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Home Design And Tips

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At long last, I have gathered some nice photos of my new home design and tips to update here. Shooting for home design is not as easy as I anticipated and it is totally different from photography for the craft. After many attempts at shooting and google-ing on the techniques from the internet (found a good one here), finally, I am pleased with the photos and I hope you find it this way too.

home design

As you may already know, I started renovating this newly built super condominium in September 2012, where I blogged about the initial progress here. I thought I had the time to blog about the rest of the updates as it marches on…. well, it is not as easy as I thought. I was so busy and got so involved in the whole renovation project.

Though I have a very good and responsible Interior Designer to design and coordinate the renovation, I still checked on every detail, discussed the cabinet and wardrobe designs, wall colors, curtain colors, type of tiles, lights, and many tiny minor items, ha ha ha…. call me control-freak and perfectionist, I can’t help myself for not checking-in every day!!!

I am so thankful to have hired Ms. Natalie of Sweet Victory Sdn Bhd to be my Interior Designer. I knew Natalie from a friend who renovated his house, I like the style though not 100% the one I am looking for. I did a lot of homework to find more home design and tips info & pictures of what I want my house to look like.

Inspirations are everywhere on the internet and they are free, I got them from Houzz, Better Homes and Gardens, Southern Living, Martha Stewart, Biggie Best, Pottery Barn, Ikea, Pinterest, and so on… After feeding her with lots of pictures and mind mapping what I wanted, she put so much thought into the design and worked on many late nights to get the designs done. I was so impressed when she showed me the drawings, she has got what I want!!! With her design and my DIY, together, we work with the contractors to get the house done.

Welcome to my new house, it is my pleasure to walk you through the home design, I hope you love what you see even though it still has plenty of room for improvement. You may browse through the above album for larger photos. Please let me know what do you think about it after the tour.

Home Design And Tips

Living Hall
I DIY the wooden panel behind the TV, will show you how to make yours soon.
The sofa is in daybed style, all the back supports and armrests are seated on the sofa, they are heavy but can be removed to make room for bed. Since I don’t have extra room for a guest, this could be great if someone needs to put a night or 2 with us.

TV-panel home design and tips
living home design and tips

Fireplace
It is a fake one, no one needs a real fireplace in the weather here. I love and dream to have a fireplace since small, thus, having a fireplace design in the house is my #1 priority. I can’t wait until Christmas to hang up Christmas stockings and all the Christmas decor here. Looks like I better start designing, making, and sewing for Christmas, it is a huge fireplace to fill up. 😉

fireplace home design and tips

Dining
This farmhouse dining table and chairs sets are also one of my DIY projects. I stripped off and sanded the ugly reddish-brown shellac from the 12-year-old rubberwood dining set. I then re-oil the table in dark walnut and seal it with 2 layers of diamond-hard matte polyurethane. I purposely made the chairs more rustic so that they don’t look too matchy-matchy. Tutorial to follow soon.

dining home design and tips

Breakfast Bar
This is one of the corners my family and I love. We basically use this bar counter more than just for breakfast, it is our drinks counter, work and study counter, and of course my craft photography corner too.

The work top is natural solid timber with coats of teak wood oil, it is food grade and safe to prepare food directly on it, like kneading bread dough 🙂

The clock on the wall is a simple stick-on clock, sleek and modern yet matches the farmhouse home style perfectly.

bar counter home design and tips
breakfast counter


At night, when all the lights are off, we keep the 3 LED focus lights on… how about sipping a glass of wine and have some quiet time? oh, I love staying up late!!!

breakfast-counter-light

Pantry
The pantry is connected to the breakfast bar, the place where I made our coffee, prepare kids’ beverages and snacks every morning. The pantry is also the place where I prepare for baking and for cooking as well.
I still need to get some kitchen appliances to fill up this counter, a bread toaster, bread maker, food processor, and a Kitchen Aid mixer 🙂

pantry light
pantry

Kitchen
A properly planned storage design is very important, not only in the kitchen but in other rooms as well. A good storage system will make sure you know and remember where the items you have kept away, it also helps to keep things organized and easily accessible.

I don’t have a mansion and I can’t afford a big storeroom for everything, so cabinets and proper storage are important to me. I utilized almost every wall to make cabinets so that I can keep all the belongings and won’t clutter around the house.

My kitchen window is still “naked”, it is asking for a dressed-up… a cafe curtain and a hanging herbs garden, perhaps?

Talking about the window, I am glad to use an electrical induction/infrared heater stove. The wind is strong most of the time which is good as I don’t like to cook in a hot and steamy kitchen. Now I can open the window widely without afraid of wind that can put out the fire of the gas stove.

stove
kitchen

Sewing Craft Room
Here is the sewing room…. though, it is tiny but the functionality and storage space is great to give me a better sewing environment.

