors from pastels to vibrant prints. I'm more inclined towards whimsical designs and its great that my husband shares similar taste and vision on how our apartment should look like.

We both like vintage prints and also Asian-theme wallpaper so it was quite easy to pick out our favorite wallpapers.

I have always have an obsession with wallpapers and I spent hours and days to look for inspiration. Osborne & Little has always been a favorite and also because its slightly friendlier to the pocket. There are many independent wallpaper companies in US and EU but its difficult to buy the rolls and have them shipped over...

images from osborne&little and flavor paper

Second row is Flavor Paper, I love the Kabloom collection in white and gold. They will definitely look luxe enough for dining room or entertainment areas. The sakura flowers are pretty for powder room. Click here to view more of their flavorful and original wallpapers.

The first row is Osborne& Little, click here to view more of their products. They have the many different color schemes and I believe their Asuka flower print triggered the global trend of sakura printed wallpapers.

image from Interiors Europe

Asuka is very pretty but they are now quite over-exposed. Last year, I fell in love with them when I visited a wallpaper boutique and was quoted EU50+/roll and later I saw in Oct 06 Domino Mag in Claire Forlani's room. I almost bought some rolls but the shipment and freight was not only expensive and it was a headache for me to be bothered with.

As pretty as Asuka is, so does it carry out the trend. I see them everywhere in Seoul especially, mostly in ladies beauty places. I can't tell if thats the real deal or the imitation.

image from Seoul Wallpaper

Since we are renovating our place in Seoul, we have to localize and trust me, South Korea has some of the most beautiful wallpapers! I'm not talking about textures but prints. They are very much up to the trends.
Housing in Seoul is very expensive and thus, homes are smaller. With small space, South Koreans creatively made certain walls as their 'point' - walls they want to stand out from the others.

The first row is Cosmos (If you look closely on Cosmos pic, you can see that the left picture feature wallpaper that look similar to the Asuka from Osborn& Little. Hmm...) and the second row is Seoul Wallpaper .

Not only does the wallpaper looks great, various of the wallpaper company boast eco-friendliness of the vinyl wallpaper they manufacture. We went along to order our wallpaper mostly from Seoul Wallpaper, most of the top wallpaper companies. They have a collection called Oksusu, means corn in english and as the name said the wallpaper is made of corn. Above, the advertisement for the Oksusu collection found on magazine.

Of course, they are more premium-priced compared to the other collection but their texture feels different to the touch.

Above is from Ezen collection and the red 'point' wall is from the Oksusu collection. I try to be careful not to mix the vintage print and the asian print clashing from one another. The blue vintage print is for the hidden hallway towards guestroom while the splashy red Asian sakura print is in the center of hallway.

The colors above dont do justice of the wallpaper. I just positively love my red sakura wallpaper. It has a nice gold glitter halo around it.

The Renovation

Finally, I was given the chance for a total makeover of our apartment. Our apartment has a great location but it is an old property and thus, everything inside was old.
Living in Seoul and having handicap in the language, I am very dependent on my husband and my in-laws to source for the renovation materials needed.



I'm not a interior designer, not aspiring to be but I do lavish a lot of attention to the renovation. I didnt have the blueprint of our apartment so I had to measure the rooms by my 3-meter measuring tape. Afterwards, its all basic sketchings to show my husband and later, the ration measurements into the layout.