Finally... It's Finished... What's Next...?

My house renovation phase one is finished now. Kitchen, living room, dining room, bathroom, and an inner-court are ready to use now. Some of the pictures taken from my house:

Next step would be kitchen renovation. I have the 3-D design ready now. I contacted Irwan, old friend of mine, to do the kitchen. And this is a picture of my kitchen-would-be:

My crib... my house... Renovation...

The renovation of my house begun last week, on May 5th, 2008. I hired some ‘tukangs’ to do the renovation. I’ve made some comparison before on which is cheaper: hire a contractor and I won’t be worried about providing the materials, or hire ‘tukang’ and I must provide and buy all the materials myself. I chose to hire ‘tukang’ instead ‘cause it’s cheaper. My father helped me finding the ‘tukang’. And it’s pretty exciting too actually to go somewhere, pick the materials, compare them, and finally bought them. It’s new thing for me, and it excites me too.

So here I am, going back and forth to Cibubur every weekend, check out the progress of the renovation, looking and purchasing some materials needed. The most unexciting moments are when I have to transfer the payment to some building material stores… ha… ha… ha… My budget is running out like water…

The changes I made for my house are pretty simple actually. I just need to close the remaining ample space at the back of the house, building up the wall for about 1.5 meters, building a concrete at the top so that in the future if I want to build my house up it will be much easier. Then I move the kitchen to the back of the house, add another bathroom, make a gazebo or ‘pendopo’ for musholla, and add a small garden as the inner court. The design is more or less as in the picture here.

Hopefully, the renovation will take about 1 month. I estimate it will be ready at the soonest early June. Wow…, I just can’t wait to see it finished. Next steps will be building a kitchen set and filling the house with furniture. But I’ll do it slowly next time as I’m running out of budget. Please… donators out there, is there anyone who would lend me some money…? Ha…ha…ha… ;p

At the end, it’s fun and good for me to have something going on right now considering what I’ve been through for the last couple of weeks back… Well, at least I can distract my attention from the challenges, which is still going on until this very day, to things related to my house renovation. Anyway, I’m really enjoying this… And I’m trying not to think about my challenges every now and then.

It's My New House...!

Cibubur, Dec. 22, 2007 – Today, I went to Cibubur. This is the fifth time I went there. I went there to see my house. Yes. My new house. I bought it couple of months ago, end of Sept, exactly. It’s a great feeling to finally have a house of my own. It’s a small house, but I love it! It’s exactly what I liked and wanted to have. The first time I saw this house, I knew exactly that that was the house that I wanted to have. I like the way it was built, I like the quality of the building and the materials, I love the way it was properly and nicely designed, how they divided each rooms, I love the location, and the most important thing was that the price suited to my budget! (well, after a bit of struggling here and there to get the down payment ready in time… ;p). And now, I finally got it! Nothing I can say except syukur alhamdulillah, ya Allah…

My new house is located at Legenda Wisata. It’s quite far actually from Jakarta. It takes about 45 minutes if I go there on Saturdays or Sundays. But if I go on weekdays, it may take about 1.5 to 2 hours considering the bad traffic along Jagorawi and Cawang highways. Well, where else can you find a housing complex at the outskirt of Jakarta that are traffic-free nowadays, right? Anywhere you choose, it’s the same problem, traffic…, traffic…, and traffic… But I’ve done my research on the location, the facilities, the area, the environment, the transportation, etc. etc. and I’m pretty happy with what I found about Legenda Wisata (thank to Sari who introduced me to this location, and thank to Agnes for so much info, soon we'll be neighbours...;p) So, I guess every choices that we made have their own consequences, don’t they? We’ll just have to live with it and accept it.

The activities of going and checking my house every two weeks really excite me. Now, I have something to look forward to every two weeks ;p And this is not to mention that I still have some other plans that I want to do to my new house later on. Yes, I still have a lot of things to do. I want to renovate it, then I want to fill it with some furniture soon enough so that I can start living there, well for the start, at least I can stay there only on weekends.

There are ample of empty spaces at the backyards which I plan to renovate. I want to add a small musholla (my father gave me the idea, actually) and move the kitchen. I also want to have a dining room and living room there, and I want to add one more bathroom complete with the service area. And to give the house a fresh air and good circulation, I want to have a small garden right in front of soon-to-be my bedroom. I’ve already had the floor plan right now. What I need to do next is to look for the right contractor to translate it into the real form, with as minimum budget as possible off course… ;p (I have limited budget for this, actually).

My plan is that, insya Allah, by the end of April 2008, I will be able to finish the renovation so by early May, I can start buying some furniture and live there on weekends (at least). It’s a lot of things to do and a lot of budget to spend too, but insya Allah, I’ll be able to realize it little by little. I just need to put aside some more money from my salary for these plans…