Facelift for a 90s resale flat & its 30y/o marble floors
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Virtual House Tour
- Couple Living
- 4 br
- HDB (Resale)
- ~1,200 sqft
- Mid-Century Modern
Welcome to our 30 year old resale flat in Bishan! We are first-time homeowners, figuring things out as we go along. 
This is the original floor plan of the flat. One thing that really sold this flat for us was its size - 1260sqft, which is rare for a 4-room HDB flat these days. The rather squarish layout (ok, save for that 80-degree angled wall) also gave us options to switch up the configuration later on, to suit our needs. But the current configuration still didn’t quite seem to maximise the potential of the flat for us. For example, the L-shaped path from the living room to the kitchen made for a rather awkward flow between the two main living areas. The position of Bedroom 3 and the store would also make the corridor rather dim, if we decided to keep Bedroom 3 closed most of the time. This would be such a waste of the large kitchen area, which presented a huge potential for hosting our friends and family. We went through many iterations of the layout, and eventually landed on a configuration that we thought would would let most light in. For example, we swapped the position of the Living Room and Bedroom 3, to allow for a more natural flow between the living area, dining area and kitchen. We also decided to hack the store, and shift it to the foyer. It would now be smaller than the typical size of the storeroom, and reduce the overall size of Bedroom 2 (Guest Room). But we thought this was worth it, because we’d now get a completely unblocked wind tunnel from the living area to the kitchen. 
The modifications above were quite significant (lots of hacking and partition works), so we were conscious that we should find ways to keep our renovation costs manageable. One of the things we did was to keep the floors intact - broken marble that was about 30 years old, inherited from the first owner. It’s pretty amazing what some polishing can do, huh? The view of the floors here are of the previous living room, which we’ve now converted into our study. This is a view of our kitchen, taken from where our dining area will be. The partition next to the fridge was where the store room once stood. Looking at how much light is flowing into this space, we have absolutely no regrets hacking the store away. 
- 29 June 2023
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