Last year, we have decided to make a huge move to remodel our existing house that we have stayed for almost 10 years. I have been planning for this renovation for a while (years in fact) e.g. gathering ideas, designing the new layout and etc.

Total duration of the renovation from 1st day of demo till we move in took about 5 months. All of this could only happen as we do have a very dedicated contractor. Actually, his role is more like a PM as most of the work will be done by his workers. So we have to thank him for that. But my personal advice is that as the owner, we should really involved throughout the entire renovation. I am lucky as I temporary moved to a place nearby and i can still visit the site twice a day. Once in the morning and once in the evening.

Our target is to achieve simple yet modern and practical home.
1. The 1st thing in my list is to flip the ground floor e.g. the kitchen, guest room so that it create open concept and 1 straight line with the living room. Benefit, open concept and can keep an eye on our growing kids when we are in the kitchen. And also to allow more natural lights to come in. Intermediate terrace house always having the creepy feel even in the day and forced you to turn on the light even during the day time.
2. Enlarge the existing ground floor toilet.
3. Add extra 1 small room for the maid. Or we can convert them into storage room in future.
4. Extend the front of the house (extra 4 feet).
5. The back of the house also need to hack during our renovation is because it has to give way to new columns for the extension on the upper floor.
6. New piping for the entire house.
7. New wiring for the entire house.
8. Add additional toilet up stairs so that we have individual toilets for each room upstairs.
9. Extended the back and front of the house for upper floor.

This is our old layout.


And this is our new layout


These are some of the completed photos.







This post has been edited by jootat: Aug 15 2017, 11:57 AM

This is the back of the house.















This post has been edited by jootat: Aug 14 2017, 03:41 PM

Day 1 Demo. The workers is like went into beast mode and it just took them 1 day to demo most of the wall and flooring.





This post has been edited by jootat: Aug 11 2017, 03:20 PM

The Ground Floor toilet.
- Enlarge of the toilet a bit, relocate the WC and redo all the piping.





Constructing the split toilets at the 1st floor on top of the extended area.






Master Bedroom Toilet was constructed last after they have done the extension on the front part.






This post has been edited by jootat: Aug 11 2017, 04:35 PM

The changes inside








This post has been edited by jootat: Aug 14 2017, 08:57 AM

This is the transformation of the front part which is also the most time consuming one.










This post has been edited by jootat: Aug 14 2017, 09:18 AM

Wow..nice. What's the layout? 24x75?

Was looking at your layout, why not move the toilet to the end of your house instead

Yea... 24x75

I reserved the space behind the toilet for washing machine and also the back door. It was a difficult decision as i do have multiple ideas but in the end, this is our final layout. So far ok. Hehe...

I used to have my house layout like yours with toilet at the center. Is just take up too much space. I put the washer in my kitchen now. Is save up lots of space

I see. I tried to design the toilet till the end of the house but the washer will eat up the wet kitchen space while it is already quite small now. Is your house also 24ft or larger? Coz i personally feel my wet kitchen now is a bit small after the reno. But i think thats the best i can do for such limited space i have. I cant sacrifice the guest room space as my mother in law is sleeping there and i do not wan her to feel cramped up.

My house 37 x 80. That is why I push the toilet till the end to make the kitchen bigger. You can check my thread https://forum.lowyat.net/index.php?act=ST&f=231&t=3799314

This post has been edited by sonerin: Aug 11 2017, 08:11 PM

Ahh.. i see. U have such a wide house. Haha. I think i have also go thru ur thread b4.

But now you mentioned about my new layout, i think pushing the toilet to the back is actually possible. Make the toiler longer and narrow then widen the wet kitchen and put the washer there. May be some other ppl in future can consider that. Its too late for me now. Hahaa... but actually i wanted to hide the back door so that it is not visible from the living room. But it is totally personal choice but u do have a +ve point there.

Yes I also try to hide the door especially the toilet door that can be seen from front of the house

But my toilet door now is visible from the front hahaa... *slam face*
I was a bit worried at 1st but now we r ok coz it is quite practical as we no need to access the toilet from the wet kitchen.

Some people pantang. Anyway nothing bad about it

The first thing I thought of was, since you have a chance to change the layout, the toilet should have planned in a way that the window opens to the outside, instead of open into another wall which does not provide direct ventilation.

But I have seen two types of people. First type is like me, prefer toilet window to open, reasons are to allow natural lighting and to make the room dry faster and less nasty stuff which tends to accumulate or grow due to prolonged dampness.

Second type is keep window shut type, and block any possible light transmission.

Ya, you are right. but since we did not hire any professional ID or architect to design the house, probably we are lacking in this area. But initially we thought we wanted to leave the back area so that we could still hang some clothes indoors (which we used to do all the time before we have a maid) but now we no longer hang the clothes indoor. but so far it still kind of ok because we have a lot of pails and also we can hide the washing machine. As for the ventilation issue, the floor still dry up but u need to make sure you open up the door or turn on the ventilation fan inside.

e.g. my master toilet, big windows, sufficient sunlight during day time but we still turn on the light when we shower. Coz it's just not bright enough.

But personally i would advice to push the toilet all the way to the back of the house if possible due to the benefits of it.

This post has been edited by jootat: Aug 14 2017, 09:22 AM

This is the closer look on the laundry area.

1. Reserved an elevated flooring for the washing machine.
2. The outlet for the washing machine is done in a way that could prevent the water from coming in in case of flood.
3. The drain pipe from the dry and wet kitchen will floor to this mini man hole (I really donno what does it call). Then my contractor installed something below it that will filter away the smells from the manhole).
4. From here then all the water will flow to the man hole.

1 of the issue that I have seek advice from forum before our reno. Is the man hole. Our previous owner, cover the man hole permanently when he did the wet kitchen. I only realized after i have the idea to renovate our house and when I look at the floor plan, i was a bit shock. Even though i think we will hardly need to open the hole but i did not want to conceal them permanently.

In the new layout, the man hole will be in my ground floor guest room. And since the new layout for the bedroom is also not very big, i decided to put a platform there instead. So far we quite like the platform as my mother in law is sleeping in this room and she loves it as well.





This post has been edited by jootat: Aug 14 2017, 11:10 AM