There's No Place Like Home!

After 14 months, we've just recently gotten some excellent news - our home in Kota Damansara is complete! Well we're thankful that the whole process went smoothly...now the hard work begins, I guess!

We can't move in yet as (1) the end-financer still owes the developer a progress payment and (2) we're not currently living in Malaysia. Renting the property out it a no-no; we'd really like to 'break-in' the house ourselves. So, the only viable option is to uninstall everything, ZIP it and ship it back to Sudan with us...seriously!

A good buddy of mine was being a lil' devil's advocate and informed me that the property is now valued at least with a 30% appreciation... but it's my first house; I can't just turn around and sell it, right? When we first went to the sales office, there were so many units up for grabs. Needless to say, all of them have been snapped up (takpe Arman, next time!)

It's a blessing Ckn is back home - she helped settled everything at the developer office. I'll have to call the financier and enquire about the progress payment, and hopefully, she can go and get the key early next month (haha the end-financier is actually my employer too, so I can't be seen to be pushing too much! but heck, I'm thousands of miles away!)

To start with we've decided to install the necessary grills on the windows and doors - necessary evil this, unfortunately. I've seen the whole range of options; in Australia, grills are unheard of, while in Khartoum each home is a tiny fortress - with a rent-a-cop dozing outside! It'll seem daft hiring a 'pak-guard' sitting infront of my vacant house, so the grills would have to do.

Over the coming months, we'll have to sit down and make important decisions for the interior decoration (suede wallpaper, lava lamps and rattan chairs for the living room are so IN, and so '70s!!). To get ideas, I started with a store that is nearby to our new home : IKEA!! I know it may sound cliched - 'I just want to kit out my house with Eye Key Yah'.. but they really have some great stuff at great prices (chewarrr! plug for the Swedes!)

They have a great online catalog - but I found the interface cumbersome, so I downloaded the PDF version; all 16mb of it, to browse at my pleasure (note to self : get the hardcopy version; it'll be easier to make decisions when referring to the catalog while I'm on my 'ceramic thinking chair')

Another great tool that they have is the IKEA Kitchen Planner software; which is a fancy 3D Computer aided Design (CAD) software to design .. tada : kitchens, using IKEA stuff. After much googling (or is it oggling?), I found out that the best way to do this is to make an appointment with IKEA designers to design our dream kitchen; but I think the software is a great starting point. You can download the IKEA Singapore version (containing the kitchen modules available in Malaysia - at least I think it is!!) and try it for yourself.

...well that's it for now! We've got a lot of planning, saving, spending, re-saving, painting, and cussing before we'll see this thru. And whatever happens, at least I'll be a proud homeowner, insyaAllah!

Arab-a-day
1. lasiz - lazat...or as a certain cartoon character would say - Delicioso!
2. ferda - friend

p/s Truth be told, our 1st choice for a kitchen system (we just love talking about kitchens!) was Signature Kitchen; inspired partly by a visit to our dear friend Salina's house. You can see her busy cooking ayam goreng for our iftar, and parts of her Signature Kitchen in the fore/background. Unfortunately, this practical and beautiful kitchen comes at a price (don't they always!) - so we decided to widen our horizons (haha to IKEA)...but who knows what our kitchen would look like in the end?



(Ok this picture doesn't do justice to the kitchen, but look at those cute kids. Picture taken in Oct 2005)