i wanna go home.

an update on the house! the floors have been ripped up and replaced with... boards?





















no, these are ceramic tiles.

hohoho, easy to mop. and the effect is gorgeous!!! i'm totally digging it. :D

the state of the house right now - an absolute mess:

















this is our list of what we have and what we need/already have:

sofa
side-tables x 2 (decided)
bar stools x 2 (pending)
dining table (bought)
dining chairs x 5
coffee table
balcony chairs x 2 (have an idea)
balcony table (have an idea)
chandelier (bought)
pendant lights over our bar counter (bought)


so, after avatar 3D (which was utterly mind-blowing), alvin and i popped into 'i wanna go home' to have a look-see.



















i really, really love that grey one-seater. i kept bugging the salesperson to see if they had a 3-seater of that design. time to disturb our designer haha.

i just simply marvel at how our furniture shopping hunts are always so fruitful. everytime we go somewhere, we see loads of stuff that'll fit into the home, and is within budget.

these are the other stuff that have caught our eye so far:





















and what makes me smile is how we started out with 10,000 different ideas for the home (modern contemporary? vintage? cottage?) but as days went by, alvin and i somehow funneled our mutual likes down to the whimsical.

we have a beautiful decorative lamp-tower, a side table housing a silhouette of a tree, a 'where the wild things are' movie still (merry xmas, alvin!), and a very simple, but beautiful (and cheap) lamp-shade instead of a chandelier.

if you asked me for what style our house is going for, i'd say modern with a touch of enid blyton.

:)

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oh we've also pretty much decided on our electronics, thanks to chinling's family. i love your parents, chin! they're such sweet people. :)

we've put down our deposit for a fridge, a panasonic viera 50" (comes free with a 32" LCD!), front-load washing machine (so we can stack a dryer on it in future, just in case), a cooking hood (i have an inclination to say fume hood) and 2 ceiling fans.

we've also been really blessed when it comes to our audio equipment. i thought alvin was the particular one among us both, but apparently i'm the nitpicking sort. we scouted around adelphi twice, the first time to try out er... i can't remember the names actually. let's call them A (alvin just woke up from his nap, and told me they're the Focal Domes), KEF, italian french-ones, tannoys and anthony gallos.

first trip was not very fruitful; we tried the As first. as the salesperson put in the Phoenix album (which was our test album for all 5 speakers), i remember i was trying to pull a chair from some corner of the room. when the music started i started in shock. gosh, that is some kind of power! i just put down my chair and grinned like a fool.

we got the quote (gah! not cheap!) and left to try the KEFs, but they were somewhat lacking in power... and i felt the highs were a little sharp. it kinda sounded like what you hear at Best Denki/Harvey Norman TVs running movies ridden with explosions. ugh.

end of day one. alvin also mentioned that the As were using a super high end amplifier which means, the sound quality i heard will never be available to us because there is no way we're getting an amplifier that costs $10k. siao. (er, i actually know someone who spent this much on an amplifier... haha, the nut.)

1 month later we came back coz our designer was pushing us to get things done (thanks... and sorry :p). alvin had been reading the speaker forums so he had an idea of where to go already. we went for the french-ones first, but on the way we passed by the anthony gallo shop... which is always closed. everytime we go to adelphi, it's always dark and empty. which sucks coz alvin really wanted to try them out.

never mind, french-ones here we come.

nothing much to say here; i didn't like them at all. i had such high expectations coz alvin was saying that the forums were full of praise for it. sorry, it doesn't do anything for me at all. moving on to the tannoys...

but one thing i have to mention... the shopkeeper was really friendly, no nonsense and easy to make deals with. i really liked his open friendliness. so we returned to get our Denon 3310 amplifier from him when we came back from taiwan 2 weeks later. :)

the tannoys were almost there. we were also inclined to change our subwoofer to a 3rd party sub because the bass was very much improved through it. and improving the bass means improving its power minusing the "ceilings and walls rumbling" effect. like those types you hear at Best Denki/Harvey Norman. ugh.

yes i have a vendetta against such speaker systems.

the price came up to quite a bit, but still... i guess we could top up from the budget set for us. sigh... not very comfortable with that though.

a little uncertain, needing to pee and tired out from our hunt, i told alvin, 'ok give the anthony gallo shop one last chance before we leave. if it's not open, we'll just take it as a sign la, that it's not for us, and we'll make our decision based on the rest tonight, k?'

we hit the loo, and i thought about God giving us a sign. i laughed to myself thinking, oh what a shocker if it's open... we just went there 20 minutes ago and it was pitch black. like the many times before... well, it'll be a nice surprise if God does one of his 'you challenging Me?! I'll show you!' moves.

we went back to the shop. and what would you know? it was open! HAHAHA. this was the fifth time we were poking around the shop, and THE LIGHTS ARE ON, FINALLY!

once the speakers started playing, alvin's eyes and mine lit up. *DING!* this is it. these are what we want. the sound is just so darn sexy. the fit between us and the sound is just so right.

this was all God's plan, for sure. (i still laugh to myself when i think about how fateful it was) the speakers are small but packed with a punch, it had power, the bass was kicking, they're pretty, they have them in white and they can reside flush into our false ceiling. the price was also alright for the kind of quality, as compared to the tannoys which i was rather reluctant to fork out extra for.

and the couple... ARE CHRISTIAN! somehow they figured out we were too, and gave us a christmas discount on our wires and free audio planning for the house. they're super duper helpful, and have already met our designer plus given us the goods. *hearts*

all is well and good. :D