The Handover

Like little kids receiving a puppy for the first time, we dashed to the house after the handover at HDB was done and dusted. We met the sellers and paid them some cash to cover the property tax for the rest of the year and they handed over a bag of the keys to all the doors in the house, each one nicely labelled. The handover was done in front of the HDB officer, our lawyer, the sellers and their agent. 
It was over within 10 minutes. We could not have asked for better sellers. The couple, who are about the same age as us, are very nice and we chatted and got along well with them on the few occasions that we met. We were grateful at how organised they were in labelling all the keys and giving it to us in a nice bag. All this was unexpected.

The bag of keys. We probably can't even find all of ours when we have to do the same in the near future.

What we saw when we opened the door to our new home shocked us. The place was spick and span! We had expected cobwebs, cockroaches, lots of dust and bits and pieces strewn here and there, but none of that was to be found. Amazing! Totally unexpected! We were bowled over! And grateful...
I emailed them later that night to thank them. So nice of them. We let them keep one key to the letterbox so that they could drop by anytime to pick up their mail. They will hold on to it for  few months and finally drop the key in the letterbox to return it. 
It was a nice feeling, seeing our new place at another stage of our lives. Its walls and halls have seen so much history and we were about to create our own. We are the third owners of the place and were excited to start the renovations to see it shape up to become our new abode. None of this could have happened without HIS grace.

The empty hall looked even bigger.

The door to the balcony.

The balcony.

The study. All built in cabinets and fixtures can be left behind but the HDB rules deem that the seller must remove everything else.

Meg's room.

Emma's room.

The master bedroom.

Master bedroom bathroom on the left.

The kitchen.

Check back in a few months to see its transformation!

Taking Stock

After the initial excitement of having bought a flat petered down a little, the reality set in. The reality that the number of zeros in our bank account would diminish, the reality that all this money could have taken us further in our retirement years or even partially paid for our daughters' education should they want to go overseas to study...the list goes on. 

Why then did we decide to do this? 

We needed a change. We needed to start afresh, away from the mess we'd lived with for so many years. In two weekends, we cleared about ten years of junk. We were finally able to see more of our yellow coloured cement floor, we wiped a lot of dust off many surfaces, and the best of all, we finally managed to have a meal at our dining table after more than 10 years. It's always been at the coffee table, bent over in front of the TV. The mess was the main reason for the change, along with the fact that in time we would need another room for Emma, and we wanted to be closer to their school and our office. 
We love our place in Sengkang, and importantly, our neighbours whom we've gotten to know over the years. The few whom we talk to have been here for as long as we have and we haven't told them that we're moving yet. They will be quite surprised. Our neighbour Alice will surely miss Emma's daily call outside her gate as we walk past their door to our apt. It's a routine that both her family and ours have grown accustomed to. Both parties will feel something is amiss once we move. 
But all things must change, inevitably. I hope and pray that we will get along with our new neighbours and experience positive vibes with them. 
Our past few weekends have been spent visiting furniture and home appliance retailers. We've looked at dozens of dining tables, sofas, sinks, taps, etc. Our experience this time is quite different from 17 years ago when we went through the same motions setting up our first home. We were much younger then, with a limited budget, but very thrilled at buying our first home together and it was great fun furnishing it. I remember we engaged a contractor and I saw the renovation works through. Our home was simply furnished. 
This time, however, we've engaged an Interior Designer (ID) who is my old Archi school friend. I can't find it within myself to coordinate the entire reno works and we wanted a well designed, magazine worthy type of interior decor. I have some ideas in parts but can't manage to piece them all together to make it work seamlessly. It's the same with MJ. So we decided to bite the bullet and find an ID. 
I have two colleagues who recently bought new apartments as well. One of them bought and renovated a five-room flat in Bishan. He engaged an ID as well and his bill came up to about $120k without the appliances. The other colleague wanted to engage an ID but the quotes he got were out of his budget. He too bought an executive apartment like ours. In fact, we are neighbors. We live just opposite each other, in neighbouring blocks but he is on the far end of his "L" shaped block so we can't see each other from our respective units. A relief for him I'm sure! He bought his apartment about 6 months before I did. I never fathomed that I would end up buying my place right next to his! The IDs quoted him between $120k - $150k for his place which has the same floor area as ours: 146 sqm (about 1570 sqft). That provided a good 'guesstimate' for us. I'm sure our final bill will be in that region and more in fact, once we factor in the new fridge, sofa, cooker, table, etc etc etc.
So while our spending power has improved since our younger days, we are also wary about spending too much because we are tapping into our lifetime's savings. This money was meant to be for our kids' education in case they chose to go overseas to study. Now there is no choice, it's a local education for them. 
Also, the media business is deteriorating, especially the print media. So our job isn't that secure. The future isn't crystal clear to us, except for the surety that print is dying. In addition to our woes, a new CEO was recently appointed by the powers that be to run the company and this chap has a reputation for cost cutting, including and especially staff costs. So our future is dismal indeed and the fact that we've just taken a rather large bank loan is indeed worrying. Our target is to pay off the loan as quickly as possible, as soon as the initial two years are up which then frees us from having to pay a significant penalty for paying down the loan. 
All these thoughts have been swirling within my head and I'm sure a few new grey hairs have sprouted. We believe in buying things that will last, which almost always means they're more expensive than the usual, cheaper options. Just today, we went to have a look at a sofa that MJ read about. One that supports the neck, is comfortable and not too hideous looking. There are few in the market that fit this bill. To support the neck, the backrest has to be high enough to reach the neck and such designs are mostly ugly and a magnet only to middle-aged folks who have physical ailments - wait, that's us! The nicely designed ones cost a bomb. The reason we are gravitating towards the recliner type of sofa, is that we fit the "old men (and women) who have physical ailments" profile. This we can't help but we can determine if we buy an ugly or a "not-so-ugly" one. 

Nice but expensive. When can something nice ever be cheap?

They like this part best about 'trying out' new furniture.

This table at Castlery was very popular. Two people bought it while we were there looking. Of course we did not get it in the end.