Home That Prem (And The Mrs) Built - Part Two

Another weekend has come and gone. And after a week of fighting the urge of heading down and seeing the progress of our new apartment so that we can surprise ourselves, my wife and I gave in on Saturday afternoon to sneak a peak.

There was nothing much to see except our tiles in the living room were laid down, the wall tiles in both our bathrooms were up and our kitchen and dining room (formally a part of the kitchen) was taking shape. We were excited except for one major issue - how to accomodate a dining table big enough to have a small gathering of close friends. This was "hotly" debated over the weekend.

You see, the dining room was small (see picture on top right). It measured about 3 meters by 2 meters excluding a built-in glass showcase to accomodate my late mother's large collection of crystalware. Although it would be only my wife and I that would be enjoying a quiet dinner together most of the time, we always enjoy the company of close friends who drop by. What kind of hosts would we be if we could not accomodate them at our dining table? So, we tossed the idea around quite a bit. Not being able to come to a satisfactory agreement on the subject, we decided to head out to Furniture Mall to shop. We chanced upon a beautiful dining table that we both liked (fortunately, our taste in furniture and many other things were very alike) and hovered over it for a long while. But, the table was a little too big for our new dining room. The sales executive came to the rescue. "You can customise it to the size you want", he said. But the size of the table our dining room could take was ridiculously small inclusive of dining chairs. I felt my head throb. Behind tired look of my wife's eyes, I could see hopelessness. I couldn't blame her. It felt hopeless to me as well.

We decided to buy it anyway but instead of having dining chairs, we could accomodate it by using benches. "Very hip.... but uncomfortable", I thought to myself. I've always enjoyed dinner and after-dinner talks but having to sit on hard wood benches will pretty much kill the mood for any post-dinner discussion - intellectual or otherwise. I could tell my wife shared the same feeling. We both knew our constraints (pardon the pun) but tried to be happy with our decision.

Sunday came around. After a day out running errands, we got back home and my wife and I poured over the floor plans. I still felt uncomfortable about our "hip" bench idea and studied the plans carefully to see how we could etch a couple more centimeters out for our dining room. It felt like trying to squeeze water out of a stone. Then, an idea struck. What if we did away with the crystalware showcase? My wife frowned. Although she never met my mum, I knew my wife wanted it to be displayed in my mum's memory. While I appreciated the sentiment, I knew my mum would have liked her full (massive) collection of crystalware on display, not just a handful of them. So, I suggested putting them in storage and someday when we could afford a bigger place, we can have a dedicated showcase just for my mum's pride and joy. With this, we managed to recover about 1/2 a meter more in our living room - enough for dining chairs!! *woohoo* I saw it in my wife eyes and I am sure she saw it in mine - relief.

So, a call was quickly made to our designer to tell her the latest changes. I get the feeling our designer is about to give up on us because of all the changes to her design.

More updates and pictures as the work progresses!