Design....

Did I mention in any of my postings, of somebody trying to get copies of our homeplans from our contractor? The contractor asked them to approach the owner i.e. my wife & I, but nobody did. 

He told that person, "Itu olang banyak pikir, banyak keluar wang mau bikin ini design, lu sanang-sanang minta ka.... aiyaaaa" or translated to English, "The owner spent so much time and money to get this design and you want to take the easy way??!".

I guess this is true. Even if the person comes to see us, I wouldn't share. It took us more than a year, asked around for ideas, get ideas from hotels (especially the bathrooms), scour magazines, hours and hours and hours of discussion. 

Another reason I wouldn't share is simply that different design applies to different needs and shape of your land... so I would rather give tips, rather than give away my design. See below:

Tips

• The thing is, our plot of land is kind of rectangular and access road is from the corner of the plot. Make sure you take this into account from the start, where do you want the house, in particular the entrance to be angled to.
  
• Needs? How many rooms? I have three kids so we have 4 bedrooms - although 1 is used for guest room for the next 10 or so years, until Iman and Izzan want their privacy (Iman is 4 and Izzan is coming to 2 years).
• We need separate living rooms for family & living room. Living room is for us to entertain guests, and we need the privacy so it is an enclosed area i.e. need a door there.
• We need the dining room linked to the living room. Main purpose of dining room is to entertain guests as well. 
• Further, growing up in my grandparents house, we often had visitors who need to use the washroom, and had to walk pass our kitchen and see all the unnecessary stuffs i.e. mess before they reach the toilet (in the bathroom), and in those days, bathroom is where we do our laundry.......... so for this house, we need a separate washroom near the dining / living rooms... and the architect told us this is called a "Powder room". I wonder why.
• I need the dry kitchen to have a bar facing the TV in the family room, so we design as such.
• And dry kitchen should be connected to the wet kitchen.
• And how big do you need the kitchen to be? why wet & dry? 
• make sure the wet kitchen do not have direct access to the other living area - the smell of cooking can spoil the environment of these areas
• Laundry should be close to the drying area.
• Oh yes, we have a maid so another room for the maid.
• Initially we plan for an atrium but the thought of troubles to replace lighting as well as maintenance (windows, ceiling cleaning), we created a playroom for kids at the top and ask for the entrance ceiling to be raised... at least we still have our own grand entrance.
• And we need garage for our cars, so instead of a separate one, we have the garage as part of the house.
• Walk in and built-in closets. 
• Power points & TV points.... and phone + LAN points. Keep these in mind.

I suppose the above should be of help to those people who wanted to start building... and good luck. I don't mind you come visit the site to get some ideas, but do let me know so I can give you a guided tour. Or you can wait until the house is completed in March, InsyaAllah.