Thursday, December 3, 2009

Designer disease

Since B and I are both designers [the worst part is we both are not interior designers but trying to design our apartment...] , this project is bound to be a big nightmare to my interior design friend who gonna help us to make the thinking into reality..... We have our own thoughts about how we want it, what type of method we want to use, why should we design this way....etc. We basically have opinions about almost EVERYTHING!

In the design book rule No. one: Set up a tone which meets up what the users want!

Luckily we don't need to do lots target research because we are the users!
But it really takes a lot of effort to narrow done what we want at this point.

I started cruising on line and buying interior design magazines to get myself inspired. After a long study and million questions we asked ourselves, here comes the conclusion of what our new apartment should be:

A library+a chic restaurant+ a SPA =our ideal home.

Here are some references I put together. 





Most of the images are from a great website desiretoinspire.


Friday, August 28, 2009

The War zone part 0.5

I found those pictures last night.
We were just back to Taiwan from Sweden and could not help but want to check how the "project" going on? So we woke up super early and went to check the apartment before work [ YES, we started working right after our wedding ceremony, you know, Asian style].

Here it was, a War zone, right before the pictures I showed in last post so I called these the war zone 0.5. Everything were half bagged and some pipes were half falling down...very happening.

The hard workers were up there eating their breakfast already and we were amazed how much garbages were installed in this oldie! It also felt like a fresh start, our hearts were starting beating fast and got all excited about our coming up home .AAB No. 1.





Thursday, August 27, 2009

Big step one-- Knock everything down, I mean, yes, Everything.

After the painful Process of payments, taxes, and all the private information exchanges, we finally were the legal owners of this place! Which also meant that we were allowed to do anything to this place besides blow it up although what we did was not too far away of it........haha.

Anyways, while we were celebrating our marriage in Sweden this July, a group of hardworking men were knocking walls down, pulling all the ugly decorations off in our newly purchase home at the same time!

Here are the amazing results after one week work~~






The apartment was naked and full of hope~~

PS.
1. The stair way was there because we needed to get on 2nd floor and it is gone now!!
2.The guy with hat is my old interior designer friend who is helping us on this remodeling process.

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

The fundation, A 30-year-old Apartment

After weeks and weeks of searching, we finally landed our eyes on an old apartment located in the East side of Central Taipei City.

Why this one? OK, first of all, we were smart enough to actually writing done a wish list of what we want to have in the apartment and about where we want to live. I have to admit, although I grow up in Taipei city, there are not too many nice residential areas in the city which we want to live in. We wanted to find an area is chic, convenient, greener than most of business areas in town, a small view of blue sky and right by a subway station. Second, after all the bad bath room and storage problems we had in our previous temporary homes, we also wanted an apartment is bit large for two--more than 100 square meters and better comes in 2 floors.

We did not have much choice and we could not afford the new apartments in the areas we wanted. So when this old but charming 2 floors apartment showed up, I graped it right away! B had his doubt but he soon realized this was a good option after he searched around town. We carefully examined the structure with some professions and history of the apartment, then, we went for it!! In one sentence-- We saw the potential!!

The remodeling process started 3 weeks ago, and we went inside the apartment to take some BEFORE pictures after our wedding. It is quit amazing that we are going to make this oldie a cutie!

The sky is typical a Taipei Grey Blue and I am sure you can tell this is an absolute 30-years oldie~~

Living Room


A bar is in command.

Sad 1 floor bed room used to be for a disable oldie we guessed

That person's bathroom?

A very weird kitchen


Sad 2 floor bathroom

2floor small bed room

2 floor master bedroom facing a school full of annoying kids..........

The other view of the master room

old old walk in closet......I guess it was kinda luxury for 30 years ago in TW..

Roof top

Yes, we believe it has its potential.........haha

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

New life, New projects & We never take a break~

Dear all,

As you can see, We started an whole new project right after we moved to a new country, got new jobs, and accomplished our wedding plan.

Yes, The NEW HOME project is coming!

The story started about 3 months ago, we moved to Taiwan for jobs. After nesting in our student-style condo located in LA for more than 4 years, B and I are pretty much ready to get our hands on a real home--completely belongs to ourselves. You see, we traveled a lot between graduation and our first serious job, of course, we had lived in many many many temporary homes. We had rented apartments in Stockholm, Tai-Chung and Taipei city, and many many hotels in London, Paris, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Milan, Frankfurt, New York, San Francisco, Tokyo, etc. .

On top of all the traveling, we also happened to travel with almost everything we had--3computers, 3 laptops, bed sheets [ I love to sleep in my own bed sheets and pillow cases], toys, posters+ artworks, my car models, ski+diving equipments, cooking wares, books, and boxes of clothes and nearly 50 pairs of shoes [ OK. most of them were mine...]. It was extremely tiring and we were so ready to get a stable home-storage place when we finally landed on our work.

Guaala, It comes now! A base in Taiwan we will keep for our future visiting even when we are done with the job contracts. The most exciting part is we finally can put our creativity on something which we have fully control of how we want it looks like! No more teachers, no more stupid bosses! We are THE OWNERS! What a magic word~