Living Room Progress

We were able to get the basics in place for our guests. We purchased the grey sectional sofa from a furniture store here in Seremban after looking all over KL and Selangor, we decided this was the best couch we could find (designs are often overly complex or come in gross fabrics/colors). The sofa took two weeks to make because we chose a custom fabric, but two weeks isn't long for ordering a sofa in Malaysia.

While looking for the sofa, we were also searching for a tv cabinet. Wow is it hard to find a simple design anywhere in Malaysia. Finally we decided to have our kitchen contractor B make us a custom cabinet which is suspended from the wall. We like it, but it cost more than we wanted to spend! For the large screen tv we went with Philips LCD attached to a media player for playing films. The image is great, but the sound isn't so good. Next up will be an audio soundsystem for it.

We are still looking for a coffee table and side tables. If we don't find anything I guess we will have B make them.

Master Bedroom

Here is an updated photo of the master bedroom. All the door frames in the house are still dark green and need to be painted once we have all the wall painting done. We are thinking of a neutral grey to paint the door frames. Well the photo makes the bed look not that big, but yep it's a malaysia king size. We continue to absolutely love sleeping on our Getha mattress.

Landscaping complete (finally)!

We had the landscaping completed before the guests arrived too! It is great to see grass instead of weeds and dirt. It really makes the house look better. We went with Nilai Landscape Sdn Bhd because they seemed the most professional and because their price wasn’t bad at all. We did go with cow grass in the end and it cut the price down significantly. We are happy we chose cow grass because it is much easier to maintain.

We used grey pebbles around the front and side of the house which took 140 20kg bags. After filling the space, we think we just barely had enough. We could buy some more to make it look better, but for now it is ok. We also used grey construction pebbles on the right side of the house behind the patio area, as it is not really a used area. It would have taken 50 more bags to fill that area. The construction pebbles aren’t bad at all, they look ok and blend with the asian grey pebbles where they meet. Someday, we can change them to the grey pebbles if we feel like it. Overall price was just over 6,000myr which isn’t bad for a yard as big as ours. Price included the grass, pebbles and the minimal landscaping at the front as well as the numerous Bougainvillea plants for the planters along the wall on the left side of the house.

Two Strange Birds

I snapped a photo of these two birds hanging around outside our office window. The top bird was tapping on the tree, and so I wonder if they are in the woodpecker family. Anyone know what kind of birds these are? I should look up Malaysian woodpeckers to check.

Update- I think I found out what kind of birds these are... they look just like the Rufous Woodpecker seen here http://www.birdforum.net/opus/Rufous_Woodpecker.

Exterior House Lighting in Black

We chose black accent lighting on the exterior of the front of the house over silver as we thought the color would look better on the Cement colored walls of the house and look nice with the dark walls along the property. The lights on the first floor have two lights (up and down), while the two lights on the second floor around the big windows have only downlighting because their wasn't much room to the ceiling above.

Interior Painting

We have been busy working on the house the last few months. We had professionals paint the Living Room, Dining Room and Guest Bedroom on the first floor because we were having our first guests visit in October. What a rush to get the house habitable and furnished for the guests, but we made it just in time! We used Nippon White paint in the Living room and Dining Room. The photos here show before the room was painted after skim coating some of the uneven walls.

Bougainvillea

The landscape company told us that the type of flowering plant that I want for the hanging planters on the long wall is called a Bougainvillea. The Bougainvillea is very common in Malaysia because grows extremely well this climate. Here are some examples of the plant I found online. I am thinking of going with a dark orange color. I am even thinking based on some of these images, that we might try some in the second story planter in front of the big window because it seems like they can grow down quite well.

I'm thinking about using the large rounded spikey plants above at the front of the house in front of the bay window (three plants). I shared my idea with the landscapers and they said they would work.

Landscaping Pebbles

We had a landscape company out to the house to give us their thoughts on our plan. They said that the small pebbles are too small to use as they will spread even with a plastic barrier between the grass and rock.

So we bought a few larger rock samples. These cost 15myr per 20kg bag.

We are thinking of going with this darker color rock for the front and left side of the house.

They estimated that we need roughly 92 square meters of rocks! Which adds up in cost. So the landscaper suggested we use 'construction stones' (pictured above which are 60myr per bulldozer 'scoop' making them much cheaper). But we don't like the whitish grey color or the weird shaped rocks as much as the curved stones. Nevertheless, as we are on a tight budget, we might use these rocks at the back right side of the house behind the patio area where there is little sun and mainly just space for a pathway to the back of the house. We'll see what the landscapers overall qoute on the Cow Grass, Pebbles and plants for the planters on the long wall comes out to. If it is not too high we can use the nice rocks everywhere (provided we can get the 180-200 bags we need).

Above is the revised layout for the rocks in front. It starts by the tile instead of up farther by the driveway, and I widened the rock coverage in front of the patio area in case we want to put some chairs or lounge chairs out on the rocks (this is instead of building an expensive additional cover to extend the patio as most of the neighbors have done or to add flat wood decking which would be flush up to the patio tiles. Both options are too costly for us right now but maybe in the future).

Contemporary Landscape Inspiration

Here are some examples of Contemporary Landscaping which I have collected as inspiration; many use the ‘pebbles’ we are thinking of using around the house (these photos have been collected from magazines, Contemporist and other sites).