With a proper home design and tips, I managed to fit in most of my favorite fabrics into the cabinet, so basically, I need to sew more before I can buy some more fabrics. The shallow drawers on the left are for fat quarters or small yardage fabrics. On the right side and under the table are cabinets for bigger yardage. There are some shallow drawers at the table, good to keep sewing tools like rulers, cutter, scissors, seam ripper, etc. I organized in such a way that the left side is for drawing and cutting and the right side is for sewing (see my Bernina sewing machine? Love it!)

I still have a separate craft room next to the kitchen which is meant for craft other than sewing, i.e. painting, paper, crochet, knitting (just to keep my yarns, I will normally crochet and knit in the living room), etc.

sewing room

Master Bedroom

Here comes the bedroom section….. the pictures tell the style of my master bedroom, plain and simple 😉 The window seat definitely need to fill up with more pillows

white wardrobe
bedroom

The wall of this study area looks a little empty, maybe an artwork will be good 🙂 Imagined, me sitting here writing my tutorial, drawing out the pattern and editing the pictures that appear in Craft Passion. To save some space off the table for better usage, I have the printer hidden inside the drawer, guest which one?

study-office

My room comes with an en-suite full bathroom, which has 2 basins (His and Hers, love it!), a long bath (no jacuzzi though), a shower, and a toilet. I am happy with the original design, all I need is to add a wall cabinet and under-basin counter to keep my toiletries.

bathroom

Girl Room

If you follow through with my recent updates, you should have seen part of this room – my daughter’s room, where I sewed a Secret Garden Quilt. After posting up the quilt pattern and tutorial, I put on more decorations to her room – the tree decal with bookshelf, some photo frames, and butterflies… My daughter is 10-year-old, to make the bedroom design last longer, it needs to be in a little grown-up style, no more princess pink even though I knew she would prefer pink to orange 🙁

I will make a separate tutorial to show you how I put on the tree decal where you can purchase here. Butterflies decoration is easy, just purchase some ready-made scrapbook butterflies, stick them on the wall with double-sided tape.

girl-room
girl room home design and tips
girl-study

Boy Room

The layout of both boy and girl rooms are identical, which means it makes the wardrobe design a little easy. We just need to alter a bit on the design, such as doors and decoration trim to make them look different.

My son’s room is in Car theme, I am still sewing his “Road Runner” Quilt, hope that I can get it done very soon. He has been nagging me to hurry up, he wants the blanket to be on the bed and not under the presser foot of my sewing machine.

If you are fascinated about the world map decal of his wall, I got it from here.

boy bed home design and tips
boy room
boy-study

Here is almost all about my new home design and tips. Even though not every corner were shown here at this time but will sure share it when I have done something on it.

**************
Distributor for home furnishing (Biggie Best), Interior Design & Renovation:
Sweet Victory Sdn Bhd
53, Jalan Kelawai,
10250 Georgetown,
Penang,
Malaysia.
Tel: 04-2299679
Email: info@sweetvictory.my


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Author bio

Joanne Loh

~ Founder and Editor ~
Born into a creative family, Joanne Loh has over 40 years of experience in sewing, crocheting, and knitting. Well-known for her creative approach to DIY crafts, her creations demonstrate a strong dedication to quality and spreading her enthusiasm among the crafting community.
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Paul Brian

Thursday 16th of September 2021

Hi Craft,

I came across your blog post on Craft Passion. I love this article because it tells about how to be a good contractor and the important things you should do when getting ready for a project, especially hiring professionals like painters in Nanaimo. This is also great information if you are not sure who to work with or what kind of contractor to hire. Thanks for sharing your knowledge!

Evie Keith

Monday 11th of June 2018

Nice post i love your post and Your house is amazing it is so beautiful.

Jenny Chan

Wednesday 6th of August 2014

Oh my goodness...it looks absolutely STUNNING. I adore the sewing room, and breakfast room, and fake fireplace - basically everything, haha. It looks better than an IKEA catalog! I think I need to hire an interior designer now to re-do my room. :)

Craft Passion

Wednesday 6th of August 2014

Thank you, Jenny :) Perhaps Ikea should hire me and my Interior Designer to work for them. Have fun re-do your room!!!

Caryl Anne

Wednesday 18th of June 2014

I love the idea of a breakfast bar! In my opinion, it adds a little bit of uniqueness without overdoing it. Thanks for sharing!

Bee Bee

Tuesday 3rd of September 2013

My favourite will be your kitchen ^_^

Craft Passion

Tuesday 3rd of September 2013

Thank you, Bee Bee :) It is an airy kitchen, no more hot and steamy when I cook and bake :)