最好的已经在眼前

All along we been wanting to upgrade to a bigger house by taking advantage of our 2nd chance to apply for new flat from HDB. We balloted umpteen times only to get disappointed repeatedly. Refer to my posting about our recent failed HDB balloting.

I been researching the typical layout of a 5 room flat and all 5 room flat also have 3 bedrooms same as 4 room flat. The only difference is the bigger living room area which a part of it can be partition to be a study room and a bigger kitchen. 

What I like about our current house is the convenience. Located just near to a Lrt station with covered sheltered walkway and only a mere 5 mins ride to the mrt station and a 5 mins walk to the nearest shopping mall with ntuc. Our daily commute and grocery shopping is a breeze. Neighbours are nice people similar profile as us who are young families. There is also a good ranking primary school nearby within 5mins walk which potentially is our target to enroll our gal in future. So actually why are we even thinking of moving? 

The only thing which I don't like about our house is the layout as there are quite a lot of wasted space in the kitchen and master bedroom due to odd corners. Therefore I always got a feeling that we are lack of space. 

However, one day when I was walking past a new estate, I observed that the 5 room flat also has 6-7 window panels including the study room which is similar to our house living room area. Currently our living room has 6 window panels which is quite spacious. Therefore with that in mind, I keep thinking how can I take advantage of that to add more space to our house? 

Then suddenly an idea came to me that I could do up some partition too in our living room to convert a part of it as study room area. In this case we could free up one more room for our gal. After some intial design draft using sketchup, this idea is doable without much compromising to our original living room space too (because currently there are a lot of wasted space due to a big built in cabinet at the living room which is underutilized).

However, to make it possible, We got to hack away the big built in cabinet which is a waste. So I got to think through this how best to reduce wastage when engaging this home improvement project. 

As for the kitchen, there are limited ways to improve its capacity due to its layout. Therefore I got no choice but to stick to it. Perhaps I can do some minor renovation on the kitchen sink area or install more shelving. For our oddshape master bedroom I also intend to do up some redesign so as to free up some space for storage too.  

Therefore if this home improvement project can go through, it will free up more space and we need not buy a bigger flat just for that extra 18sq ft area. Not only we save on the cost of paying a hefty resale levy, we need not go through the anxiety of hoping to sell our house at a good price but would be difficult as all buyers would want to buy at bargain and now it is a buyers' market. This home improvement project if goes through might increase our house value in future too. 

That is why I said 最好的已经在眼前. The best is already with us. Sometimes, we tend to under appreciate the good things around us but actually they are there all the time waiting for us to discover its value. 

But of course I will not rule out the possibility to apply for balloting if the launches are in a good location which must be even better than our current house. 

So now after sorting out my thoughts, I got to rake my brains how to realise this home improvement project (HIP) at a reasonable cost and reducing wastage to the minimal.