Before & After | Open-Concept Kitchen | Tampines 4-room BTO

127

Minimalist
HDB (BTO)
~1,000 sqft
3 br
Couple Living with Kids

A photo that brings back the smell of a fresh BTO, an empty, undecorated house and its bare kitchen. It’s excitement that we remember when we see these photos. Hello! It’s the Chan’s again, back on Season 8 to show you behind the scenes of our renovation done from April to July 2024. Has it really been 6 months since we shifted in?! BTO owners have it better when it comes to renovation as everything is bare and clean, somewhat less hacking as well. We will be showing you how we transformed our kitchen with our non-optional component scheme, which included grey floor and wall tiles in the kitchen.
Our default tiles received many compliments so we decided not to plaster the walls, and designed around a minimalistic theme. Our original laminates selections were cream-based, which we made a last minute to ditch and switch to having a monochrome kitchen design instead! No regrets because monochrome colour theme gives off sleek vibes, and we could easily match our grey, silver or black appliances with it, such as a black down light!
- #MinimalistDesign
- #monochrome
The corridor entrance to our kitchen was originally quite wide, but since we have long decided to hack and erect a half wall, we extended our kitchen countertop into this area to create a longer kitchen with more countertop space. Everyone knows kitchen countertop space is so precious!
Zoomed out a little more to show you the extended countertop. It’s a breakfast bar cum groceries drop off point now. I find the breakfast bar space very useful now that my daughter is in Primary 1, because while she has a quick breakfast here I can make food for her recess and still supervise her.
Unfortunately, our rectangular kitchen had an awkward structural wall right between the living room and kitchen. With thoughts of hacking a half wall for our kitchen, we decided to just do it, and extend the countertop outwards!
- #CountertopDesign
With the half wall design, we could do with or without a cooking hood. However, with a hood means 1) exposed hood or 2) top hung cabinet + hood. Hacking the wall to brighten up the kitchen yet installing a hood doesn’t make no sense to us. Moreover, we don’t have heavy cooking needs, and have also learnt from past experiences that we don’t need a hood to keep a kitchen well ventilated. Hence, it’s the birth of our hood-less kitchen!
- #hoodless
To enhance the sleek vibes of our kitchen, we installed an induction hob instead of stove. It gives clean lines and surfaces. Really no regrets going for an induction hob, my food still turns out yummy 🤤 hehe
We also designed around the structural wall and installed a track socket to make the wall useful instead of obstructive. It’s mainly used for our ninja foodie and charging of devices, especially when I’m cooking and my phone needs a recharge!
- #structuredwall
Another POV of our pre-hacked wall.
The space is so much more opened up after hacking!
A direct view into our bare, new kitchen.
This is how it looks after! One of the happiest thing we did was having a black tinted glass for our dish rack, and having it aligned with our top hung cabinet. We installed the height adequately for the Mrs since she does more washing than the Mr. We had a long convo with our ID with respect to the dish rack height and he advised us that if we aligned the height, it will look a lot more aesthetic and neater! He also mentioned a 10cm drop for the dish rack wouldn’t make that much difference to us since we’re not really very petite. (I’m 1.6m while he’s 1.75m) I’ve also seen pull down dish rack but never felt I needed it even though I had stayed in for 6 months already! (Whew. Can save some money 🤣)
- #Blackglass
Also wanted to share along with our kitchen renovation that we made the decision to do without a “built-in” washer. It was due to the mini washer extending the height of our washers, and that we don’t want to fix the height of our future washer (with or without mini washer). Without the countertop, we saved a little cost! We also did not do a top hung cabinet to allow the installation of a longer automated laundry rack.