DAY 1

What lies behind the door?
We opened the door with trepidation, not knowing what to expect after the first day of hacking.

We popped by the apt at the end of the first day of renovations to see what was happening. I had come by earlier in the morning to drop the greeting cards under our neighbours' doors - the ones provided by the HDB to help new owners to break the ice with their neighbours - introducing ourselves and informing them of the impending renovations. We've not met any of them. Their doors are closed all the time, all three of them, and I had to slot the cards under their doors. HDB provided three cards so I gave one to our neighbours directly opposite us, to the right of us and below us. I wanted to give inform the neighbour diagonally across from us too but had no more cards to give so I left them out.

The HDB-provided cards which we dropped under the neighbours' doors. I thought the cards are a very good idea. It allows you to pen a message too! Well done HDB!

The flooring is supposed to be saved, so that we lay our tiles over it to save some costs. I guess that's why only certain portions were hacked. HDB only gives us three days to do the hacking, from 9am-5pm so all major noise producing works have to be finished within the three days, which isn't a lot of time if you have quite a few walls to hack!

The balcony wall tiles were stripped, as well as the floor. Balcony glass door was also removed.

The cooker hood and kitchen sink were dumped there.

Another view of the living room with kitchen entrance on the left.

The study.

The master bedroom. 

Another view from the master bedroom. On the left is the bathroom and on the right is the living.

The bathroom in the master.

The kitchen.

 A last look before leaving.

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!

The Search For Our New Home...

...has begun, with a phone call that I've been procrastinating with for weeks. I called a housing agent, Joseph Lim, recommended by my colleague Desmond who engaged him as his agent to buy his new home and sell his current one. So Joseph came highly recommended. 
It's with some hesitation that I finally dialled Joseph's number earlier this evening. Is this the right time? Should I call him now? When is the right time? It can take months to find the right home, so I should start the ball rolling now, shouldn't I? And I turn a year older in two weeks' time, which means I have a year less to pay up my loan. As it is I want to finish paying for the house before I retire so that leaves us with a very short period of time to do so. I think I'm already too late as my monthly mortgage will be quite high as it is. 
The finances are a worry. I've tried to do my sums and it doesn't look good. Yet, this move is necessary and it is probably the last house that we will buy before we retire. We've always wanted our dream, well designed home that is a vast change from the clutter we've lived with for years. The new home is not just a new space to live in, but it marks for us a new start in terms of a more simplified way of living, a chance to de-clutter, a chance to live comfortably in a nice new place that will bring us a peace of mind and some happiness. It's for all these reasons that this is such an important move for us. I'm filled with apprehension, as the coming year is expected to be a challenging one economy-wise so interest rates are on its way up. There are so many 'what ifs' and 'hows' in my head so I can only pray that He will help us in our search and allow everything to fall into place nicely.