hong kong vista

One of the things that sold us on our new apartment is the view. We have been lucky enough to be living on the waterfront for the past 3 years, and we really appreciate how wonderful it is to look out your windows at water, hills and open space (especially precious in Hong Kong, considering the high chance that your apartment will look directly into your neighbour's apartment!). Of course, you have to pay extra for a view, but we think it's worth it.

Our living room and 2 bedrooms look east towards Hong Kong Island, straight down the famous Victoria Harbour. We are very excited to be moving to a place that will get morning sun!

This photo is a little distorted because of the limitations of stitching together a panorama on my camera. You don't really see the building on the right - it's our bedroom window and it faces out towards the islands too. But you get the idea!

               Zoomed up view over Hong Kong Island                                                                                                                                  Sunrise over Peng Chau Island

Our apartment is on the top floor of the block, so it's very easy access to the rooftop. This is what sold Justin once and for all on the apartment! Images of reading on the roof and summer BBQs had him asking for a pen to sign the contract!

A dusk rooftop view over Discovery Bay, the beach and the hills

day 2 demolition

Day 2 of demolition was just as exciting as the first! The wall between the 2nd and 3rd bedrooms was knocked down. You can see in the photo below where the wall once was between the two doors.

day 1 demolition

We were very excited when finally the day to start renovations arrived! We had tried to get the contract completed earlier, but we had to be patient and wait the full amount of time. We were so surprised when we walked into our apartment after the first day of demolition to see how much had been done!

Kitchen cabinets - gone! Parquetry floors - gone! Toilets, vanities and baths - gone!

original condition

Our apartment was in original condition when we bought it, which meant a "delightful" interior which was 22 years old. The pale grey and beige themes in the bathrooms certainly looked 1988! (sorry to the previous owner if you actually had updated the interior post-1988!).

The floors in the living and bedroom areas were parquetry, favoured in Hong Kong apartments old and new. This floor was showing its age with worn varnish and warped strips of wood. The walls had been freshly painted, albeit badly and  with a cheap brush which had left black bristles stuck on walls, doors and frames everywhere!













The L-shaped kitchen had wall cabinets that reached the ceiling. Great - extra storage! Um, no, not when they were regular height wall cabinets that were just hung further up the wall so they reached the ceiling! The shelves inside would have been difficult to reach! There was no oven, just a portable gas hob sitting on the bench, and a mouldy fridge. Two of the three bedrooms had old built in cupboards.

And here's a little video tour of our apartment in original condition!

814 sq ft

So after returning to Hong Kong after a trip home to Sydney at xmas last year, we decided to look for an apartment to buy in Hong Kong. We've been living in HK for over 4.5 years now, and it's been a somewhat temporary existence, as we thought we'd only be here for 1-2 years before returning to Sydney. But now we own our own litle slice (well, the bank does), all 814 square feet of it!

On March 15th the flat officially became ours. It was a 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom flat, but we're changing that! It's now on it's way to a 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom. Well, the 2nd bedroom isn't really a bedroom, and the 2 bathrooms aren't replicas of each other... let me explain.

Original floor plan
The flat was in original condition when we bought it. It had one master bedroom and 2 very small bedrooms! They were only 2 metres by 2.2 metres! So we knocked down the wall between the 2nd and 3rd bedroom, and are making it one big, open room where we'll have a wardrobe, bike storage and computer desk. The original 2 doorways have been knocked into one extra wide doorway which we are not putting doors on. Hopefully this makes the area seem more spacious and will let the easterly light flow throughout the hall area.

Original floorplan

The original 2 bathrooms were identical to each other - vanity, toilet and bath/shower in each. We decided we really don't need 2 bathrooms; we're never fighting to use the bathroom together. Question was, do we knock the wall down in between and make one long bathroom? Or do we move the wall and make one bathroom about 1.5 times its original size, and make the other small room just a toilet room or perhaps a very small laundry area? What we've decided to do is keep the wall where it was, but one bathroom will have just the vanity and shower, and the other will have the toilet and laundry. Positives for us:

• this gets the toilet out of the middle of one bathroom so we don't have to trip over it while showering and brushing our teeth
• making one room into a toilet/laundry room means we can get the washing machine out of the kitchen (standard for Hong Kong) which gives us more cabinet space in the kitchen

 Other rooms in the flat are of course a kitchen, living/dining area and a master bedroom.

better late than never

I started thinking about keeping a blog on our apartment renovations a couple of weeks ago, and then thought, "Nah, it's already been a month since we settled the contract and started renovations, I've missed the boat". But even though so much has happened already, there's still SO much to be done and a 1000 more decisions to make, so why not document it all here? Plus we're taking lots of photos and video of the process, so it will be nice to have them displayed in one place to share with friends and family overseas, and anyone else interested. And maybe by musing over renovation and interior design and decoration options here, it will help me make a few of the 1000 decisions necessary to create our little 814 square feet home here in Hong Kong.